0:00

Greetings and salutations, scholar-warriors

0:02

and fellow travelers. It is I, CJ,

0:04

here to share with you

0:07

another dose of dangerous

0:09

history.

0:10

And this episode is going to feature

0:13

my talk

0:14

from a few weeks ago at

0:17

the 2023 Florida

0:20

State Libertarian Party Convention.

0:23

And the talk is about the

0:25

seminal leader, Osceola, who

0:29

I very much admire and

0:31

who I see as a hero

0:34

as both a Florida man and

0:36

a libertarian.

0:38

And this was a really neat event

0:41

and I had a lot of fun. And

0:44

I want to say a big thank you to

0:46

Lisa,

0:47

who is, I forget her exact

0:50

position, but she's very

0:52

involved with the Florida LP

0:54

organization

0:56

and has been a DHP listener

0:58

for quite a while and was

1:01

the main person behind inviting

1:03

me and helping me, you know,

1:06

to get there and

1:07

the logistics and all that sort of stuff. So

1:09

Lisa, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

1:12

And also I want to say thanks as well to Patrick,

1:15

who is, I believe, the

1:17

chairman. And if he's not the chairman, he's

1:19

something pretty high up in the Florida

1:22

Mises caucus of the

1:24

state LP.

1:25

And Patrick also helped me to get

1:27

there and, you know, contributed towards my expenses

1:30

and things. So Patrick,

1:32

thank you very much as well.

1:34

And I won't get into too much detail here other

1:36

than to say,

1:37

man, it's continued to be a difficult

1:41

last few weeks for me since

1:43

I put out the last DHP episode.

1:46

Just a series of unfortunate

1:48

events, you know, personal and family

1:50

and so on and so forth. And

1:53

it's just continued to be a very rough stretch for me.

1:55

The one good news about

1:57

all that that I have to report is

1:59

is that I am still on

2:02

the wagon. As of the

2:04

recording of this intro, I

2:06

am 89 days booze free

2:09

by the time this,

2:10

and then

2:12

the audio of my talk, you know, put together

2:14

into a finished product as a podcast episode

2:17

is published, I'll probably be 90 or a little

2:19

past 90 days booze free.

2:22

But as of right now, when I'm recording this

2:25

intro, I'm at 89 days

2:27

no booze. So

2:29

despite the many stresses

2:31

and problems and hardships I've been dealing with in

2:34

recent weeks, at least

2:36

I've managed to not,

2:38

I've been tempted a few times, I'll tell you, but

2:41

at least I've managed to not

2:43

hit the bottle again and make things

2:45

even worse. But

2:48

I hope you're doing better than I've

2:50

been doing lately. And

2:52

if you haven't been, if you've been dealing

2:55

with various problems and crises and things as

2:57

well, then I sympathize

2:59

and I feel for you. But

3:02

real quick, I just wanna remind you that

3:04

if you enjoy the work that I do here and you want

3:06

to help me to

3:08

continue to be able to do it and,

3:11

you know, to not have to get

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3:14

freelance and part-time work on the side, unrelated

3:17

to the DHP just to make ends meet and pay my

3:19

bills,

3:21

thus freeing up that time that I

3:23

would devote to that part-time and freelance work to just

3:25

devote to the DHP and stuff like that, then

3:28

please consider supporting my work. There's

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a bunch of ways to do it.

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But the most helpful is if

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would be things like access to the

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first 52 episodes of the show, what I

3:53

call vintage DHP.

3:56

And by the way, that includes two

3:58

episodes on the Seminole Wars.

3:59

that I made years ago,

4:01

and that

4:03

obviously relate to the talk that's

4:05

gonna be the centerpiece of this episode.

4:07

And then in addition to that, again,

4:10

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4:12

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4:57

discuss cool books that I select.

5:00

And typically we alternate

5:02

every other month. We go back and forth between

5:04

fiction books and nonfiction books.

5:07

And this month's book discussion, which

5:10

will be happening in a couple

5:12

of weeks from when I'm recording this intro, will

5:15

be on a really neat Mike

5:17

Resnick book. And

5:19

it's not Santiago. It's a Mike Resnick

5:21

book. I don't think I've ever talked about

5:23

publicly. Maybe I briefly mentioned it somewhere,

5:26

but not one I've

5:28

talked about very much, but it's a really cool

5:31

one that combines space Western

5:33

stuff with some other kind of sci-fi

5:35

sub genres and kind of mixes

5:37

it all together with tall

5:40

tales as a storytelling concept.

5:43

So anyway, that's in a couple of weeks. And

5:45

then the following month, June, we'll be reading

5:47

a nonfiction book, which I

5:49

have not yet selected, but I probably

5:52

will be doing soon.

5:54

So anyway, I hope you'll consider

5:57

signing up to help support my work.

5:59

you're not already doing so and

6:01

maybe if you already are a contributor at

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one of the lower levels you might consider upping

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your contribution level in order to access

6:09

more goodies and bonuses and to help

6:11

me keep doing what I'm doing because it's

6:14

been pretty tough times lately for

6:16

me.

6:18

But anyway without further ado here

6:21

is my talk on Osceola delivered

6:24

several weeks ago at the Florida State

6:26

LP convention.

6:50

My topic is going to be the

6:53

guy on my shirt. It's always

6:55

handy when you can wear the shirt of

6:58

whatever you're talking about to go speak

7:01

in an event or something. So how

7:04

many are actually Florida residents currently?

7:06

Okay

7:07

that's good. How many Florida

7:09

natives? Makes

7:12

two of us. Born on the Georgia

7:14

border or born in

7:17

a plane flying over Florida? Okay

7:21

all right it's amazing

7:24

to me how how few Floridians know their history

7:26

but then again I've not spent enough time in other

7:28

states to know like do people

7:30

in Missouri have no clue about the history of Missouri?

7:32

I don't know. But

7:35

Florida is particularly loaded with transplants

7:38

and has been since at least about World War II

7:40

and so a lot of Floridians

7:43

know little or no Florida history and

7:45

to me that's a problem not just because I'm a history dork so

7:48

I think that everybody should know history

7:50

but also you know when you think about

7:53

the possibility even of things

7:55

like

7:56

radical decentralization or even

7:58

secession you know

7:59

I have my dream of the Republic of Florida

8:02

man, and I've got it all planned out like the

8:04

national anthem is gonna be free bird I've got the whole

8:07

thing figured out

8:09

But one of the things that

8:12

Gives people a real willingness

8:16

to stand up on

8:18

behalf of things like you know

8:20

local self-government and home rule and

8:23

Resisting far away imperial encroachments

8:25

and whatever one of the things that gives the people

8:27

it gives people historically The

8:30

kind of backbone to take a stand is

8:32

a sense of their history the history of their place

8:35

the knowledge of land This is something that struck me a lot

8:38

I've studied a fair amount of Irish history, and

8:41

I've back when I was still teaching college history

8:43

I led study abroad groups to Ireland

8:46

three times and

8:48

You know when you look at the history the Irish had

8:50

to try for like 700 years Before

8:53

they finally succeeded in kicking the

8:55

bricks out of you know all but the northern counties

8:58

That takes some real Endurance

9:01

you know and and particularly since a lot of

9:03

that time Ireland

9:03

or sorry England was you know the heart

9:06

of the world's most powerful Empire for much of that

9:08

time and A big part of it

9:10

is I think that the Irish they had a real

9:12

sense of their home their culture

9:15

their history You know they could tell

9:17

you about like ancient kings of Ireland

9:19

going of Brian Baruch or somebody and

9:22

so this love of their Their homeland

9:25

the geography the history the

9:27

myths I think this is

9:29

one of the things that gave them the endurance to

9:32

keep standing up to London

9:33

Despite losing you know

9:35

countless times And so I think it's worth

9:37

especially as more people have fled to Florida recently

9:40

as you know covid refugees and so forth I

9:42

think it's worth if you're not

9:44

a native Floridian or even if you're just you

9:47

are but you're not familiar with the history to Learn about

9:49

it because it's a lot more interesting

9:51

than people might think it didn't start with Disney World

9:54

So if you go back

9:57

to say the

10:00

18th century, so end of the 1700s.

