Ep. 832: Osceola, Native American Slavery, and The Seminole Wars

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with author Jamie Holmes https://www.jamieholmesbooks.com/, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/?hl=en, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/?hl=en, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/. Topics discussed: Jamie's new book, The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Free-and-the-Dead/Jamie-Holmes/9781668050613 is out; deep archival research like a treasure hunt; the evidence base and when the notes section of the book is almost as long as the book itself; the complexity of stories about the Seminole Wars; turning what you know on its head; the environment of interior Florida; what enslavement meant to the tribes; who were the black Seminole people?; the relationship between Osceola and Abraham; and more. Feel free to donate to the recovery effort here: https://critfc.org/donate/ Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:32Steven Rinella?

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• 2:00Steven Rinella?

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• 2:51Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F I R S T L I T E dot com. Good Lord, writer Jamie Holmes is here. His third book's out, just out. I'm holding my hand here.

• 3:31Steven Rinella?

  It's called The Free and the Dead, The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel and America's Forgotten War. Releases on February 3rd, so we're going to talk about the Seminole Wars and we're going to talk about a feller you have certainly heard about, Osceola. Jamie, I was going to tell you all about how I got interested in this. I got interested in this when Clay on Bear Grease did a series on Osceola and thinking to myself, well, how would Clay get the definitive story? There's gotta be more. There's no way Clay didn't miss big. There's no way Clay didn't miss something that I would need to know about.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Friendly competition.

• 4:15Steven Rinella?

  Jamie Holmes is a writer and the author of the books, The Free and the Dead, of course, what I'm holding right here, plus 12 Seconds of Silence and the book Nonsense. His work has appeared in print or online in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, Wired, The Atlantic, and he has slummed it over at USA Today, among other publications. He holds a Masters.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Steve's words, not Jamie's.

• 4:39Steven Rinella?

  Well, you know, it's just like I was, you know, really, it was like he was kicking ass. There's like, you know, he's kicking ass and then it just. Well. Yeah, I never, I never, I mean, hell, I'd be thrilled to be in the USA today. Is that still going concern? Remember they used to put it outside the hotel room?

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. That was the paper they put outside all the hotel rooms. It's gotta be still going.

• 5:05Steven Rinella?

  He holds a masters of international affairs from Columbia University School of International Affairs. You know, Randall over there holds a PhD.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  And you have a masters?

• 5:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah. And an honorary. But it's honorary.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 5:20Steven Rinella?

  But it's much bigger than mine.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Oh, good, good.

• 5:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Steven Rinella?

  Uh, previously worked at New America as a policy analyst in international development and served as a future tense fellow. Prior to that, he was a research coordinator at Harvard University's Department of Economics, where he focused on behavioral economics. Can you very quickly tell me what that means?

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:49Steven Rinella?

  Behavior, bleh.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:50Steven Rinella?

  Behavioral economics?

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Behavioral economics tries to take insights from psychology and put them into policy. So for example, there's a, there's a psychological phenomenon called, um, uh, what's it called? Like priming or, or like, let's say, let's say if you're giving a tip in a taxi cab, right? And they say your three options are five dollars, seven dollars and nine dollars.

• 6:16Steven Rinella?

  It's not what this is.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  This is not called priming. This is called, there's another word for it. Uh, and then you say seven dollars, nine dollars and 11 dollars. So it's called anchoring. So you're anchoring your expectation of what the average is based on, you know, these three things. And they show how you can move people to give more donations based on these, these three numbers. And you move them up and down. So then they take that and, you know, you use that for fundraising. So what they really did is there's a book by this guy, Cialdini. Which was like sort of insights from the business world and how salespeople and people making products use and discovered these psychological insights and maps them on and, you know, psychologists are discovering similar things and then they want to basically

• 6:57Speaker 04

  turn that around instead of manipulating people to buy things or get them to do what you want is whatever it is, raise money, you want to make positive policy changes. So that was the idea behind it. It had, and there was a big push in the Obama government where he hired a lot of those people, Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and my boss at Harvard, Sondre Malmath, and they tried a bunch of stuff, some worked, some didn't.

