initiative, and when all returned in April, 1833, and Phagan explained what had happened, the Seminoles expressed themselves in no uncertain terms.  The chiefs who had gone West denied strenuously that they had signed away any rights to land, but they were nevertheless upbraided as the agents of deception.  Some of the old chiefs, of whom Micanopy was the highest authority, resolved to resist the efforts to dispossess them; and John Hicks, who seems to have been substituted for Sam Jones on the commission, was killed because he argued too strongly for migration.  Meanwhile the treaty of Payne’s Landing was ratified by the Senate of the United States and proclaimed as in force by President Jackson April 12, 1834, and in connection with it the supplementary treaty of Fort Gibson was also ratified.  The Seminoles, however, were not showing any haste about removing, and ninety of the white citizens of Alachua County sent a protest to the President alleging that the Indians were not returning their fugitive slaves.  Jackson was made angry, and without even waiting for the formal ratification of the treaties, he sent the document to the Secretary of War, with an endorsement on the back directing him “to inquire into the alleged facts, and if found to be true, to direct the Seminoles to prepare to remove West and join the Creeks.”  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.

4. Osceola and the Second Seminole War

Osceola (Asseola, or As-se-he-ho-lar, sometimes called Powell because after his father’s death his mother married a white man of that name[1]) was not more than thirty years of age.  He was slender, of only average height, and slightly round-shouldered; but he was also well proportioned, muscular, and capable of enduring great fatigue.  He had light, deep, restless eyes, and a shrill voice, and he was a great admirer of order and technique.  He excelled in athletic contests and in his earlier years had taken delight in engaging in military practice with the white men.  As he was neither by descent nor formal election a chief, he was not expected to have a voice in important deliberations; but he was a natural leader and he did more than any other man to organize the Seminoles to resistance.  It is hardly too much to say that to his single influence was due a contest that ultimately cost $10,000,000 and the loss of thousands of lives.  Never did a patriot fight more valiantly for his own, and it stands to the eternal disgrace of the American arms that he was captured under a flag of truce.

[Footnote 1:  Hodge’s Handbook of American Indians, II, 159.]