10:03

Florida was nothing like what it was today.

10:05

First off, it was extremely

10:07

lightly populated,

10:09

and it was an imperial frontier

10:12

battleground

10:13

between multiple empires. You

10:16

had the British involved

10:18

in the area, the Spanish, of course, had been involved

10:20

in Florida since the 1500s. You

10:22

know, Ponce de Leon first

10:24

poked around a little bit in 1513,

10:27

but didn't really establish any enduring settlement.

10:30

It wasn't until Pedro Menendez in 1565 that

10:33

the Spanish established a continuous

10:36

presence in St. Augustine.

10:37

And they were there for the next 200 plus years, but

10:40

amazingly, the Spanish,

10:42

despite being here a long time, had a very light footprint.

10:45

They basically had St. Augustine, Pensacola,

10:48

and a handful of tiny little military

10:51

outposts, and for a while some

10:53

religious missions, Franciscans and

10:55

so forth. But they had a very light

10:57

presence.

10:58

And so, as

11:00

a result, they never had control of it the way they had control

11:03

of something like Mexico or something like Cuba.

11:05

In the

11:08

mid-17th century, of course, you had the Seven Years'

11:10

War, which the British won. And

11:13

one of the things that happened as a result of the British victory there

11:15

is Florida got handed over to the British.

11:17

And this is, to Florida history dorks

11:19

like me, this is known as the British period

11:22

in Florida history, creatively enough.

11:24

And

11:27

even the British never really established a

11:29

huge presence in Florida while they ruled it. You

11:32

know, the Spanish still had an influence.

11:34

The British ruled it. Then at the end of the American

11:36

Revolution, the British lost

11:39

that war. And one of the things that happened,

11:41

aside from the 13 colonies getting their independence, is

11:44

Florida got handed back to Spain.

11:47

This is what's known as the Second Spanish

11:49

Period. And they would rule Spain for

11:52

about

11:52

a little shy

11:54

of 40 years after they

11:56

got it back from the British. Of course, during that

11:58

time, you also had now. Another factor

12:00

in the mix, which was a brand

12:03

new empire

12:04

called the United States of America,

12:06

which make no mistake was

12:08

an empire from its very founding, even

12:11

though we don't like to say that. But

12:13

it's been an empire from day one.

12:15

And I could do a whole like two-hour thing just on that, but

12:19

I won't. So, as

12:22

a result, when Spain got Florida

12:25

back, Florida was

12:27

this weird imperial

12:29

battleground where you had the

12:32

British had relinquished it, but they still had a presence.

12:34

There were still British traders and sort of agents

12:36

and things operating in Florida. Spain

12:39

nominally ruled it,

12:40

but they had a very light footprint. They only had control

12:43

of a few areas. And as

12:45

a result, much of Florida was, for

12:47

good or for ill, kind of in a semi-anarchic

12:50

state, which brings

12:52

in the additional factor, the natives,

12:56

including the Seminole of which Osceola

12:59

was. So, the

13:02

Seminole were not

13:05

an original native tribe

13:07

of Florida. Most

13:09

people don't know that. What I mean

13:11

when I say that is there was no such

13:13

thing as a group of people called the Seminole, say,

13:17

as of the time Ponce de Leon

13:19

came over in 1513. There was no such

13:21

thing as a Seminole. In fact,

13:23

there was no such thing as a Seminole when Pedro Menendez found

13:25

it in St. Augustine. And there was no such thing as

13:27

the Seminole really when the Spanish handed over

13:29

Florida to the British. It was only roughly

13:31

around the time of the British period and into

13:34

the second Spanish period that you started to even get

13:36

something that people started to refer to as

13:38

the Seminole.

13:39

So, the original native tribes

13:41

of Florida are tribes

13:43

that most people have never heard of, unless they've studied

13:45

Florida history like me. There are people with

13:48

names like the Calusa, or the Tequesta,

13:51

or the Temuqua.

13:53

But by the time Spain handed Florida

13:55

over to Britain, those groups were

13:58

virtually extinct, primarily by the time they were born. because

14:00

of disease and also, you know, wars and things like

14:02

that. But disease was the number one thing.

14:04

So Florida was like almost

14:07

empty

14:08

really by the mid 17th century, outside of

14:10

the handful of Spanish cities and things.

14:13

And what happened was people

14:15

started to come down into Florida, sort

14:18

of like as refugees from places

14:21

of what today we would think of as Georgia and Alabama

14:23

primarily. And these were mostly

14:25

what are called Creek Indians.

14:28

So the main

14:30

contingent and ingredient of the seminal were

14:33

actually Creek Indians.

14:35

And the seminal in terms of their language,

14:37

their culture, their religion, all that stuff, they remained

14:40

basically Creek Indians. It's

14:42

just they had a, they developed a distinct

14:45

local identity and political identity as

14:47

separate, you know, from the

14:49

main group of creeks up in the

14:51

North. So from

14:54

very early on after Florida went back

14:56

to Spain, the end of the American revolution, American

15:00

leaders and various

15:02

other people looked at Florida with

15:05

a very covetous eye.

15:07

And it was partly

15:09

because of, you know, all this empty land

15:11

as they would have seen it, but partly it

15:14

was also, there was a

15:16

security concern, particularly

15:18

if you were an American living on what was then the Southern

15:20

frontier, like South Georgia or what

15:22

today is Alabama.

15:24

And number one, it was the fact that because

15:26

Florida was still nominally Spanish,

15:29

technically it wasn't supposed to be legal under international

15:32

law for Americans say

15:34

to, let's say, I don't know, you owned

15:36

a plantation near that Southern border.

15:40

And let's say, you know,

15:43

some hostile Indians from Florida raided your plantation.

15:46

Well, now you're in all kinds of legal difficulties

15:49

because in order to retaliate, maybe

15:51

try and regain, you know, if you've lost property

15:53

or whatever, you'd have to pursue across an international

15:55

border.

15:57

And it's really messy in

15:59

terms of all. the border violence that started to happen

16:01

around the turn of the century from the 17th to the

16:04

1800s, it's really messy to try and figure out

16:06

who's starting what. It's really

16:08

difficult, but it

16:11

seems like from my research that

16:14

more often than not, it was actually

16:17

the Anglo-white settlers who

16:19

were kind of starting the hostilities in many

16:21

cases. Not necessarily all the time, but a lot

16:23

of the time.

16:24

And some of it seems to have been driven by

16:27

envy, because these people

16:29

we know as the Seminole, they

16:31

started to do pretty well for themselves. And

16:33

the Spanish had kind of like a hands-off

16:35

approach to them, where their view was like, eh,

16:38

as long as these people aren't attacking

16:40

our cities and bothering us, we're going to kind of

16:43

just let them run themselves, and we

16:45

don't even really have enough boots on the ground to control

16:48

them, even if we wanted to. So let's just

16:50

kind of look the other way.