• 7:22Steven Rinella?

  I got lost there.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:24Steven Rinella?

  Tried a bunch of stuff on, like, I don't understand what you mean.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  They tried a bunch of interventions based on psychological insights. So I'll give you another example of what they actually did. So what happens if, to save energy, if you send people a letter and in the letter you tell them, "Your neighbors are saving a lot of energy, they're not using a lot of water, they are keeping their electricity bill down."

• 7:45Steven Rinella?

  I've gotten these letters.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  So this is like social pressure.

• 7:47Steven Rinella?

  When you see how much their water they're using.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:50Steven Rinella?

  And you're like, "You don't have three kids, some bitch doesn't have three kids."

• 7:52Speaker 04

  So why are you using?

• 7:54Steven Rinella?

  I go over there and talk to the neighbor.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  I'm saying, "This is a big shot."

• 7:58Speaker 05

  You have a nerve.

• 7:59Speaker 04

  So this is social pressure and they're trying to get, they're trying to use it to get people to use less energy.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  They also do, they did stuff with the size of soda cups. Like if you want people to ingest less sugar, instead of putting a 44 ounce cup out, because they're gonna drink, they're gonna drink, it's not like they're gonna drink 44 ounces of soda no matter how big the cup is.

• 8:20Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Or like the size of a tray in a cafeteria.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, or you go to a store and they put the, you know, the, all the high sugar things right near their cash register because they want you to make an impulse buy.

• 8:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  They say, "Well, what can we do with that? You know, what if we put something that's good for you there?" Which doesn't necessarily work.

• 8:36Steven Rinella?

  So they brought, I don't want to spend too much time on this.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  It's cool, it's interesting.

• 8:39Steven Rinella?

  They brought in, at like, on a policy basis, the administration brought in people.

• 8:46Steven Rinella?

  Who would, for lack of a better word, be good at like manipulating the public to have behaviors that they wish they had?

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 8:54Steven Rinella?

  And to counteract what? I'm gonna have to put the seminal wars on hold. Because corporations are doing this to get you to make certain choices. Sure. The idea was sort of leveling the playing field in terms of- Coffee shop people are doing it. Yeah. Because when you get the tip functions, they're like, you could be like, the tip would be like 70%, 80%, 90% or other. And you gotta be like, oh, now I'm in a situation where I gotta hit other, you know, just getting out of control.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  There are stores in New York now, New York City, where you go and you're buying something at the counter. And they say, do you, what, how much do you want to tip at the counter?

• 9:30Speaker 05

  You've not had any interaction with a human.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  I am not tipping.

• 9:34Steven Rinella?

  I want to get into seminal wars, but I do want to, uh, the other day, when we were on, we were going to tip our kids to visit their grandmas. We were in the restaurant and in the restaurant, there's like the price of the menu. And I wish I'd take a picture of it, very fine print. And the bottom is that we don't want to, uh, because of inflation, we don't want to change our menus prices.

• 10:02Steven Rinella?

  So unless you ask otherwise, all of this is elevated by 14%. But you can request to have that not happen.

• 10:14Steven Rinella?

  That's wild. I am not kidding you, on the bottom of the menu, and I ate there, we were staying in a hotel. I ate there probably three times before my father-in-law noticed.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  That's weird.

• 10:26Steven Rinella?

  That's weird.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  So it says eight dollars, but it's really whatever, nine.

• 10:29Steven Rinella?

  Like you think your omelet is 12, your omelet is, they're saying, we're putting a four, unless you ask otherwise, that's actually 14% more because of inflation, but we don't want to change the menu prices.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  That's too weird.

• 10:43Steven Rinella?

  Sure, it's guys like you.

• 10:48Steven Rinella?

