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Overview
A bestselling, up-to-date evaluation of a legendary Indian leader. Named Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. "Osceola's Legacy is significant for its geneology and archaeological study of this Native American and his interaction with the federal government during the 1800s. The catalog of photographs of Osceola portraits and his personal possessions makes this a worthwhile reference book as well." --Georgia Historical Quarterly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817384395 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2009 |
| Series: | Fire Ant Books |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 397 |
| File size: | 10 MB |
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Chapter One
The Historical Rise of Osceola
Sources regarding Osceola's early life are so limited that probably no definitive account will ever be assembled. His birth and early years coincide with a period of major upheaval and dislocation among the Creek Indians—the people who represented the dominant cultural influence in his life. In order to form any plausible picture of the sociopolitical route by which he reached his highly visible role in the Florida story, we must piece together the most rationally acceptable bits of circumstantial evidence.
The Creek "Confederacy" that assembled (or reassembled) itself east of the Mississippi River throughout the eighteenth century did so as a direct response to cultural stress occasioned by the increasing encroachments of European settlers. The survivors of many tribes entered it, either as conquered enemies or as refugees. By the late 1700s, strong pro-British and pro-American factions were polarizing within the group. Geographically, the confederation also had two factions represented by "strong" towns (i.e., strong leaders and followers) both among the Upper and Lower Creek areas.
During the years of his relatively short life, Alexander McGillivray (1759-93) was able to direct Creek policies in favor of the British and of peace by attempting to control trade contracts and the activities and placement of traders within the confederation. McGillivray is thought to have been a member of the powerful Wind Clan and a native of Little Tallassee, an Upper Creek town on the Coosa Riverin northern Alabama. After his untimely death, no other Indian leader arose to take such a visible position of leadership.
The man who is generally considered to have succeeded McGillivray as the predominant force among the Creeks was not only a white but a representative of the American government. Benjamin Hawkins was appointed United States Indian agent in 1796, and his greatest aim was to persuade the Creeks to adopt a "civilized" (white), American style of life. In so doing, he tacitly or overtly permitted a radical increase in internecine strife which would have dire consequences for the Creeks. An increasingly intense split developed between the Upper and Lower towns over such issues as power in the Hawkins-promulgated Indians' National Council, competition for the location of council meetings, dissension over distribution of the annuities, and attachment to Hawkins and his agricultural and political programs. Power began to shift away from the indignant Upper Creeks, and soon schism was growing even within their ranks.
By 1811 the situation was a powder keg, for which the spark was provided by a visit to the Creeks from the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh. His mother was a Creek, and Tecumseh may have been born in the nation. He apparently preached a doctrine of native internationalism and the word of his brother, an Indian prophet. A party of Upper Creeks followed him home to hear more of his preachings and returned in 1812, looking for blood. When reprisals were made against them by those Creeks who did the bidding of Hawkins, the survivors were infuriated. Upper Creeks rose up in violence, under the leadership of a group of prophets espousing a nativist doctrine. The most conspicuous of these prophets were Josiah Francis (Hilis Hadjo) of Autauga, a Koasati town; High-head Jim (Cusseta Tustunnuggee) and Paddy Walsh, both Alabamas; and Peter McQueen of Tallassee. Through preaching and prophecy they gained a following of perhaps 70 percent of the Upper Creek population and declared the old Tallassee king as their leader. In the name of their prophecies, the leaders declared a scorched-earth policy: cattle and hogs were slaughtered, stored grain was confiscated or destroyed, and few crops were planted in 1813-14.
Late in July 1813, "at the crossing of Burnt Corn Creek on the Pensacola Road, a motley collection of White settlers ... and mixed-blood Creek planters from the Little River area above Pensacola attacked a pack train of gunpowder led by McQueen and High-head Jim." The aggressors were forced to take refuge in a makeshift fort which had been constructed around the homestead of an old Georgia trader, Samuel Mims, and "what began as an attack escalated into the infamous slaughter of Fort Mims. Instead of acting to ameliorate the situation, Hawkins exacerbated it when he intervened militarily and the might of the U.S. became involved. Outraged by the bloody victory of the nativists (called Red Sticks by contemporaries) and seeing the chance to pick up much rich, free land after an easy contest, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi Territory rushed armies into the Nation. After a bitter fight that also involved the Choctaws, Cherokees, and many nonnativist Creeks as allies of the Whites, the Red Sticks succumbed.... Peace left much of the Upper Creek country a scarred and smoking ruin."
