The New Student's Reference Work/Osceola

Osceola (ŏs′sḗ-ō′lȧ), a chief of the Seminole Indians, was born in Georgia in 1804. His father was an English trader, and his mother the daughter of an Indian chief, who took him to Florida when a child, where he became influential among the Indians. His wife, the daughter of a runaway slave, was taken from him, and for his threats of revenge he was seized and imprisoned for six days by General Thompson, whom he killed, with four others, six months afterward. This was the beginning of the second Seminole War. At the head of a band of 200 or 300 Indians and runaway slaves, he carried on the contest for nearly two years, in the almost impenetrable Everglades. On Oct. 21, 1837, while holding a conference under a flag of truce, he was treacherously seized and imprisoned at Fort Moultrie, S. C., where he died on Jan. 30, 1838. He is the hero of Mayne Reid's Osceola.