16:52

And so a lot of Americans, particularly

16:54

in the deep South, felt like we need to

16:56

take over Florida

16:58

so that these Indians can't

17:00

keep using it as a base to attack

17:02

us. It's sort of analogous to the argument

17:04

for going into Afghanistan

17:06

after 9-11. It's amazing how many aspects

17:08

of the Seminole wars

17:10

have very current parallels.

17:13

It just keeps repeating itself over and over and over.

17:16

I used to tell my students when I was teaching Florida

17:18

history that

17:20

if you think Vietnam was the first Vietnam,

17:22

you're wrong. Before

17:24

Vietnam, there was the Philippines

17:27

from like 1899 to 1902 thereabouts. And

17:31

what I mean by Vietnam is a very

17:34

difficult counterinsurgency campaign

17:37

against skillful guerrilla fighters in

17:39

a difficult tropical climate.

17:42

Okay, that's Vietnam, that's also

17:44

the Philippines, that's also the Seminole

17:47

wars. So it's like you can

17:49

go back, you know, at this point almost 200

17:51

years and see, oh, we

17:54

just keep doing the same things over and over and over again,

17:57

and each time the

17:59

attitude to be, of course, the leaders

18:01

who run these sorts of things, they want you to just, you

18:04

know, have no sense of the past so that you

18:06

don't realize they're pulling the same tricks over

18:08

and over and over again. And the attitude

18:11

after these messy wars, like the Seminole

18:13

Wars or like the Philippines Wars or like Vietnam,

18:15

the attitude often seems to be

18:17

when they're over, let's just move on.

18:20

This is kind of a downer. Oh,

18:23

it's depressing. It makes us feel not

18:25

great about being Americans to really look at these

18:27

things dead in the eyes and see what really

18:29

happened and why it turned so ugly.

18:32

And so as a result, because we don't want to look

18:34

at the aspects of history that make us uncomfortable

18:36

and that are kind of a downer, okay,

18:39

then we don't learn any lessons and then we just keep

18:41

doing the same things over and over again.

18:43

And I expect the leaders,

18:45

the political elites to keep trying to do stupid

18:48

and evil things because that's just the kind of people they are. But

18:51

I don't think, I think most high level

18:53

politicians, particularly in our era,

18:55

are psychopaths. I genuinely believe that. But

18:58

I don't think

18:59

the majority of average random people walking around

19:01

the street are psychopaths. But

19:03

what they are is ignorant and

19:05

easily duped by psychopaths.

19:08

And so if you don't know your history and you don't know how

19:10

these people operate, they're going to

19:12

lead you into the next disaster,

19:15

into the next immoral, horrible

19:17

mess. The other

19:19

aspect that caused many Americans to

19:22

want to try to take over Florida, particularly

19:24

if they were Southerners, was that

19:27

another thing going on was that slaves

19:29

were escaping.

19:30

And if you were a slave and you escaped from

19:33

a plantation in Maryland, your

19:35

best bet might be to try to get all the way to Canada

19:37

because technically, according to the Fugitive Slave Law,

19:41

yeah, you might be able to fly under the radar and live

19:43

in Philadelphia or whatever and not get busted,

19:46

but

19:47

you would always have that sort of damocles hanging over

19:49

your head.

19:50

And so it's another

19:52

one of those ironies of history that we're often told about

19:55

people fleeing to America for freedom and

19:57

that sort of thing. And in many cases, that's true.

19:59

obviously been the case for many people. But

20:02

there are also cases of people fleeing

20:04

the United States for freedom and

20:06

for their lives. And so

20:10

slaves, if they escape from the Deep South,

20:12

if they escape from Georgia or something like that,

20:15

their best bet at the time was to get to Spanish

20:17

Florida. Because even though technically

20:20

Spain was supposed to be by treaty

20:22

and things obligated to try to catch slaves

20:24

and return them to their owners, in reality,

20:27

the Spanish government of Florida,

20:30

they didn't really have the capability even if they wanted

20:32

to because they had such a light footprint in Florida. And

20:34

they weren't really inclined to either. They had kind of problems

20:36

with the US. They often were,

20:39

you know, having friction

20:40

with the US government at the time. And so

20:43

basically Spain's attitude was like, eh, we're

20:45

going to kind of look the other way. And these escaped

20:47

slaves were building entire communities and

20:49

in many cases doing pretty well for themselves. And

20:52

many

20:52

of them established pretty friendly

20:55

relationships with the Seminole.

20:57

And it's kind of complicated. And because the Seminole

20:59

were not like a primarily

21:02

written word culture, we don't always

21:04

have super detailed documents about everything.

21:07

But basically, a

21:08

whole group kind of emerged who

21:11

eventually came to be known as the Black Seminole. And

21:13

these were escaped slaves and things like that, that very

21:16

often they would live in like side by

21:18

side communities where,

21:20

you know, like right next to a Seminole village, there'd be a Black Seminole

21:23

village.

21:24

And they had a complex relationship.

21:26

The Seminole sort of saw themselves

21:28

as kind of being like owners of these people because

21:31

the Seminole, like many Southern Indians, you

21:33

know, didn't have a moral problem with slavery as such.

21:36

But it wasn't the same as being like a slave

21:38

on an Anglo-American plantation.

21:40

It was much more relaxed of a relationship.

21:43

It was almost a more like

21:45

a slightly less bad version of feudalism

21:48

or something like this, where the Black Seminole

21:50

would just sort of like pay their red

21:52

Seminole neighbors, you know, a certain amount of their

21:54

crops every year or something as sort of like tribute,

21:56

but other than that, kind of left alone. And

21:58

then a lot of these Black Seminole also began

22:01

to take on Seminole culture. They started to dress

22:03

like the Seminoles, learn their language, their culture,

22:05

etc. And so just put all this together.

22:07

Imagine you're an Anglo-American

22:10

plantation owner in Georgia. Just

22:13

across the Spanish border in Florida, you've got

22:16

Indians not under your control doing

22:18

whatever they want, sometimes getting into conflict

22:21

along the borderlands. And now you've got escaped

22:23

slaves living with them, getting

22:26

along with them, setting up their own communities

22:28

and doing all right. And imagine how worried

22:30

you would be if you owned a large plantation full of slaves,

22:33

you'd be so worried that your slaves would hear

22:35

rumors. Hey, you know, if you can just get

22:37

to the Florida border,

22:39

there's entire communities of black people that

22:41

are just, you know, doing their thing and

22:43

you

22:43

know, get to one of those. You're basically,

22:45

you're free. So from very early

22:48

on, the independent United States was very interested in

22:50

getting Florida. And

22:52

it escalated in

22:55

the aftermath of the war of 1812. The war of 1812

23:00

also had Indian conflicts that happened

23:04

alongside of it. And the one that

23:06

matters to our story here is

23:08

with the Creek Indians. And in particular,

23:11

the Creek Indians were actually Confederacy of multiple

23:13

kind of smaller tribes and things like this. And they

23:15

had a very decentralized political structure

23:18

where each little kind of village or group

23:20

or whatever governed itself.

23:22

And some of the Creek

23:24

Indians wanted to go to war against the United

23:27

States. The Creek had long been pretty friendly

23:29

with the British

23:30

and had seen the United States as the

23:32

much more dangerous white

23:34

tribe than the British. And so

23:37

during the war of 1812, a lot of Indians saw

23:39

it as an opportunity to kind of rise up against

23:41

American control, take the opportunity

23:43

of the war

23:44

and ally with the British against the Americans. And

23:47

the Creek Indians split. Some

23:49

of the creeks didn't want to have any part of this

23:51

and some of them did. And the quote unquote

23:53

rebellious in the Americanized creeks

23:56

were known as the red sticks. They were the

23:58

like the militant ones who wanted to try

23:59

and throw off American control.

