A legendary Seminole warrior, Osceola was born in 1804 in the Upper Creek village of Talisi (also known as Tallese and later Old Tallassee), which was located 4.7 miles south of present-day Tallassee at the mouth of Euphaubee Creek on the east (left) bank of the Tallapoosa River.
Known as William (Billy) Powell to Anglo-Americans, Osceola became a leader of the Florida Seminoles and is credited as having initiated the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).
The name Osceola came after he moved to Florida in 1814. It is the Anglicized form of the Creek Asi-yahola, which means a black drink singer or speaker.
The people in the village of Talisi were mixed-blood Native American (Muskogee-Creek), English, Irish and Scottish, and some were black. Osceola’s Creek mother, Polly Copinger, was part Muskogee and part Caucasian. She had married Englishman William Powell, an Indian trader. Some historians think that Osceola’s birth father actually was a Muskogee who died after his son’s birth.
Osceola’s great uncle on his mother’s side, Peter McQueen, was chief of Talisi, where Osceola was born. McQueen became a leader of the Red Sticks during the Creek War of 1813-1814. As that conflict escalated, many Creeks fled from Alabama to Florida; among them were Osceola and his mother. They followed Peter McQueen and became separated from William Powell. The boy Billy Powell was captured by Andrew Jackson’s troops during his 1818 campaign in Florida but was released because of his young age.
Osceola (1804-1838) was part of the Muskogee-speaking migrants who settled in central Florida after the Creek War. They joined the Seminoles, a Florida-based tribe who never did sign a treaty with the U.S. government.
Osceola was never a hereditary chief, nor was he ever elected to the Post. He is alleged to have participated in the First Seminole War (1817-1818) and became a leader of the Seminoles who refused to be moved to Oklahoma west of the Mississippi. He emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of Indian removal among the Seminoles.
On Dec. 28, 1835, Osceola led an attack on Fort King, which was near modern-day Ocala, Florida. American Indian Agent Wiley Thompson was assassinated as a result of this event that, along with Chief Micanopy’s ambush of Major Francis Dade’s troops south of Fort King, the Battle of Withlacoochee and raids on sugar plantations in East Florida in early 1836, marked the beginning of the Second Seminole War and branded Osceola as an outlaw. The seven-year war, 1835-1842, is regarded by historians as the longest and costliest Indian war in United States history. At the time of the Fort King attack, Osceola was 31 years old.
With his leadership of the resistance well recognized, Osceola was the primary target of U.S. Army operations. He was captured by deception in October 1837.
Frustrated by the Indian leader, General Thomas Sidney Jesup accepted his request to negotiate under a flag of truce, but when Osceola and more than 80 of his followers set up camp one mile south of Fort Peyton for the duration of negotiations, they were arrested.
Despite the public outcry, Osceola was taken to St. Augustine, Florida, and imprisoned at Fort Marion, which is now Castillo de San Marcos.
On Nov. 30, 1837, some 20 of Osceola’s Seminole followers escaped from Fort Marion, but the Indian leader apparently was suffering from malaria and was not among them; however, because of the escape, General Thomas Jesup transferred Osceola and about 200 Seminoles from St. Augustine to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, the following month.
Soon after arriving at Fort Moultrie, Osceola’s health rapidly deteriorated. During his brief incarceration at Fort Moultrie, he sat for a portrait by George Catlin just days before his death on Jan. 30, 1838.
On that morning, Osceola realized he was dying. Too weak to speak, he signaled Dr. Frederick Weedon that he wished his chiefs and the officers at Fort Moultrie to join him.
His two wives prepared him in full dress. He shook hands with all present – his chiefs, the officers, the doctor, his wives and his two small daughters. The officers and chiefs wept at the death of a man revered even by his enemies. He was just 33.
Osceola was buried outside Fort Moultrie on Sullivan Island with military honors. The epitaph on his tombstone reads: “Osceola, Patriot and Warrior, Died at Fort Moultrie, January 30, 1838.”
Before his interment, Osceola’s head was removed by Army doctor Frederick Weedon (1784-1857), the physician who had treated Osceola at Fort Marion, in St. Augustine and at Fort Moultrie. The documented reason for the removal of his head specified scientific research, but there is some speculation that it might have been done in revenge. Dr. Weedon was the brother-in-law of Wiley Thompson, the Indian Agent shot dead by Osceola.
Weedon also made a death mask of Osceola’s head. It is housed at the New York Historical Society’s galleries.
Osceola’s severed head was given to Dr.Valentine Mott, founder of the Medical College of New York. It was displayed in the school’s medical museum until 1866 when it was allegedly lost in a fire.
There is another Tallassee connection to this story: Dr. Frederick Weedon was the great-grandfather of Tallassee’s Mildred Weedon Blount (1898-1981). Mildred and Roberts Blount (1893-1967) built Seven Gables in 1941, one of Tallassee’s historic homes.
In 1949, Mildred Weedon Blount owned a diary and letters of Dr. Frederick Weedon. Sometime later, she donated them to the Alabama Department of Archives.
~Tallassee’s Bill Goss has been writing historical accounts for area magazines since 2003.