Caught up in the midst of this cultural tumult was one family which personally suffered the destruction of their home, their source of income, and even their own familial relationship. At least three generations of social stability were swept away in the course of a couple of cataclysmic years. William Powell was a trader, probably of British descent, living at Tallassee. Hawkins spoke of him as a man of little property and apparently unambitious. Hawkins also mentioned visiting William "Pound" at Tallassee in 1796, who is probably the same man. At that time he had already resided for four years in the nation and had a pretty little Indian woman and one child.
In his research on this subject, Mark Boyd speculated whether or not this child might have been a son, Billy, or Osceola, as he would come to be called. He concludes not. The weight of circumstantial evidence seems to support this conclusion. Furthermore, evidence also indicates that the "pretty little Indian woman" whom Hawkins saw was not the mother of Osceola. William Orrie Tuggle, a native Georgian and legal counsel to the Creek Indians in Oklahoma in 1879-82, earned the respect of many of the chiefs and recorded a sizable number of their folk tales. Tuggle records an introduction to an Indian woman named Hepsy Ho-mar-ty, a sister of Osceola. "Hepsy was stout, had a pleasant face, hazel eyes, somewhat resembling the picture of her brother. She was fourteen years old when her people left Alabama.... She said that her father was a White man named Powell, who was also the father of Osceola, but their mothers were not the same; that she remembered some of the incidents [in] the war of 1836, and was now a widow. She did not know her age." Neither did Hepsy speak English.
From the Powell families of Virginia and North Carolina comes another piece of the story which, amazingly enough, does not conflict in its main elements with any of this information. According to the family genealogy, William Powell was the eldest son of James and Alse Powell, who had moved from Brunswick County, Virginia, to Glynn County, Georgia, in the latter part of 1782. The family records name male ancestors for three generations prior to the birth of James but give a birthplace only for James's father, Thomas. He was born in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, and died in Brunswick County, Virginia, in 1757.
William Powell was one of eight children (seven brothers and one sister). Family tradition offers the following information, unsubstantiated by any documents. "William, the eldest son, was an Indian trader. He married a Creek Indian Princess, the daughter of an Indian Chief, and they lived in what is now Seminole County, Georgia, on the Chattahoochee River. They had one son, Osceola, the famous Indian of the Florida Seminole War, and two daughters, one named Maurnee. For some reason, Osceola's mother fled with him to the Seminoles in Florida.... Later, William Powell moved with his two daughters to the West. This tradition has been handed down to each succeeding generation of this family."
The various stories outlined here make sense in the light of several other bits of evidence. John T. Sprague, an officer who served in Florida in the Second Seminole War, offers a fairly detailed account of Osceola's parent-age which, although questionable on several points, indicates that, at the breakup of the Powell family, two daughters went away with the father and the son remained with the mother. This scenario has been questioned by researchers—not the split itself but, rather, the method of dividing the custody of the children. In view of Hepsy's statement, however, this would have been the typical Indian way of dividing the family if the two daughters were the issue of Powell by his previous marriage to the "pretty little Indian woman" and the son was the offspring of Powell and a second (or later) Indian wife. As Hawkins tells us, "Marriage gives no right of the husband over the property of his wife; and when they part she keeps the children and property belonging to them. Moreover, the story also fits with Benjamin Hawkins's observation if Maurnee is Osceola's half sister, because Hepsy's approximation of her age at the time of the breakup of the family would have made Hepsy older than her half brother by about four years, and Hawkins found Powell with one child in 1794, which indicates that Hepsy had an older sibling. The Powell family tradition that Osceola's family lived on the Chattahoochee River coincides with Sprague's allegation also. The Powell family, however, would seem to have compressed events to exclude the northern Alabama "prologue" to the story. At the same time, however, the family history does include the detail regarding William Powell's subsequent move to the West.