24:02

Long

24:04

story short, they got crushed

24:06

by Andrew Jackson. This

24:09

is really Andrew Jackson's first big

24:11

military victory that makes him a star. At

24:14

the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, he crushes

24:16

the Red Stick Creeks. Well,

24:19

amongst the Red Stick Creeks was

24:22

a young man called

24:24

Billy Powell, but also

24:26

known as Osceola. And

24:29

Osceola, around the time of the Battle

24:32

of Horseshoe Bend, would have been around 10, 11 years old.

24:35

We don't have an exact birthday for him. He

24:37

was born somewhere around 1803 or 1804, depending

24:40

on what source you look at.

24:42

His mother was a creek,

24:45

but the historical record refers to

24:47

as mixed race, so probably

24:50

at least part white.

24:52

His father was a white guy. Now,

24:56

I think Osceola should be

24:58

a hero to libertarians,

25:02

and I think Osceola should be a hero

25:04

to all true liberty-loving Florida

25:06

men and Florida women.

25:10

And I'm not gonna be

25:13

Elizabeth Warren and claim

25:16

that I'm part seminal. As far

25:18

as I know, I don't have any seminal

25:20

DNA, so I'm not gonna

25:23

go doing that sort of thing. The reality

25:25

is, though, just based on DNA, Osceola

25:28

was probably at least half white,

25:30

if not even more than half,

25:32

because his father was a British trader, and

25:36

his mother is referred to as mixed race. But

25:39

he was raised in the creek culture

25:41

and language and way of life,

25:44

and so he always considered himself that, identified

25:46

as that,

25:47

and since Creek Indians, like

25:49

many native tribes, were matrilineal,

25:52

the fact that his mother

25:54

was a creek meant that the Creek Indians

25:58

accepted him completely as one. of

26:00

them and that's how he saw himself. So

26:03

his family were part of the red stick

26:05

contingent. They flee into Florida

26:08

to escape and then live,

26:11

you know, in

26:12

relative peace and freedom from then

26:14

on as he grows up.

26:17

Well, then you get the First

26:19

Seminole War. The First Seminole

26:21

War you could argue over exactly when

26:23

it starts. I

26:25

would say roughly around 1816, so pretty soon

26:28

after the War of 1812 ended,

26:31

the First Seminole War starts. This war

26:34

is the war by which the United States acquired

26:36

Florida.

26:38

This war, Andrew Jackson, now

26:40

a general, is in charge of getting it done.

26:43

And there's a whole complicated story to this that

26:45

I won't delve into too much because of time.

26:48

But basically at that point, James

26:51

Monroe was president of the United States. And

26:53

James Monroe wanted

26:56

Florida, but he wanted to try

26:58

and do it in such a way as to not provoke

27:00

Spain or potentially even Britain

27:03

into war over it. He

27:05

also wanted to cover his ass politically

27:08

in case the conquest of Florida

27:11

failed because there had been a few earlier

27:14

kind of smaller attempts to take over Florida

27:16

by the United States that were just really

27:18

kind of half baked, half ass schemes

27:21

that failed miserably. So James

27:24

Monroe, who was a very savvy politician,

27:26

kind of overlooked as a president a lot of times,

27:29

James Monroe

27:31

kind of gave Jackson ambiguous

27:34

orders

27:35

on purpose, most historians believe.

27:37

And so basically

27:40

it was like a CYA move. He

27:42

knew Jackson was aggressive and wanted to conquer

27:44

Florida. So

27:46

he gave him deliberately vague orders,

27:50

knowing that Jackson would probably, you

27:52

know, arguably exceed his orders and just

27:54

decide, I'm just going to go take over Florida.

27:57

But because the orders were kind of vague,

27:59

Monroe, If it goes

28:01

bad, I can just kind of say, I didn't

28:03

tell him to do that. Look at what I wrote. I didn't

28:06

say go take over Florida. This

28:09

guy just went nuts. So

28:11

anyway, long story short, the first seminal

28:13

war was over by about 1819.

28:17

And it resulted in a treaty negotiated

28:20

by John Quincy Adams, who was then Secretary of State,

28:23

who unlike any of our recent Secretaries

28:25

of State was actually a very skillful diplomat.

28:28

And the Adams-Onys

28:31

Treaty of 1819 said, Florida

28:33

is going to go to the United States as of 1821.

28:37

And sure enough, that's what happened. So 1821,

28:40

officially the U.S. acquires Florida. At

28:43

that time, there are

28:46

believed to have been approximately 5,000 seminal

28:49

living in Florida.

28:51

They were mostly living in the northern part of Florida,

28:53

in the Panhandle and the very northernmost part of

28:55

the peninsula.

28:58

And a lot of them, like I said,

29:00

were actually doing pretty well. They were

29:03

known to be very good hunters, and this was back when you could make

29:05

a lot of money still by market hunting and selling

29:07

pelts and things. They also were very

29:09

successful as cattlemen.

29:12

Many of them were ranchers. They were herding

29:15

wild Spanish cattle

29:15

that you could find. And a lot of them were doing

29:17

pretty well. And

29:20

a lot of white settlers in

29:22

the southern frontier areas resented this. They

29:24

saw the Indians as being in the way

29:27

of America's manifest destiny.

29:29

They saw them as,

29:31

in their eyes, not using the land to its fullest potential.

29:34

This was the common argument

29:36

that

29:37

Americans learned from the British of,

29:40

well, if you believe in, like, the John

29:43

Lockian idea of how to acquire property, how

29:46

can you take land from these people who have been living here

29:48

for generations, right? It seems

29:50

like they kind of have dibs. They've been living here and whatever. And

29:53

the argument would basically go, well,

29:54

we have an exception. The exception

29:57

is it's okay to take land from these

29:59

people. people, even if they're already there and

30:01

have been there for a while, it's still okay to take

30:03

it

30:04

if you think they're not putting it to its best use.

30:07

This was the argument the English had first developed

30:10

and perfected in justifying

30:12

taking over Ireland,

30:14

which was like the original beta test

30:17

of almost everything the British Empire did later over

30:19

the next bunch of centuries. So

30:22

that was the argument. So

30:25

by the time you start getting into

30:28

the 1820s, eventually Andrew

30:30

Jackson becomes president and

30:33

Andrew Jackson comes up with

30:36

the idea of Indian removal. Okay,

30:39

so there was a treaty

30:42

worked out in the 1820s, I guess a little bit

30:44

before Jackson became president,

30:46

known as the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. It

30:49

was actually negotiated at a spot not too far

30:51

outside St. Augustine near where I used to live. There's

30:54

now a nice little park there.

30:56

And the Treaty of Moultrie Creek said

30:59

that the Seminole, now that Florida

31:01

is American and now that American settlers are going

31:03

to start moving into the place, the Seminole have

31:05

to relocate to a reservation.

31:07

The reservation was a big chunk of territory

31:10

and kind of the almost the dead center of the peninsula.

31:13

It was a pretty big piece of land, but the problem was most

31:16

of the Seminole lived far north of that. And

31:20

so it meant that they had to abandon homes,

31:22

farms, ranches, whatever to move to

31:24

the reservation. But most of them

31:26

actually did within a few

31:28

years. Most of them actually did because they

31:30

were like, you know, this sucks, it's inconvenient,

31:33

but if it means we get to be left alone and still,

31:35

you know, do our thing, then whatever. Interestingly,

31:39

the reservation's borders

31:41

were drawn in such a way that it had no coastal access.

31:44

This was because one of the things the Seminole

31:47

had been doing for a while, again, they were pretty

31:49

prosperous, successful people.