  Man, uh, into the seminal war story. Yeah. Dude.

• 10:53Steven Rinella?

  Here's what I, here's why I got, I love your book. Um.

• 11:00Steven Rinella?

  It does, the story does two things. The book does two things.

• 11:04Steven Rinella?

  The book captures all, the book validates.

• 11:09Steven Rinella?

  All of your sort of pre, not your, the book, the book validates one's.

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  All of one's preconceived notions about the brutality and crime. Of the Indian wars. But.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  Simultaneously, it turns every preconceived notion you have about the Indian wars. On its head. And, and I'll explain. It's like, in, in getting into the story, you have to come to grips with. Here's a group of Native Americans. That. Kind of, kind of. Had slaves.

• 11:53Steven Rinella?

  The, this story involves a Native American that was a West Point graduate. That went to fight against Native Americans. It involves a person that is able to ally himself with Native American forces, who is a freed slave.

• 12:11Steven Rinella?

  Fighting alongside Native Americans, who at the same time. The same individuals that at the same time, kind of have some slaves.

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Uh. It involves a Native American war leader. Who is one eighth.

• 12:30Steven Rinella?

  Maybe one eighth, one eighth Native American. That is mostly. Genetically. Not culturally. Right. Not spiritually. Right. But like through weird circumstances, like genetically, a Western European.

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  It's, there is a lot, a lot to, to like. Unpack. In this story. Yeah. It's such a, it's such a complex story.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  How to set the table for it.

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I know. I know. If you don't have an idea, I'll tell you what I think you should do.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  How did you? I mean, I'm curious. Tell me what you think.

• 13:08Steven Rinella?

  I'm curious how you got to it.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, how we go from behavioral economics to.

• 13:12Steven Rinella?

  I wondered that the whole time. Why'd you even write the book? I was wondering about that.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it, The Bridge is my second book, which is 12 Seconds of Silence, which is completely within this genre, which is historical narrative, nonfiction with a ton of archive work. I did a lot of original archive work.

• 13:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, you did.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  Uh, some of, some of the archive work I, I found contradicts some of the assumptions that we've had about the story. And there's, there's a lot of things that are.

• 13:40Steven Rinella?

  Come back, yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  That are central to the, yeah.

• 13:43Steven Rinella?

  Zoom in on this, Phil.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  There's a lot of things that are central.

• 13:46Steven Rinella?

  This is the son of a bitch of notes.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:49Steven Rinella?

  So if you're one of those guys that looks at a book and he's like, I can't read that. It's too long. Don't read the notes.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  I sat down with it.

• 13:54Steven Rinella?

  Then it makes it like, look at how, then how look attractive it is.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  I sat down with it 24 hours ago and I thought, there's no way I'm gonna get through this. And then I flipped to the, the end of the actual last chapter and I thought, meh, it's a pretty good chance.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  I'll tell you why I did that and then I'll answer your question about how I got to it. Because of, because I think one of the things that Clay said on his first podcast is like, imagine if somebody from a foreign country came and observed you and maybe they had a political agenda and almost all of the documentation about you are, is from these outside observers. What kind of an evidence base would you be dealing with?

• 14:31Steven Rinella?

  That's an interesting point.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  So, so that's the kind of evidence base that's, and, and the evidence base is messy and it's full of contradictions and it's full of biases and it's full of errors. It's, the newspapers at the time are making stuff up. So there's a lot of mythology. So.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  As I began to get my, my way closer to what I thought the story was, I realized I had to kind of do a separate book in the back for the academics.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  And say, okay, here's where I think this is, this academic says this, I don't think that's right, here's my evidence, and I'm gonna lay it all out. Because I wanted to keep the front of the book just a story. I came to it just as a storyteller, and just wanting to enjoy the story, explore the archives myself, very quickly, and then I'll return to your point. There's a great quote that says, "The past is a foreign country." And it comes from a 1950s Edwardian novel, but there's a scholar named David Lowenthal, who did a famous book with that title, "The Past is a Foreign Country." And it's really about history, and then heritage as mythologized history.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  But the idea of a history book, and writing and reading about history as an exploration, I know you've traveled a lot, I've traveled some, going to a foreign place, at first kind of being overwhelmed by the weirdness and the difference of it, and slowly starting to pick up clues as to what these different things mean that are new to you. And then also having that experience reflect back on you. So you're exploring the world, and then it's also reflecting on how you, what is normal. They're doing it like this, I thought this was normal. So it's changing your view of yourself as you're exploring. I think in that way, it's a lot like travel writing. So I came to it with that, with that goal, to just selfishly explore the story that

