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Updated: June 18, 2025
“At first he supposed that they were taking advantage of the absence of the heavy fighting-ships, and were making a bona-fide run for the open sea. “As superior officer, he immediately signalled the other war-ships on the station, the Vicksburg, Annapolis, Wasp, Tecumseh, and Osceola. The little squadron gave chase to the flying Spaniards, keeping up a running fire as they advanced.
There was another chief, Wild Cat, who was imprisoned with Osceola, and one night Osceola "boosted" him to a high window, where he squeezed through the bars and got away. If Osceola had had any one to give him a lift, I suppose he would have been off, too. Rectus and I wondered how the two Indians managed this little question of who should be hoisted.
On December 15th, Pope moved out from Sedalia directly to the south, as if he were pushing for Warsaw, and at the same time sent a cavalry force to the southwest, to mask his movement from Price's command at and near Osceola. Next day a forced march took him west to a position south of Warrensburg, and between the two roads leading from Warrensburg to Osceola.
Osceola was not a chief, but he was well known and liked among the Indians. He used his influence to keep the rash young men from violating the treaty. He wished to see the Seminoles do their full duty to the white people, not because he was fond of the white race, but because he thought it well for the Indians that the peace should not be broken.
General Wiley Thompson was appointed to succeed Phagan as agent, and General Duncan L. Clinch was placed in command of the troops whose services it was thought might be needed. It was at this juncture that Osceola stepped forward as the leading spirit of his people. Osceola and the Second Seminole War
To this humane counsel Osceola replied with haughty independence: "You have guns, and so have we; you have powder and lead, and so have we; you have men, and so have we; your men will fight, and so will ours until the last drop of the Seminoles' blood has moistened the dust of his hunting grounds."
A very popular actress was then playing at the Charleston theater, and knowing the Indian's love of whatever is gay and spectacular, the authorities at the fort decided to take the chiefs to the theater on the sixth of January. Public sympathy had been excited by reports of the capture, imprisonment, and failing health of the once terrible Osceola.
There was no foreign war during his administration, although one with France was barely averted; and no domestic contest except with the Florida Indians a contest in which these combatants held their ground so well, under the half-breed chief Osceola, that he himself was only captured by the violation of a flag of truce, and that even to this day, as the Indian Commissioners tell us, some three hundred of the tribe remain in Florida.
"He made a signal for them to lower him down upon his bed, which was done, and he then slowly drew from his war-belt his scalping-knife, which he firmly grasped in his right hand, laying it across the other on his breast, and in a moment smiled away his last breath without a struggle or a groan." Osceola was buried with some ceremony near the fort.
One night early in June, Osceola entered the camp and visited the tent of the sleeping Micanopy. As he had always done before, the old man yielded to the wonderful personal influence of Osceola and did his bidding like a child. On the morning of the fifth of June, General Jesup was awakened by an officer who came hurrying to tell him that the Indians had gone.
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