Neither does this entire, complex scenario conflict with the one source which is probably the most accurate concerning Osceola's family history and early life—Thomas ("Tom") Simpson Woodward, a native of Elbert County Georgia, a woodsman and soldier and one who spent most of his life among Indians, by choice (see figure 1). Woodward was born on 22 February 1794 (or 1797, he had no way of ascertaining for certain) and was a major in command of a force of pro-American ("friendly") Indians during Gen. Andrew Jackson's campaigns of 1817-18. His Reminiscences, first published as letters to the editor of the Montgomery Mail, were assembled into book form in 1859. Even writing some forty-plus years after many of the events he was describing, his lucidity and recall of details were prodigious. He wrote with an ease of style and familiarity of description that could only have been born of personal association with the people and events which he recounted. From his narratives, then, we are tentatively able to reconstruct the cultural matrix which influenced the character of the mixed-blood boy who would become one of the best-known figures in all of Florida's history.
Osceola's birthplace was near the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, which was founded by Woodward. "It was in an old field between the Nufaupba (what is now called Ufaupee), and a little creek that the Indians called Catsa Bogah, which mouths just below where the rail road crosses Nufaupba." Tom remembered the large cedar tree which had shaded the place—he had moved five small cedars from beneath its branches to his own property. He said that "the rail road from Montgomery to West Point runs within five feet, if not over the place, where the cabin stood in which Billy Powell, or Ussa Yaholo, was born." Woodward's use of the word cabin here is significant. Through his writing, Tom Woodward proves himself a man aware of details. His choice of this word implies that Osceola lived in a stable, at least semipermanent, structure and lends credence to the current hypothesis that the Florida Indians, prior to their dislocation, did not live in chikees (open-sided stilt dwellings roofed with palm thatch). This also correlates positively with the observation of a contemporary "gentleman of the [Florida] province," who cited the towns of the Seminoles as being "built of pine logs."
Osceola, as the whites came to know him, was a Tallassee. The main town of his clan was Tallassee, on the east side of the Tallapoosa River, about three miles from King's Ferry. The Tallassees and their neighbors across the river, the Tuckabatchys (Tookabatchas), were "both original Musqua and Muscogees." About the year 1800, Benjamin Hawkins wrote of the town that its name came from Tal-o-fau (a town) and e-see (taken). It was situated "in the fork of Eu-fau-be on the left bank of Tal-la-poo-sa.... The land on it is poor for some miles up, then rich flats, bordered with pine land with reedy branches, a fine range for cattle and horses. The Indians have mostly left the town and settled up the creek, or on its waters, for twenty miles.... The Indians who have settled out on the margins and branches of the creek have, several of them, cattle, hogs, and horses and begin to be attentive to them. The head warrior of the town, Peter McQueen, a half breed, is a snug trader, has a valuable property in negroes and stock and begins to know their value."
From these and numerous other passing comments in Tom Woodward's chronicles, we may piece together a genealogy for young Osceola. "This man [Osceola] was the great grand-son of James McQueen. You knew his father—the little Englishman, Powell. His mother was Pony Copinger."
James McQueen, the scion of the family, was, in most ways, typical of so many whites who moved into the Indian lands of Alabama and Georgia after the American Revolutionary War subsided and before its finale, the War of 1812, began. He was a Scotsman and sailor who had deserted his English vessel after striking an officer. The ship was anchored "at" (off?) Spanish St. Augustine, and through the Spanish territory, McQueen made his way to the Creek Nation by 1716. He was, by his own account, thirty-three years old at the time.
Thomas L. McKenney, United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1816 until 1830, later offered a description of men such as McQueen.
A considerable number of the persons who have risen to distinction among the southern Indians, within the last quarter of a century, have been the descendents of adventurers from Europe or the United States, who, having married Indian women, and adopted the savage life, obtained the confidence of the tribes, and availed themselves of that advantage to accumulate property. They were at first traders, who carried to the Indians such goods as they needed, and bought their peltries.... They lived in a state of semi-civilization, engrafting a portion of the thrift and comfort of husbandry upon the habits of the savage life, having an abundance of everything that the soil, or the herd, or the chase, could yield, practising a rude but profuse hospitality, yet knowing little of any thing which we should class under the names of luxury or refinement. Their descendants formed a class which, in spite of the professed equality that prevails among the Indians, came insensibly into the quiet possession of a kind of rank.