• 16:23Speaker 04

  I was interested in, and do as much archive work as I could. After I did this, this book on science, my first book, I kind of got disenamored with it a little bit, for various reasons that are not very interesting. And I, but I love writing. Disenamored with what? With psychological science. Oh, I see, okay. Yeah. And I, but I, but I love writing. And I love narrative writing. I kind of started off wanting to do fiction before I got into nonfiction. And so I thought, well, this is a genre. I really like Eric Larson's books and David Grand's stuff. Like, I love this genre. Maybe this is a place I can reinvent myself a little. So 12 Seconds of Silence is, I'm very proud of that book. It's about

• 17:08Speaker 04

  World War II and these group of scientists. So science was kind of the bridge from the first book to the second book. And it's about a group of scientists who World War II who invent this new weapon to shoot down airplanes. And they take down a Nazi superweapon with it. So I fell in love with archive work during that process. Like, you're digging in the crates. You're going to these, you're going to the Library of Congress. You're going to the NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. It's kind of like a treasure hunt. And, you know, so just a couple of things in here that nobody has. They didn't have Abraham's Indian name right. If you look it up online, it's going to be wrong. I mean, I haven't changed the Wikipedia. I actually think that he was born

• 17:51Speaker 04

  among the Seminoles and not a former slave from Pensacola. And I have good evidence for that in the back of the book. So there's a lot of things that I add in, a lot of things that I discovered, new archival evidence that, you know, historians get to debate and disagree with and would move forward in that way. But, so I fell in love with my second book. And then I just found this story and jumped in. And it was a different archival challenge because of where the archives are for this story. The last one, it was almost all in DC, so I moved to DC for it. This one, all of the archives, the best archives are really written by soldiers, either in the army, or they're militia, or they're volunteers. And all of those archives are all across America. I mean, there's some

• 18:36Speaker 04

  military files in DC. There's some important people that have stuff at the Library of Congress, like Andrew Jackson, like the main general, Thomas Jessup. But all of the soldiers' diaries, and those are really the best records. It's like state historical societies and universities. So, you know, I went poking around, like Maine Historical. Oh, here's a journal that's not been cited before. So that was, that was fun. And I love that part of it. And then you kind of sit with all of these contradictions and you try to distill the story that, you know, makes sense as far as you can make sense of it.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  That's awesome.

• 19:12Steven Rinella?

  Can you start by

• 19:16Steven Rinella?

  When I was kicking around how to get into this, I thought, let's start with the thing that was most confusing to me.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:22Steven Rinella?

  And then I'm just gonna trust that it's gonna be a thing that's very confusing to other people.

• 19:29Steven Rinella?

  I always thought that there was a tribe, and I just assumed the tribe had been in existence for a thousand years, that there was a tribe of people that were the Seminole.

• 19:47Steven Rinella?

  Can you explain what, how, like, how that group of people came to coalesce, where that name came from, who they were, what you're, when you say Seminole, what are you saying?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Sure. It's a good question. So Seminole comes from the Spanish Simaron, which is sometimes translated as runaway or untamed. I think it was originally in reference to undomesticated cattle, live, you know, horses.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  I think, and to some degree, the Seminole tribe of Florida doesn't like the runaway designation, untamed.

