Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsOsceola Included In Willcox Death Watch
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
The General (Mark Willcox) was having a hard time keeping up with all the deaths. Osceola had killed General Wiley Thompson in 1835. Even former U.S. Congressmen weren't safe from the Indians. And his own father-in-law, General John Coffee, had expired late in 1836. Before him, the same year, in more dramatic circumstances, General Coffee's colleague in Congress, Davy Crockett, had given his all at the Alamo. General Blackshear went out in 1837 and now, in 1838, we resume with the coming demise of the great Seminole war leader, Osceola.
As "palefaces," we will probably never fully understand why the Indians were so hostile. However, if we think about it, we probably wouldn't want strangers running us off land we had inhabited for 10,000 years plus. Also, we probably are not greatly inclined to look at both sides of the coin. We think they behaved "savagely" but from all accounts we conducted ourselves similarly. As we said before, land will do strange things to people.
General Jesup and General Hernandez had made a real good deal with Osceola. After tricking him into coming forth under a flag of truce they hit him on the head and when he woke up he had good news. He was told by the generals that he should be glad they had him because he would like the treatment he was going to receive. Being thrown in a Castillo de San Marcos prison cell in chains probably had Osceola thinking maybe he heard wrong.
But Osceola had plenty of time to think, or he thought he did. Just about the time he started thinking, possibly about escaping, he was put on a ship with other Indians, including Chief Micanopy and carried to Charleston, S.C.
Now, we Americans are interesting folks. They were back then, too. When Osceola arrived at Charleston, he was heralded as a hero. In the mind of the seaboard citizen, he was the very epitome of the patriot warrior. He represented the embodiments of those things that had made the Minutemen tick. But, now back down in Florida, those crackers thought he was a mad dog killer. Perhaps, Osceola was not at either extreme but somewhere in the middle.
He loved the image of being brave - the knight in shining armor. It was an ideal taught to Anglo-Saxons way back when. Perhaps he even got some of that inclination from his Scottish father, although he said in his last days that he was a full-blooded Indian. Even that might not have been a reference to biological makeup.
He loved his land - his home - his "stomping grounds." In a few short years, Southern boys and men would go to a hopeless war with that same ideal - the ideal that the state was "home" and no one was to intrude upon those inviolate family boundaries. Not even a neighboring state. But, Osceola was an Indian. Did he have those same feelings? Apparently, he did - with gusto!
But probably what once had been a warm smile had turned into a cold one. Remembering the blood-letting at his Alabama village and his flight with his mother to escape the same fate, Osceola had many moons ago forsaken the indulgence of feeling bad about massacre and mayhem. At first he thought he would hold to his hero, Red Eagle, and avenge the great warrior with victories instead of the defeats suffered by William Weatherford (Red Eagle).
For a time, the victories came. Osceola, not looking the part at all, with small hands and feet, and curved shoulders, was a superior physical specimen of strength, skill and endurance. He excelled in the games of fun and war. His appearance was deceiving to say the least.
He could ride and shoot with the best of them. General Thompson should never have given him that rifle with the grooves on the inside of the barrel. Historians tell us that some of the bullets removed from his body had matching grooves in them, more or less proving that Osceola had used the same rifle given to him by Thompson earlier as a present. It is said he made a remark that went something like this - "Did he think he could bribe my dignity with a mere rifle?" Of course, the smoking rifle was also seen by the daughters of old chief Charley Emathla as he died at the hands of Osceola. Osceola had good sense, too. He later remarked he was not about to go to Oklahoma because some of old Charley's folks would put the "finale" on him for doing Charley in. But he never saw Oklahoma because the malaria got him before he got there. I wonder what happened to the fine rifle with the grooved barrel and the hand-carved stock of inlaid silver. I don't know what happened to the rifle but evidently, according to the people who told it, Osceola had his scalping knife up to the very end.
The very end was getting near in the first month of 1838. Progressively the malaria was getting the best of Osceola. His proud figure was the same as it was in the fierce battles in Florida and the same as it had been in the Charleston theater when he was escorted there to see a play, "The Honeymoon." This is what Mary Boykin Chesnut had to say:
"His was the saddest face I ever saw. Under that red skin it seems there was a heart to be broken ... For the poor savage -- there is no friend. It seemed to me that my country had not dealt magnanimously with these aborigines of the soil. And I found the dignified Osceola a sad spectacle." Mary Boykin Chesnut in a few years would write more lamenting words about a warrior of another cut - the soldiers of the Civil War.
As the moments of life signaled to Osceola that they were departing swiftly, he called for his full dress regalia and for the red paint of the irrevocable vow of war and finality. Struggling against the ravages of his illness, he slipped into his decorative garments and placed his turban with the egret plumes on his head. He placed his scalping knife across his chest.
Before this, he had smiled ceremoniously and shaken hands with the officers and doctors around him. He had embraced his wives and his little children and then drew a final breath and departed for that life we all aspire to have possession of (later).
Then something strange happened. Dr. Frederick Weedon, believe it or not, the brother-in-law of Osceola's enemy and victim, General Thompson, secretly removed Osceola's head. Some say they don't know why he did that. Probably because he was doing the same as had been done to General Thompson by Osceola. The good doctor was sort of weird, too. It is said he would hang the head on the bedpost in the nursery if his little boys misbehaved. I believe I would have been hunting for another daddy. The story goes that the head was finally donated to a teaching doctor in a university and was burned when the museum burned.
Right or wrong, or sometimes some of both, Osceola reacted to what was happening to him. We do the same today.
As they buried Osceola on that cold, rainy day in Charleston, South Carolina, The General (Mark Willcox) might have been thinking of his contemporary and how he himself had reacted to the circumstances around him. Both had been the products of the world around them. And both had influenced, greatly, the world around them. They had a lot in common.
The next year, 1839, on June 12, baseball was invented and that brought a lot of fun. But this was 1838 and over 4,000 Cherokees died on "The Trail of Tears." And a lot of Seminoles did the same. And such as that is why we have to try to see that America pays attention to its moral conduct and mindset. It's not all fun and games.
Credits:
C.T. (Chris) Trowell for Exploring The Okefenokee Letters And Diaries From The Indian Wars, 1836-1842;
Mary Boykin Chesnut for her quote on Osceola;
Alvin M. Josephy for Patriot Chiefs and The Death of Osceola;
Vernon Lamme for Florida's Seminole Indians - The State's Most Colorful Son;
The Trail of Tears by Gloria Jahoda;
History of Marion County, The Early Americans by Darrell G. Riley;
Ann Carswell for letters of and notes on Gen. Mark Willcox;
Willcox Family History by Martha Albertson;
Pioneer Days Along the Ocmulgee by Fussell Chalker;
Telfair History (1807-1987);
info furnished by Gertrude Wilcox Williams and Diane Williams Rogers and others.