31:51

They had been trading with places

31:54

as far away as like Cuba.

31:55

And so that they often could like sell

31:58

their cattle and things like that to Cuba. get

32:00

better money than selling it locally

32:02

to people in Florida.

32:04

Also Americans were worried if

32:06

the Seminole had coastal access, they

32:08

might do things like import guns from

32:11

the Spanish or the British or something like this. So

32:15

anyway, no coastal access.

32:18

So that goes into effect. This is when the Seminole start

32:20

to move, you know, further south from their initial homeland.

32:23

And then in 1830,

32:28

Jackson gets Congress to pass

32:30

the Indian Removal Act.

32:32

Now this is the one that results in among

32:35

other things, the famous Trail of Tears.

32:37

And this was done, you know, Congress,

32:39

the majority of Congress was on board with it.

32:42

The relevant state governments were also totally on

32:44

board with it as well. The Supreme

32:46

Court actually pushed back against it, at

32:48

least in regard to the Cherokee,

32:50

but Jackson just ignored them famously.

32:53

Basically, the idea of Indian Removal

32:55

was all of the remaining southeastern

32:57

quote unquote uncivilized, sorry,

33:00

they would have, they

33:02

would have referred to the some of them at least as civilized

33:05

tribes, maybe not the Seminole, but like the Cherokee

33:07

and stuff they would call civilized tribes, you

33:09

know, very, very un PC.

33:12

The idea was that they would be removed from

33:14

places like North Carolina, Tennessee,

33:17

Georgia, Alabama, Florida,

33:19

out to what today we would think of as Oklahoma. This

33:21

is when that happened. You

33:23

know, the Cherokee took the federal government to

33:25

court and said, hey, we've got treaties

33:28

and things that say this is our land.

33:30

You can't just kick us off. The Supreme Court

33:32

actually sided with the Cherokee and said, yeah, they're right.

33:35

And Andrew Jackson supposedly said, the

33:37

Supreme Court Chief Justice

33:39

at the time was John Marshall, supposedly Andrew Jackson

33:42

said, John Marshall has made his decision.

33:44

Now let him enforce it.

33:46

Revealing, the Supreme Court has no actual enforcement

33:48

mechanism. They have no, you know, army or SWAT

33:51

team or whatever. They rely on the other branches

33:53

of the government,

33:54

equiescing to their decisions.

33:57

And so Jackson went ahead and had the Cherokee

33:59

marched out to Oakley.

33:59

in Oklahoma anyway, and this is the Trail of Tears.

34:02

Well, many Seminoles were also not on

34:04

board with this treaty, sorry,

34:07

with this policy of Indian removal.

34:09

So there was an

34:12

agent in charge of dealing with the Seminole named

34:16

Wiley Thompson, and

34:18

the US government would

34:21

appoint someone to

34:23

be the agent to deal with

34:26

each Indian tribe that the US government

34:28

was dealing with.

34:29

And so the agent was supposed

34:32

to be kind of like a middleman intermediary

34:34

between the US government and the tribe. Supposed

34:36

to be trying to be a relatively

34:39

fair and honest broker between the two. Often,

34:41

as you might expect though, that was not the reality.

34:45

So Wiley Thompson

34:48

was the point man in trying

34:50

to get the Seminole to

34:54

agree to leave, to leave,

34:56

to leave Florida. And some

34:59

of them were okay with it. They saw it as just the way

35:01

to avoid violence and things

35:03

like that, but many of them were not.

35:06

One of the things that Wiley Thompson started doing

35:08

in the early 1830s that angered many Seminoles

35:11

was

35:12

prohibiting the sale

35:14

of guns and ammunition

35:17

to the Seminole. Many

35:19

Seminoles took this as not just

35:21

an annoyance because many of them

35:23

were professional hunters, obviously they also wanted to

35:25

be able to defend themselves. This was still a rugged frontier,

35:28

areas like around where we're standing.

35:31

But they also saw it as

35:33

an insult. And

35:36

one of the Seminole who seems

35:38

to have been most bothered by being

35:40

told you're no longer allowed to buy guns and ammo

35:43

was Osceola. By the

35:45

way, Osceola was never technically a chief.

35:48

He's often referred to by people who don't

35:50

know the history as Chief Osceola. That's

35:53

actually not correct. He was never technically

35:55

a chief. He was just a very intelligent,

35:58

charismatic, and...

35:59

respected leader who also turns out to have been a very skillful

36:02

guerrilla fighter and

36:04

Many people look up to him, but he was never

36:06

technically a chief although he was good friends and

36:08

a close advisor to mikka Nopi who was

36:10

a

36:10

prominent seminal chief and

36:13

Supposedly when Osceola heard

36:16

that Wiley Thompson was saying seminal

36:18

or no longer allowed to buy guns and ammo He was

36:20

like really pissed off and basically

36:22

said no That's

36:25

the mark of a slave if you're not allowed

36:27

to buy guns and ammo. You are a slave

36:30

And I'm not gonna let these people tell

36:32

me that I'm now in the position of a slave.

36:34

I'm not accepting

36:37

So tensions began to escalate

36:39

between Osceola and some of the

36:41

other resistant seminal leaders and

36:44

agents of the US government in

36:48

some seminal leaders were basically bribed

36:50

and threatened into citing a treaty

36:53

known as the Treaty of Pain's Landing and

36:55

and Basically this said

36:58

that any seminal leader and sort

37:00

of his you know again It's very decentralized each

37:02

little kind of like village and area has its own Achieving

37:05

things like this But

37:06

that any seminal leader who agrees

37:09

on behalf of himself and his people to move out

37:11

to Oklahoma is gonna be like paid

37:14

You know and they promise them certain amounts of

37:16

money and supplies and whatever like that

37:19

Some of the seminal leaders signed on but many did

37:21

not One of those who

37:23

did not was Osceola And

37:26

the story is that when Osceola

37:29

was presented with the documents

37:31

to sign the Treaty of Pain's Landing

37:34

His response was he pulled out a

37:36

knife And stabbed the

37:38

treaty and basically said something like this is what

37:41

I think of your deal and

37:44

There's question as to whether this is just you know an

37:46

apocryphal kind of mythological story or not Supposedly

37:50

an historian a while back dug

37:52

through the National Archives Found

37:54

an original copy of the Treaty of Pain's Landing

37:57

and said that yes, there was a triangular

38:00

cut into it that looked like

38:02

it could very well have been from a knife point. Whether

38:06

it happened that way or not, there is a statue

38:09

in Silver Springs. You ever go to Silver Springs,

38:12

there is a statue of Osceola

38:14

stabbing his knife into the

38:16

Treaty of Pains Landing, basically

38:19

as a FU to Uncle Sam. This

38:22

is what I think of your removal policy. Things

38:26

started to escalate. Osceola had kind

38:28

of a frenemy relationship. With

38:30

Wiley Thompson, they kind of got along sometimes,

38:33

but also Osceola was not at all

38:35

shy about being

38:37

pissed off when he thought Wiley Thompson

38:39

was doing something wrong.

38:40

He would just like go into his office and yell at him

38:42

and stuff like this. But then at other times they would

38:44

kind of get along.

38:46

And so at one point

38:49

in 1835, as tensions were really starting to escalate,

38:52

Osceola apparently went in and was ranting

38:54

to Wiley Thompson, complaining about things.

38:57

And whatever he said, Wiley

38:59

Thompson got so personally offended

39:02

that he actually ordered Osceola

39:04

to be arrested.