• 20:28Steven Rinella?

  But that, just quickly, that, that is a thing that, that is very common in European nomenclature for tribal peoples, is we use, used, use, a lot of words that were not their words.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:45Steven Rinella?

  But we'd be allied with or make contact with a tribe.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:50Steven Rinella?

  The tribe would be like, well, I'll tell you what I call them. And that, and that would become the name.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  There's a word for that. It's called an exonym.

• 20:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Name given by an outside group. And then, to some degree, those names can be reclaimed.

• 21:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  And they take them back. But to answer your question, you know, originally, there's an estimate of 25,000 indigenous people in Florida.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  This is at Spanish contact.

• 21:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  Those, including the Timquans, like, some others, those people were, were wiped out. You know, those people were gone by the time the Seminoles come down, from disease, from military conflicts. The people that became the Seminole, and even the Miquetzcoy tribe, which is down there, come from the Creek Confederacy, Creek, another exonym, the Muskogee people.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  And these are kind of loose confederations. And what happens with the Seminoles is you have Americans, settlers, coming down, pressuring people in what is now Georgia and Alabama. And you have the elements of the Creek Confederacy starting to acculturate. Starting, you have some intermarrying.

• 22:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, tell people what that means, acculturate.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Acculturate, meaning they're starting to adopt the customs of the Anglos and then the Americans. And eventually, you have Creek enslavers running plantations at scale. So they're, you know, growing crops and they're having slaves at that scale. I mean, that's the degree of acculturation.

• 22:26Steven Rinella?

  People of Creek descent, like?

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Creek descent have, but that, but they're all, they own deeded land?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  A portion of them. No, it's not deeded. No.

• 22:37Steven Rinella?

  Okay. So they're running, they're running plantain operations on open, unclaimed lands?

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:43Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Yes. So, but, so you have this, this split within the Creek Confederacy, this, this schism. And it's sort of continuing in the, in the 1790s, it sort of becomes even more dramatic. As to are we going to adopt these new ways, which, you know, it's like, okay, we've got hunting rifles, our clothes are changing, we're buying things at markets, you know, the things that women used to make, we're now, we're now purchasing. They, you know, are we going to shift fully into agriculture? They were, they were growing things, but, you know, also hunting. So there are all these pressures that are changing the culture. And of course, the settlers are pushing them out and there's military conflicts and all that.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  The Seminoles, the main Seminole force, the main, the main body of the people who came to be called Seminoles, came in three phases.

• 23:36Steven Rinella?

  Would you mind tying this real quick?

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:39Steven Rinella?

  To known American history? Just, just to remind, like, where are we? In terms of the post-revolution?

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So the first wave of, of people that became Seminoles is 1700, 1750.

• 23:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  So this is pre-revolution. And they broke apart from the Creek Confederacy and decided, we're going to go with the old ways, we're not going to change.

• 24:02Steven Rinella?

  So they're, they're having this debate about?

• 24:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:05Steven Rinella?

  Do we? Adopt what would become American ways.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:09Steven Rinella?

  But they're having this conversation before America exists.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  As, as America, as America is coming to exist and then after the revolution as well.

• 24:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  So, one of the dramatic things that happens, so anyway, quickly, I'll quickly answer the immigration thing because you brought up an important point and then I'll get back to this Creek split. Seventeen fifty, another wave around seventeen ninety, another wave around eighteen fourteen. You have a bunch of groups down in Florida at this time that Americans all call Seminoles, even though the Americans knew they were not all Seminoles. So, you have Seminoles, the, the main two to remember are Seminoles and Mikazuki. You also have some people who still identify as Creeks down there. You have some Talasses, some Uchis, some Tallahassee's.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  And in American newspapers, they're all called Seminoles. I think in part because it makes it easier to sell the treaty. If it's all one people, all one people agreed to this treaty to leave, but really it's fragmented and at the time, they don't identify as one group really. Uh, you know, I have something that Abraham wrote, at the chief Abraham, wrote at the time, where he's listing the different groups. Now, later, after the Seminole Wars, those groups began to reclaim that term and identify all as Seminoles.