James McQueen was "said to be, by those who knew him well, very intelligent, and [took] great pains to make himself acquainted with the history of the Creeks." Woodward wisely surmises, "From the early day in which he came among them, and they knowing at that time but little of the Whites, their traditions, were, no doubt, much more reliable than anything that can now be obtained from them." McQueen tells us that the name Muscogees, or Musquas, as they were known originally to the other tribes, signified "independent." He was the first white man whom Woodward had ever heard of being among the Creeks and apparently exerted a great deal of influence among them. When McQueen first encountered the Tallassees and settled among them, they were occupying a portion of Talladega County McQueen moved them "down opposite Tuckabatchy" and settled the Netches (Natchez Indians) at the Tallassee old fields on the Tallasehatchy Creek. McQueen married "a Tallassee woman" (whether before or after the move is unclear but probably before, since intermarriage would have strengthened his influence) and settled himself in Montgomery County, "near where Walter Lucas once had a stand, at the crossing of Line Creek [earlier known as Fawn Creek]."
Woodward, personally associated with the family, gives this account:
I knew several of his children—that is, his sons, Bob, Fullunny, and Peter. Bob was a very old man when I first knew him. He and Fullunny had Indian wives. Peter, the youngest son, married Betsy Durant. They raised one son, James, and three daughters, Milly, Nancy and Tallassee. The Big Warrior's son, Yargee, had the three sisters for wives at the same time, and would have taken more half sisters. After Peter McQueen died, his widow returned from Florida and married Willy McQueen, the nephew of Peter, and raised two daughters, Sophia and Muscogee, and some two or three boys. Old James McQueen had a daughter named Ann, commonly called Nancy. He called her after the Queen of England, whose service he quit when he came into the Nation. Of late years it was hard to find a young Tallassee without some of the McQueen blood in his veins. This daughter, Ann, raised a daughter by one Copinger, and called her Polly. She was the mother of Ussa Yaholo, or Black Drink—but better known of late as Oceola.
McQueen continued to exert personal, familial, and political power over the Tallassees, possibly for as long as ninety-five years. Through his personal influence, the Tallassees and Natchez never took up arms against the colonies during the American Revolutionary War. Old James McQueen finally died in 1811—by his own count, at the age of 128 years! His great-grandson Osceola would have been about seven years of age at the time—old enough to have known this powerful and respected man personally, to have felt the influence of his large family, and to have been imprinted with his leadership capabilities. Great-grandfather McQueen was buried on the west (Montgomery) side of Nufaupba Creek, on property later owned by "a Mr. Vaugh," about a mile from the birthplace of Osceola.
As we have seen earlier, James's son Peter McQueen, Osceolas great-uncle, became a leader of the Tallassees after the death of his father. This role should not be construed as chieftainship or formal leadership in the white American sense in the case of James or Peter McQueen or, later, in the case of Osceola and his influence with the Seminoles. This point is frequently misconstrued by whites and has led to much confusion and many errors concerning the true nature of Osceolas power base among the Indians. From Hawkins we learn that, prior to his own organizational imposition based upon the power of the United States government, the Creeks never had a national government or law. Each town had its micos ("there being several so called in every town, from custom, the origin of which is unknown") and counselors. A mico superintended all public and domestic concerns, received all public characters, heard their talks, laid them before the town, and delivered the talks of his town. In other words, these micos acted as spokesmen for the collective will of their people, deriving their power from the respect and collective consent of the people.
Warriors were also prominent in town affairs because of their prowess in battle. Young men could be appointed leaders if they distinguished themselves in "warlike enterprises" and, through repeated successes, could rise in town estimation. Even in the twentieth century, however, researchers investigating the decision-making process among the Florida Indians have concluded simply that "the Indians do not like to be told what to do, either by white men or by their own people."
