America\'s Military Adversaries. From Colonial Times to the Present

Historic Architecture, Eastern Service Center, 1971;

Houlding, J. A. Fit for Service: The Training of the

British Army, 1715–1795.New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1999; May, Robin. The British Army

in North America, 1775–1783.New York: Hip-

pocrene Books, 1997; Rankin, Hugh F. Greene and

Cornwallis: The Campaign in the Carolinas.

Raleigh, NC: Department of Cultural Resources, Di-

vision of Archives and History, 1976; Rogers, George

C., ed. “Letters of Charles O’Hara to the Duke of

Grafton.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 65

(1964): 158–180.

OSCEOLA

Osceola

(ca. 1804–January 30, 1838)
Seminole War Chief

O

sceola was the
most celebrated
chieftain of Flo-
rida’s Second Seminole
War, a ferocious guerrilla
warrior who defied supe-
rior numbers of American
troops for two years. Un-
conquered in battle, he
was finally taken prisoner
by deception, although his
people refused to relocate
from their ancestral home-
lands. The fact that Semi-
noles still live in Florida
today is the great legacy of
Osceola’s defiance.
Osceola (a corruption
of the phrase asi yohola,
or “black drink crier”)
was born probably along
the Tallapoosa River on
the Georgia-Alabama bor-
der in 1804. His parentage
is disputed, with some
sources maintaining he was the son of British
trader William Powell and Polly Copinger, a
Creek woman. Osceola himself maintained he
was of full Indian heritage, probably out of
contempt for whites, but throughout his
youth he was apparently known as Billy Pow-
ell. The Creek nation at that time was under

tremendous stress from

white expansion into its

territory, and the Creeks

split into two groups. One

faction, the White Sticks,

consisted primarily of

Lower Creek tribesmen

who sought to sell their

land in exchange for

peace. The other, more

militant faction, the Red

Sticks, were unassimi-

lated Upper Creeks who

sought to use violence to

curtail further encroach-

ment. The ensuing Creek

War of 1813–1814 was as

much a civil war between

Native Americans as a

frontier conflict. By

March 1814, however, In-

dian resistance had been

effectively crushed by

Gen. Andrew Jackson at

Horseshoe Bend, and

many of the Lower Creeks fled to Florida,

where they intermingled with the Seminole

Indians living there.

Young Osceola had fled with his mother to

the supposed haven of Florida, which was

then a Spanish province. However, continuing

tensions between Indians and slaveholding

Osceola

National Archives