• 25:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Um, but at the time, they were not thinking of themselves that way, even though it appears that way in American newspapers. And of course, this causes a lot of confusion because if you have a split between the Seminoles and Mikazukis and you call them all Seminoles, you can't understand what's going on. You can't read the situation.

• 25:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Uh, so there's a lot of confusion that comes from, of course, the generals, the people closest to the story, they know very well. They're highly aware, but it, but in a lot of-

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  They know they're dealing with different groups-

• 25:58Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 25:58Steven Rinella?

  With different leaders, with different motivations, with different objectives. But the story is, we're fighting Seminoles.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  That's exactly right, yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 06

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• 26:38Steven Rinella?

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• 27:18Steven Rinella?

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• 28:02Steven Rinella?

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• 28:45Steven Rinella?

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• 29:28Steven Rinella?

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• 29:39Speaker 04

  The greatest schism in one of the great schism, you know, there's a war, of course, in 1813, 1814 called the Creek War, in a way, it's a civil war. But going back to the 1790s, there's a very interesting part of this story where the Creeks are allied with the British, the Upper Creeks, I think. And they're attacking against, they're fighting the Americans during the revolution. And they're attacking, what's there? What's there? It's plantations. And they're taking POWs, which is the old way. You would always take POWs. You didn't care what skin color they were. And you would either kill them, adopt them into the tribe, or make them servants. Not agricultural workers on a farm, but they would be servants. And their children would be free.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Their children could be part of the tribe. Now, which is important. And the Seminoles still practiced that as late as 1774. Now, the Creeks start to change. And about 1790, okay, well, if we're, if we're going to practice the, the other way, then enslavement is going to be by skin color, and it's going to be transgenerational. So I'm going to own your children, and we're going to do it by skin color. And that is a radical change in Creek culture.

• 30:51Steven Rinella?

  That was a term that I had to look up. I'd seen it a thousand times. I don't even know how to pronounce it.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:56Steven Rinella?

  Chattle, shat, like?

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Chattle slavery.

• 31:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and it was like, I'd seen that where I never looked it up. Reading your book, I look it up. And it's like this concept that you're, I own you. You're my servant and your child is my servant.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  It's dramatic. That's dramatic.

• 31:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's an interesting distinction.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so I think a number of the people who became Black Seminoles were children of POWs who escaped down to the Seminoles who had a more open view of this. As Creek culture is changing. That's for sure part of the story.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  So, yeah, it's really, it's really the pressure from the North. And then these various groups coming down and identifying generally as Seminoles, even though they're not exactly that yet.

• 31:45Steven Rinella?

  Where, where does, as these groups get pushed down? Oh, you know, there's another thing I want to top before we get there because it's part of the pushing down. Can you explain the, was it the red shirts or red arrows? What was it? The red sticks. Red sticks.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  I will, but you brought up something and I didn't respond to it. chattel slavery. So, and then I'll get to the red sticks. So chattel slavery, right, I own you, I own your children, but it's basically you're, you're a piece of property. And what they wanted to do after, especially after 1831, when you have Nat Turner's rebellion, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. So, the rules are basically, I can sell you, I can split apart your family. You're not going to have any knowledge. I don't want you knowing anything. I'm not, you're not going to be allowed to read, right? You're not going to be allowed to travel freely. And these rules vary, vary on different plantations. You, you can't travel without a pass and you can't accumulate wealth. Uh, so, and then if you look at the rights of the Black Seminoles,