Nowhere in Hawkins's or Woodward's writings or in Second Seminole War sources are we given information concerning any clan affiliation of Polly Copinger and therefore of Osceola. We do know, however, that Creek and Seminole clan affiliation was matrilineal, and therefore almost certainly Osceola recognized the clan of his great-grandmother, the Tallassee woman who married James McQueen. Alternatively, Osceola may simply have seen himself as a Tallassee or a member of McQueen's "band" (Woodward's word). We do learn, from Woodward, that the Indian's language and perceptions of many things Indian changed as a direct result of their contacts with the whites. He says, for example, "Their intercourse with the whites has changed many of their old habits and customs even since my time. In fact, I know a number of words in their language and names of things and places that are not spoken or pronounced as they were when I first knew them. This has been occasioned by the whites not being able to give the Indian pronunciation, and the Indians in many cases have conformed to that of the whites." This subtle but continuing cultural transformation, of which Woodward was a keen and cogent observer, undoubtedly contributed to the later rise to prominence of Osceola, in the social perception of both Indians and whites.
At any rate, when the Upper Creek nativist prophets began their firebrand preaching, James McQueen was no longer alive to counsel his family. Localized disturbances rapidly escalated into regional warfare, involving the events and reasons discussed earlier. The treaty of capitulation finally forced on the Creeks by Andrew Jackson on 9 August 1814 required that they cede to the United States government two-thirds of their lands—some of which included property occupied by Indians who had sided with the Americans! Not long after General Jackson reached "Franca Choka Chula, or the old French trading-house, as it was called by the Indians" [i.e., Fort Toulouse/Jackson], a group of the Creek dissidents gathered their bands and left their homes. These included Hossa Yoholo (who is sometimes confused with Osceola but was a grown man with an established reputation, while Osceola was still a child); Savannah (Sowanoka) Jack; Peter McQueen and his wife, Betsy Durant, along with her father, John Durant, and her mother, who was one of Alexander McGillivray's sisters. "The boy, Billy Powell, who was the grandson of one of Peter McQueen's sisters [Ann, also called Nancy], was then a little boy, and was with this party. They all put out for Florida, and on their route they split among themselves."
Woodward advances no explanation for this split. Savannah Jack and his people halted on the West Florida line and paused before turning west. John Durant went on to New Providence, Nassau. McQueen and the others went to East Florida. It is probably that this is the point at which Powell and his daughter(s) chose to separate from Polly Copinger and her son. If so, the story of this split may also be the item which Sprague, a generation later, reported as the separation "by mutual consent." Sprague also reports that William Powell remained in Georgia until he migrated to Arkansas in 1836. If this is correct, then it also accounts for the fact that Hepsy Ho-mar-ty recalled some of the events of the 1836 (Second Seminole) war.
The refugees found succor, for a few years at least, among other Upper Creeks and the British in the erstwhile Apalachee territory of West Florida. Shortly after their arrival, Hawkins reported to Governor Early of Georgia that the prophet Francis and Peter McQueen had been seen wearing British uniforms at an outpost newly established by the British on the Apalachicola River. Agents of the British crown, operating from what was still Spanish-held territory, were attempting to finesse the support of the Creeks against the Americans by promising the return of Alabama lands which they had been forced to cede to the United States by Jackson's 1814 treaty. Francis (see figure 2) and a delegation of the Indians, pleased with this British courtship, left Florida in 1815 for a trip to England.
In November 1816 Woodward saw McQueen at Fort Hawkins, where the Indians had gone to trade. A few months later, on 17 March 1817, Alexander Arbuthnot, a British agent (later hanged by Jackson), wrote to Fort Gaines from Ocklockonee Sound complaining that Negroes had been stolen from Peter McQueen.