39:05

And Osceola was held in,

39:08

you know, some sort of a makeshift cell or whatever

39:10

for two nights until

39:14

Osceola apologized, said,

39:17

I'm sorry, I offended you. Said,

39:20

if you'll let me out, I promise

39:22

I'll sign your treaty and go to Oklahoma.

39:26

We now know he did not intend to do any of these things and

39:28

that his apology was tactical

39:32

and insincere.

39:34

So Wiley Thompson fell

39:36

for it. Said, all right, we'll let you out. And

39:39

you know what? Let's, you know, be friends again.

39:41

Let's let bygones be bygones.

39:43

And in fact, as a making

39:46

up present, Wiley Thompson

39:48

gave Osceola a fancy

39:51

custom made rifle.

39:54

Friends again.

39:57

Except inside Osceola is planning to never leave

39:59

and.

39:59

He's planning his revenge.

40:03

Tensions begin to escalate.

40:06

Looks like there's going to be war because a lot of the Seminole

40:08

don't want to go to Oklahoma. And can you

40:10

blame them? Who wants to

40:12

go to Oklahoma now? Imagine

40:15

Oklahoma in the 1830s. If you think Oklahoma is a

40:17

big empty nothing today, imagine

40:19

what it's like in the 1830s. And

40:22

especially, you know, you're coming from someplace like Florida.

40:26

Good luck in the winter, right? So

40:29

it all came to a head and

40:31

the official start of the Second Seminole War would

40:34

be in late 1835.

40:37

On one day, two major things went

40:39

down that kicked off the war. Went

40:42

down virtually simultaneously. First

40:45

was something called the Dade Massacre.

40:47

So there was a contingent

40:50

of a bit over 100 US soldiers

40:52

who were marching from

40:54

Fort Brooke, which is basically at Tampa, to

40:57

Fort King, which is today's

40:59

Ocala.

41:01

And the Seminole decided they

41:03

were going to launch their war of

41:05

rebellion and resistance to being relocated

41:08

against this column of US soldiers.

41:11

And long story short, they

41:14

very skillfully carried out

41:16

an ambush and wiped

41:18

out, I believe all but one, if I remember

41:20

right,

41:22

well over 100 US soldiers. They wiped

41:24

out in a very one-sided

41:26

battle.

41:28

And there's now a state park of some

41:30

sort there that actually does a reenactment

41:32

of the massacre. If you ever want to go watch, it's

41:34

pretty good. I have an aunt who's a Florida

41:36

park ranger and that was one of the parks she worked at for

41:38

a while. Of

41:40

course, Dade County and a number of other things named after

41:43

Dade, the commander of these guys who got wiped

41:45

out.

41:47

And roughly the same time back

41:51

over at Fort King, just

41:54

outside of Ocala. That's where Wiley Thompson,

41:56

the Indian agent was.

41:59

And they knew that the Seminole, even before

42:01

the Dade Massacre happened, they knew that like it was

42:03

a very touchy situation that the Seminole

42:05

seemed to be preparing to potentially fight.

42:08

And so they had like some extra security measures.

42:10

But even so Wiley Thompson

42:13

was confident enough that almost every

42:15

day he and some of his closest friends at the fort

42:17

would go like take a walk outside the fort

42:20

itself on the grounds. And

42:23

the same day that the Dade Massacre was

42:25

happening, however many miles away it

42:28

is, 50, 100 miles, whatever, Wiley

42:30

Thompson decides to go out for his daily stroll with

42:33

a few friends. And guess what?

42:36

Osceola is leading a small group of

42:39

Seminole to ambush them. And

42:41

you know I like to in my mind I picture

42:44

like Wiley Thompson's about to take a whiz or something and then

42:46

suddenly Seminole pop up with guns.

42:48

But um yeah

42:50

Osceola made sure he had dibs on firing the first

42:52

shot. He used the very

42:55

fancy custom rifle that Wiley Thompson

42:57

had just given him some months earlier

42:59

as an apology gift to do the

43:02

deed. Shot Wiley

43:04

Thompson, he and his men killed all the other guys

43:06

who were with him. And supposedly

43:09

Wiley Thompson's body was found just riddled

43:12

with bullets. So and

43:14

these are muzzle-loading you know type

43:16

rifles. So it's unlikely

43:18

that Osceola was just sitting there for 10 minutes

43:20

you know reloading shot after shot. So

43:22

basically you know all of his

43:25

boys were getting in a few shots on this guy that

43:27

they all hated. So

43:28

that kicked off the Second Seminole War.

43:31

The Second Seminole War lasted from 1835 to

43:38

1842. It's the longest Indian War in American

43:40

history. It's the costliest Indian

43:42

War in American history in lives

43:45

and money. You

43:46

know most people if you ask them what's the longest and costliest

43:48

Indian War they may not give you an answer but their

43:50

brain is thinking like you know Lakota,

43:53

little Bighorn, like something out there right?

43:55

Custer, some of those things right? Kevin

43:57

Costner movies. But

44:00

the reality is that the longest

44:02

and bloodiest and costliest Indian war was here,

44:05

the Second Seminole War. The

44:08

Seminole were extremely outnumbered,

44:11

extremely outgunned, yet they were very

44:13

skillful guerrilla fighters operating

44:16

in a very difficult

44:17

wilderness environment, which Florida very

44:19

much still was. And

44:21

so as a result, it was one of these very frustrating

44:24

wars for the American soldiers.

44:26

Again, very similar to Vietnam in a lot of ways.

44:28

In fact, a lot of what the American soldiers were doing

44:31

during the Second Seminole War was essentially

44:33

an early version of the search and destroy

44:36

tactics that were used in Vietnam. Basically

44:38

send out a patrol of soldiers to march around

44:40

looking for

44:42

engines and then eventually

44:44

they'll ambush you and then you try and kill them. Except

44:48

they might take a few shots at you and then run away

44:50

to do it another day. Which very

44:52

confusing because then the Americans are like, they're not standing

44:54

and fighting, they're running away. Why

44:57

we're winning this war and not

44:59

realize like, no dummy, they're

45:02

wearing you out through attrition. So

45:04

it was one of those messy kinds of wars that soldiers

45:07

really don't like to be in. And

45:09

a succession of generals came through the

45:12

Second Seminole War

45:13

and none of them really figured out how to win it.

45:16

It was kind of shades of Afghanistan

45:18

as far as that goes. You know, like, oh, bring in

45:21

Petraeus, he's going to fix it. And

45:23

then he eventually figures out like

45:25

some little BS battle that's not even really a

45:27

battle that he didn't even really win, decides to be like,

45:30

woo hoo, victory, I've won, I'm going to go leave.

45:32

And then the next general comes in and the war still isn't over

45:34

and then you could just say, well, you know, I had it under control

45:37

until I left and that jerk came in and screwed it all up.

45:40

So

45:40

despite being very outnumbered, very outgunned,

45:43

the Seminole put up a very skillful resistance.

45:46

Nonetheless, they were getting worn down.

45:48

You know, they were kind of cut off from outside

45:51

supply. They didn't have their own industrial

45:53

capability. As I said, even

45:55

at the start of the Second Seminole War, maybe 5000 Seminole

45:57

lived in Florida.

45:59

out numbered.

46:02

And as a result, the more the war dragged on, the

46:04

more some seminal would just out of desperation

46:07

agree to go to Oklahoma. Very

46:09

often they'd be, you know, bribed and things like this. And

46:11

so, you know, periodically over the course of the war,

46:14

you

46:14

know, some chief would come in and say, all right, I've had

46:16

it. You know, my people are about to starve.

46:19

We're out of ammunition. What's the best deal

46:21

we can get? Fine. We'll go to Oklahoma.

