Osceola
a chief of the Seminole Indians; born in Florida about 1813; was the son of an Indian trader called Powell. In 1835, while on a visit to Fort King, his wife was claimed as a slave, as being the daughter of a fugitive slave woman, and carried off as such. Osceola resolved upon vengeance, and some months afterward, finding General Thompson outside of the fort, killed him and six other whites in his company, Dec. 28, 1835. Such was the beginning of the second Seminole War, during which Osceola defeated the United States troops in several engagements. On Oct. 23, 1837, while holding a conference under a flag of truce with General Jessup, near St. Augustine, he was treacherously seized and kept in confinement in Fort Moultrie till his death, in 1838.