• 32:45Speaker 04

  almost all of them worldly, they speak two or three languages. Uh, they have vast wealth, they're traveling freely. Uh, and there's a, there's a rule, according to Wiley Thompson, who's Andrew Jackson's Indian agent, that it is illegal to sell them. And their constant promise is not to split up the families. Now, laws get broken, but that's apparently a law. Now, when Americans take over Florida, you have this population, I would say there's 500 black Seminoles, estimated. I would say about 100 are servants, by the old Muskogee way, which is not hard labor. And it's sort of a system of tribute where you get a portion of your, of the corn that you grow, which sounds to me like a tax, more than slavery.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  And then you have about 400 who are claiming to be slaves. The quote is, "They all pretended to be free." I mean, all pretended to be purchased. And if they're children of POWs from the revolution, they're not going to have any papers proving that. Of course, the Creeks can't prove that they own them. So, in a way, they're more free to go down to Florida, but in a way, they're vulnerable because there's no paperwork. So, you know, you have, when America takes over Florida, it becomes the territory of Florida in 1821. It's different than the Spanish policy, where you really had three groups of people,

• 34:10Speaker 04

  and it was pretty easy to free yourself if you're an enslaved person. Florida doesn't want to do that. They want to have, and in fact, when they write their constitution, it becomes a state in 1845. They tried to ban all African-Americans who are free from entering Florida. They're not allowed to do that, but they tried to do that.

• 34:31Steven Rinella?

  Because they wanted to clean it up. They wanted to clean up all the confusion about who was who.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  You don't, yeah, yeah. You don't want, they didn't want free black people there as a bad example to the enslaved population. That was their idea. So, the black Seminoles are claiming to be slaves in an environment where you cannot have a large free black population. In a way, they're using it as protection. And I'm sure there was variation.

• 34:56Steven Rinella?

  Because I'd rather be these guys' quote slave than your slave slave.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  And you don't want to be vulnerable to being enslaved.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  If you're already someone else's property in the eyes of the outsiders, they can't take you.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  That's the game. So, Abraham owns his son, Renty, as a slave.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought that was, the paperwork that, when they have a kid, they establish all this paperwork that their kids are owned by them.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Chief Micanopi sells the child, and you go and you write it down in the record books of the local administrators. There's a family that goes and tries to write down the free status of their children in three different record books. So they're trying to protect their children. They know a day is going to come that claims are going to be made on them. And they want to be able to say, look at the record books at Polack, at Fort Brooke, or Tampa Bay. So that's what's happening mostly. And you have historians in the past who have said, oh, they say they're all slaves. They're all slaves. It's more complicated.

• 35:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:02Steven Rinella?

  I still want to get to the red sticks, but I want to talk about the slavery thing for a minute.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:07Steven Rinella?

  Just because this becomes a big part.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:11Steven Rinella?

  You had mentioned that there's almost like a reverse, there's like a southern railroad.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:17Steven Rinella?

  Where if you, in the deep south,

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:19Steven Rinella?

  if you're an escaping slave,

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:22Steven Rinella?

  it's understood among slave communities that an option, if you can't get north, an option is to get south.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's such, it's, yeah. So as early as I want to say something like 1685, it's in, it's the late 17th century. The Spanish adopt a policy in which an escaped slave can come down, say that they're Catholic, join the army, and they will back up their rights. So there's this deal that's going down. If you can get down there, if you're willing to fight, the authorities down there will recognize your status. And we do this in, in the United States military today, right? You get, you can get a fast track to citizenship if you serve in the armed forces, in the American armed forces. This is a very old deal, going back to antiquity. Soldiership for civil rights.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  And then some people are coming down to Florida and leaving. You know, you can get, you can get down to the Caribbean. You can get down to Spanish Cuba. So that's happening as well. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, you know, the interior of Florida, and then we'll get back to the red sticks. The interior of Florida is not settled. It's, there's no minerals to extract. And the Spanish don't try to settle it. And neither do the British. I mean, there are some Spanish missions, but it's really the coasts. It's kind of a strategic buffer. You know, Spain, Spain comes, they settle Saint Augustine. I, I think it's fifteen sixty-five or sixty-three, something like that.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  And they lose it to Britain very quickly because they side with the French in the French and Indian War. French lose, Britain takes over, and the Spanish side with us in the American Revolution. They attack British Florida, both from Spanish Louisiana and from Cuba. They take it back over, but it's still a strategic buffer. It's like, you don't really want to live there. It is like Greenland.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  You want it, it's the Greenland of its day.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  So, so to the red sticks.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  I got a comment about.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 38:31Steven Rinella?