Indian raids, American reprisals, and assorted retaliations ensued. On 30 November 1817 a group of the Apalachicola Creeks, apparently including some of McQueen's band, attacked a boat party transporting army stores from Mobile point, up the Apalachicola River, to Fort Scott in Early County, Georgia. All were killed except two soldiers who escaped and a white woman named Mrs. Stuart, the wife of a sergeant, who was abducted by the Indians. General McIntosh, Maj. Tom Woodward, and Capt. Isaac Brown, in command of the body of allied Indians accompanying Jackon's troops into Florida in the spring of 1818, pursued McQueen's band, which they knew to have the captive woman. "While marching on between St. Marks, and Sewannee Town, distance about one hundred miles, on Sunday, the 12th day of April, we discovered fresh signs of Indians." Woodward and his Indians overtook and captured a part of the group, consisting of women and children and including Mrs. Stuart. "This was at Osilla [the Aucilla River, about ten miles east of St. Marks] and was known as the McIntosh fight." Woodward specifically mentions that among the prisoners taken that day was Billy Powell, or Osceola. Woodward says that he knew Osceola well. He recalls, "Capt. Isaac Brown and myself, with a party of friendly Creeks and Uchees, made him a prisoner ... and he was then but a lad."
This description, besides fixing Osceola's geographic location at one point in his early life, also tends to corroborate the hypothesis that he was born around 1804. Hawkins tells us that it was the Creek custom to initiate youths into manhood "at the age of from fifteen to seventeen." This ceremony occurred at the principal busk (Boos-ke-tau), the annual festival celebrated in July or August. Woodward also repeatedly refers to him as "the boy Billy Powell" during this period and differentiates cogently among his child name, his busk name, and the later transliteration of that name by whites. In this critical instance of his capture, especially, it is hard to believe that, had this male Indian been of the proper age for the busk, he would have been captured with the women or allowed to depart with them. At about fourteen years of age, however, he was still but a lad.
Osceola had left his home, his home town, and probably many of his blood kin in Alabama at around the age of ten years. He had been living a seminomadic life for almost four years—four of his critical, formative adolescent years. During this time, the mixed-blood culture and concomitant tolerance for whites which had dominated his worldview was forcibly shifted by the polarizations of warfare against a predominantly white enemy. This enemy, however, was American, not British; this enemy was the United States government, and not necessarily each individual white American. We will have ample proof throughout Osceola's life that he was capable of making the distinction.
After the capture of the Indians, General Jackson was "sought out" by an old Indian woman, to whose people Jackson offered amnesty in return for the surrender of Peter McQueen to the commandant at St. Marks. Jackson's reports of this affair, together with later known movements of the group, imply that the women and children were set free to carry the offer to McQueen, although the Indians chose not to avail themselves of the clemency of the Americans. Mark Boyd posits that this old woman might have been Ann Copinger and that the release of the captives excluded warriors. We have no reason other than fancy to surmise such. Moreover, Woodward, one of the individuals best in a position to tell us what actually happened, says that, during the fight which resulted in the capture, the women and children were purposely cut off from the warriors in order to rescue them and, in particular, the white woman was calling for help. As a consequence, only women and children—not warriors—were captured.
In April 1818, following these events, Jackson destroyed several Indian towns in the area of the St. Marks and Suwannee rivers and returned to St. Marks, where he hanged the British agent Arbuthnot and another British insurrectionist, Robert Ambrister. The prophet Francis and Himollemico were also executed, removing the Indians whom Jackson considered to be "the prime instigators of the war." In an incendiary postlude to the conflict, however, Jackson occupied Spanish Pensacola, thereby creating an international incident. In the meantime, the Indians scattered. Woodward says that Peter McQueen died in Florida shortly after General Jackson's campaign in 1818, "on a little barren island on the Atlantic side of Cape Florida," below present-day Miami.
In late 1821 Jackson sent a report to the secretary of war which included a list of twenty-two Indian villages in Florida as known to old Neamathla, a Miccosukee Indian who had cooperated with the Americans in 1817-18. Number 7 on Neamathla's list is "Peter McQueen's village, the other side of Tampa Bay." Two other towns, numbers 6 and 10, also contained McQueen's people. Number 10, Old Suwannee Town (Old Town, Suwannee Old Town), had been burned in 1818, however. Number 6, "Sow-walla village," had no indication of location but may have been an older village also. Regardless, Osceola and his mother may have joined the group on "the other side" of Tampa Bay. This possibility also fits with other reported events.
(Continues...)
Outside the Magic Circle
The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr
Edited by Hollinger F. Barnard
The University of Alabama Press Copyright © 1985 The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.