46:23

But many were just determined to stay no matter what. Osceola

46:28

ended up in US custody in 1837,

46:32

in October of 1837. The

46:35

Americans at, I believe

46:38

it was Fort Payton is what it was called

46:40

at the time, which is near St. Augustine. The

46:43

Americans had one seminal

46:46

leader that they had captured in custody. And

46:50

another seminal leader came in to sort of negotiate

46:52

in parlay on behalf of himself and his people.

46:55

And he said, Hey, I can get Osceola

46:57

to come in and negotiate, you know, tomorrow

46:59

or whatever. Like, is that cool? And

47:02

the general in charge of this fort was a

47:04

general

47:05

whose last name was Hernandez.

47:07

And Hernandez, his

47:10

commander was higher up general

47:12

named Thomas Jessup. So Thomas Jessup

47:15

is giving Hernandez instructions of how to handle

47:17

this.

47:18

And he basically says, okay, if Osceola

47:20

wants to come in and negotiate, okay,

47:23

maybe we can get him to go to Oklahoma, but

47:26

I don't trust him. And

47:28

so I want you to

47:30

ask him when he and his guys

47:33

come in to the fort to talk to you, I

47:35

want you to ask him these questions. Now, what

47:37

exactly the questions were, I'm still

47:39

not sure. But

47:42

basically was to ask them questions that

47:46

if they didn't answer very straight

47:48

up, you know, if they were at all evasive

47:51

Hernandez's orders were

47:52

just go ahead and arrest them all.

47:55

This was despite the fact there was a flag of truce,

47:57

which you know, was considered very serious back then.

48:00

So, Osceola and his guys come

48:02

in,

48:03

Hernandez starts asking him the questions

48:05

he's supposed to ask them, and supposedly Osceola

48:08

and his guys give kind of evasive answers,

48:10

and so Hernandez is like, boom, alright, you guys are all

48:13

under arrest

48:14

to hell with the flag of truce.

48:15

Osceola is arrested. Now, this

48:18

was very controversial at the time, even amongst

48:20

many white Americans.

48:22

Osceola already had this almost mythical

48:24

reputation as a great

48:26

leader, you know, a great

48:28

warrior, all this sort of thing. Many white Americans,

48:30

even if they wanted to get rid of the Seminole, still

48:33

respected him. He had that kind of a position

48:35

that sometimes happens, you know, where people develop

48:37

respect even for someone who they perceive

48:39

as an enemy.

48:41

And in fact, there were even

48:44

members of the US Army and members of

48:46

Congress that spoke out

48:49

against the arrest of Osceola under a

48:51

flag of truce and said, hey, you

48:53

know, this is, this is

48:56

extremely dishonorable to the US

48:58

military, the US flag, you shouldn't be

49:00

doing this sort of thing.

49:01

Arresting a guy who's come in to talk under a flag of

49:03

truce. Now,

49:05

to be fair, it's totally possible Osceola

49:07

may have been coming in intending to do a jailbreak

49:11

and get his guys who were in custody out. It's

49:13

quite possible. It certainly wasn't,

49:15

you know, beneath him to do something like that. But

49:18

the point is, he didn't even have the chance until,

49:20

you know, the US military, you know, ignored the flag

49:22

of truce and busted him. So

49:26

he got, oh, by the way, one more

49:28

thing I'll mention just that stands out about

49:30

the Second Seminole War

49:32

as an Indian conflict.

49:33

It's also the only Indian war in which the United

49:36

States Navy and United States Marines

49:38

participated.

49:40

Unique in that regard. Anyway,

49:43

Osceola was arrested. He was held for

49:45

a little while at Fort Marion, which

49:47

is what at the time the fort in St. San

49:51

Marcos, that stone fort many of you have probably been

49:53

to, it was known as Fort Marion at the time. He

49:56

was held there for a little while.

49:58

But the The

50:00

soldiers there were concerned that he might get busted

50:03

out by some of his friends because

50:05

it wasn't that far Osceola basically at that

50:07

time kind of lived and operated in like the

50:09

Gainesville area

50:11

and so For good

50:13

reason they were concerned that some of Osceola's

50:15

buddies might come in and break him out

50:17

So before long they shipped him up to

50:20

Fort Moultrie, which is just outside

50:22

of Charleston, South Carolina and there

50:24

he was held For the next few

50:26

months. So he's arrested in October held

50:29

briefly in Fort Marion Shipped up

50:31

to Fort Moultrie and was there for a few months

50:34

and supposedly like everybody who met him

50:36

and interacted with him Was impressed by him

50:40

I'm not even a hundred percent sure if he was literate to

50:42

be honest with you, but apparently

50:44

he was an extremely intelligent guy very

50:47

charismatic just one of those people that people are impressed

50:50

by and And Multiple

50:53

artists came in. This is still pre

50:55

photography multiple

50:57

Very respected artists of the time period

50:59

came in and met him and painted

51:02

him So, you know, there's this and

51:04

there's there's a few other, you know portraits and things

51:06

done by some of these artists

51:08

I

51:10

Think it was this one done by a guy named George Catlin

51:12

who was like one of the most respected artists in America

51:14

at the time

51:16

He also kind of became friendly with some of his captors

51:18

However, he was very

51:20

sick

51:22

Osceola had apparently been

51:24

dealing with some serious illness for months

51:27

even before he was arrested

51:29

and of course being held in a virtual dungeon

51:31

Not gonna help your health

51:34

He is believed to have been suffering from malaria

51:37

And then also towards the end of his life may

51:39

have also been suffering from tonsillitis which

51:43

Back in those days things like tonsillitis or strap throat

51:45

can

51:45

flat-out kill you

51:48

So He gets

51:50

sicker and sicker and on January

51:53

30th 1838 Osceola

51:56

dies of illness in custody informative

52:00

Moultrie. Before

52:02

he died, he

52:03

was speaking to the doctor who was

52:05

taking care of him.

52:07

Who was a doctor, I forget his first

52:09

name, his last name was Whedon. Spelled

52:11

differently from Joss Whedon, so as far as I know,

52:13

no relation to the Firefly guy. But,

52:17

you know, he got pretty

52:19

friendly with Dr. Whedon and supposedly

52:21

he requested, you

52:24

know, realizing he was probably gonna die soon, please

52:27

head by body, shipped back to Florida and

52:29

buried there. Because

52:30

that's what I consider my homeland, that's what

52:32

I was fighting for was to stay there

52:34

and to be able to just live the way I was living.

52:36

Unfortunately, Dr. Whedon was not a good enough friend to

52:39

respect Osceola's request. I don't even know, you

52:41

know, his hands may have been tied, you know,

52:43

by whoever was running the fort. But

52:45

instead, Osceola would be buried outside

52:49

the fort, just outside

52:51

of it actually. If you go to Fort Moultrie today, you can you can

52:53

go see his gravestone. His name is misspelled

52:55

on it. It is spelled O

52:57

C E O L A. They left off

52:59

the S. But it's, you

53:02

know, it's, it's fairly positive, like, you know, patriot

53:04

and warrior and it's got like a pretty positive

53:06

thing, to be fair. You know, once your enemy is

53:08

dead, I suppose you can start saying nice things about him. That way,

53:10

you can pump up your own ego like, yeah, I

53:12

conquered this badass. How about that? You know,

53:15

however, Dr. Whedon did

53:17

something that strikes us as kind of bizarre today.

53:20

This is back in the days when people were really big into things

53:22

like phrenology.

53:24

And thinking that like by studying someone's head,

53:26

you could like really learn important stuff about them. And

53:29

so Dr. Whedon decided this is a really remarkable,

53:31

impressive individual.

53:33

Someone needs to preserve his head. And I guess I'm the

53:35

man to do it because I'm the doctor.

53:37

So Dr. Whedon, when

53:39

Osceola's body was getting ready for burial,

53:42

he cut his head off. Then

53:44

he apparently used like Osceola had

53:46

a scarf that he liked, and he used that to

53:48

keep the head on. Body

53:50

goes out to be buried and somehow or other,

53:53

he's able to like the doctor slips in and, you

53:55

know, takes the head before the body

53:57

is buried. Keeps the head. like

54:00

pickles it or something, you know. And

54:03

then the doctor apparently owned

54:05

a drug store in St. Augustine

54:07

and he had Osceola's head on

54:09

display in the drug store for

54:12

several years. Then he eventually

54:14

either gave it or sold it to another doctor

54:17

who had a museum that included

54:19

a bunch of heads, because that was like the style at the time

54:22

was collecting and studying human heads.

54:24

And so Osceola's head then sat in this guy's

54:26

museum for a few decades

54:29

and then was supposedly lost at

54:33

when a fire happened. So yeah,

54:36

Osceola by the

54:38

way, when he was buried outside of Fort Moultrie, he was given

54:40

full military honors at his funeral. He was

54:42

very respected as an opponent, as

54:45

a foe by American soldiers.

54:48

So you've got Osceola's

54:51

headless body buried outside

54:53

of Fort Moultrie with a misspelled gravestone, his

54:56

head being put on display and

54:58

eventually being lost probably to a fire.

55:01

The Second Seminole War, by the time it ended,

55:04

in 20 years, the Seminole

55:06

population of Florida had

55:09

been reduced. From the time period that the US

55:11

took over Florida until the end of the Second Seminole War, the

55:13

Seminole population of Florida had been reduced

55:15

by approximately 94%.

55:18

Most of those being people shipped off

55:20

to Oklahoma one way or another, but many of them also killed.

55:25

94%, so before, at the time the US took

55:27

over Florida, maybe 5,000 Seminole,

55:30

by the end of the Second Seminole War, a few hundred

55:32

Seminoles still lived in Florida and they were down to the Everglades,

55:34

which was such a harsh environment that

55:37

white men could hardly even think about going in there

55:39

after them. There still would be a Second

55:41

Seminole War, trying to deal with some

55:43

of those renegades who lived in the Everglades in the late 1850s. But

55:48

by most definitions, what

55:50

happened to the Seminole would be considered

55:52

ethnic cleansing in today's

55:55

terminology, where you basically eliminate

55:58

94% of the people from where they lived previously. And,

56:03

you know, what

56:05

inspires me about Osceola is, yes,

56:08

you know, he had a tragic end, but

56:11

I think he was a great practical

56:16

libertarian in the sense that

56:18

he probably never read a single book of philosophy

56:20

or political science. But he

56:22

had an instinctive desire

56:26

to be free, to live his life, to

56:28

be left alone, regardless of what

56:31

some president or some Congress, hundreds or

56:33

thousands of miles away, had to say about it.

56:35

And he was willing to fight for it. And he fought very skillfully

56:38

until, you know, he got captured.

56:41

And so I

56:43

think he's somebody that Floridians

56:46

who value liberty should know more about

56:48

and should look up to. And

56:51

you know, it is a very inspiring figure. And

56:54

I'll just wrap up with a couple of quotes here.

56:56

So this, this first one is

56:59

as follows. The government

57:01

is in the wrong.

57:02

And this is the chief cause of

57:05

the persevering opposition of the Indians

57:08

who have nobly defended their country

57:10

against our attempt to enforce

57:13

a fraudulent treaty.

57:15

The natives used every means

57:17

to avoid a war, but were forced

57:19

into it by the tyranny of

57:22

our government. The

57:25

guy who said that was a US Army major

57:27

with the very cool name of Ethan

57:29

Allen Hitchcock. Ethan

57:32

Allen Hitchcock was US Army officer who

57:34

fought against the Seminole. He was even

57:37

one of those who discovered the remains

57:39

of the Dade massacre after it happened. So

57:41

he actually had discovered, you know, his comrades,

57:44

fellow American soldiers, slaughtered and mutilated

57:46

in the aftermath of the Dade massacre. And yet even he

57:48

was fair minded enough to say, we're

57:51

not the good guys here. These people are

57:53

fighting just to stay in their homes and

57:55

to keep living the way they want to. We're

57:57

the aggressors. And

58:01

then one more quote,

58:04

and I'll call it a day. This

58:07

is from John and Mary

58:09

Lou Missle, who are a husband and wife team

58:11

who are like among the top historians of the seminal.

58:14

And in one of their books on the seminal wars

58:17

called the seminal wars, America's longest Indian conflict,

58:19

they say, militarily, the

58:21

second seminal war was an embarrassment.

58:24

The United States and its powerful army were

58:26

repeatedly humiliated by a

58:29

small band of warriors whom most

58:31

whites derided as nothing more than quote, unquote

58:33

savages.

58:34

The honor and glory that were supposed

58:37

to accompany civilized warfare were

58:39

almost totally absent.

58:41

For those who fought in the war, there was little

58:44

about which to go home and boast. It

58:46

was an experience few of the participants wanted

58:48

to talk about, and very few did.

58:51

For the nation as a whole, the war was

58:53

often seen as a moral failure. The

58:57

Indians were considered desperate underdogs,

59:00

defiantly attempting to defend their homes

59:02

against a heartless and greedy aggressor. Many

59:05

of them were taken prisoner while negotiating

59:08

under a flag of truce, and seminal villages

59:10

and farms were burned, leaving women

59:12

and children to scavenge for food in

59:15

the inhospitable swamps. The

59:17

Indians, of course, committed their atrocities

59:19

and treacheries, but many people felt they were

59:21

driven to it. When the war ended,

59:24

these painful and troubling thoughts were easily put

59:26

aside. Because

59:28

the seminal wars were so quickly forgotten,

59:30

the American public never learned some

59:33

valuable lessons.

59:35

Later conflicts with the Indians of the West

59:37

proved no less unsatisfying.

59:41

The parallels with our experiences in Vietnam and

59:43

the Middle East are often very striking,

59:46

which may be one of the reasons the tale is so

59:48

relevant. Because of we Americans

59:50

had understood what happened in our nation's infancy,

59:52

we may have been better able to avoid

59:55

the pitfalls that have entrapped

59:57

us in our present day and age.

1:00:02

All right, I hope you enjoyed my talk on Osceola. And

1:00:05

again, I hope you'll consider stepping up to help support

1:00:08

my work if you're not already doing so and

1:00:10

upping your contribution if you are already

1:00:13

a contributor at one of the lower levels. Also,

1:00:17

by the way, remember, and I'll put a link to the

1:00:19

page for this in the show notes, but

1:00:21

if you are involved with any kind

1:00:23

of an event or organization or anything

1:00:25

and you would like to have me

1:00:28

give some sort of a talk or presentation

1:00:31

to your group or event, you can

1:00:34

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1:00:36

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1:00:39

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1:00:41

come address your group or your

1:00:43

event, and I would be happy to do so.

1:00:45

So thank you very much for listening, and

1:00:47

I hope that I'll be able to

1:00:50

get back to you with another dose of Dangerous

1:00:52

History

1:00:53

relatively

1:00:54

soon. First cross, knock on

1:00:56

wood, God willing, and not too

1:00:58

many other disasters happen to me in

1:01:00

real life.

1:01:02

Take care.