  The, how, in your description of Florida, that is funny because you hear you have these, like, the E. Like, if you look at a map now, you'd be like, oh, it's the eastern US.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:43Steven Rinella?

  And you have in your head that there's like Boston and Philadelphia and Charleston. You're like, that's the whole settled part.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:50Steven Rinella?

  By these dates.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:52Steven Rinella?

  And it made me think of, uh, MacArthur had this approach in World War II. Where he would just shoot through areas and just pass everybody up and grab cities. And he'd be like, we'll sort that out later.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:07Steven Rinella?

  Like, instead of, instead of rolling along on a unified front, he would now and then just bust through it.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Sounds like a blitzkrieg.

• 39:13Steven Rinella?

  And then, yeah, and then be like, well, no, I know we drove past tons of people, but we'll just get them later.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:18Steven Rinella?

  Like, I just want to keep moving.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:20Steven Rinella?

  And you think of, in a little bit like, when you imagine your mind's eye of the settlement and United States-ification of the continent.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 39:30Steven Rinella?

  You imagine it being this line.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:33Steven Rinella?

  But it has all these, like, misses.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:35Steven Rinella?

  Like, it misses Florida for a while, it misses the Mississippi Delta, and then it's kind of go like, we'll get to that later. Then the Great Plains, you know, San Francisco's a big city, so like, oh, they're done. They're done conquering the thing, like, oh, no, we left off a huge, we left off the Great Plains. We'll come back and get to that later, you know?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, but by eighteen thirty-five, you have.

• 39:58Speaker 04

  Everything up to the Mississippi, except maybe parts of like, I don't know what the Mississippi does when it gets super far north, it may go into Minnesota or something. But basically, it's Michigan and Florida are the only places that are not states.

• 40:11Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  And Florida is the least settled, and it's the most sparsely populated. You have 15 million people in the US at that time. You have, almost all of it is rural, really small cities. New York's like 200,000. 70% of people are working on farms.

• 40:30Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  It's like, most of the country is farming and hunting and fishing. And Florida is really these cities. And you have, you know, in 20, we take it over, we take over Florida, it becomes the Territory of Florida in 1821. One of the first things they do is they move the tribes into an Indian reservation in the center of Florida. But we don't, it's unmapped. The middle of Florida is unmapped. We have maps for less than half of it. There's, you know, there's a quote, "We know less about the interior of Florida than the interior of China." At some, at some point in the war, there's a general who has to go to a bookstore to buy a map of Florida, that's the best map he can get of the Territory.

• 41:16Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  So Florida is lagging. And, and you know, the bottom half, a lot of it's because it's not good for farming. You know, the bottom half of it, you've been to like Okeechobee, I think. Below that, the natural Everglades, like, you're not farming there.

• 41:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  So the Red Sticks is, you know, there's, this is about the split in the Creek Confederacy. And Osceola comes from the Red Sticks. And they fought against Andrew Jackson. They're the Upper Creeks. The Lower Creeks were called the White Sticks. By the way, Red Sticks, Baton Rouge, the Red Sticks.

• 41:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And they fight, and Jackson fights with the White Sticks against the Red Sticks.

• 41:58Steven Rinella?

  There's the, are these colors related to skin color, or totally coincidental?

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Coincidental.

• 42:02Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  It's the Red War Club that they had. I guess it was painted red.

• 42:08Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 42:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. Baton, the stick, red stick.

• 42:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so there's the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. I want to say it's 1814. Where Jackson and the White Sticks have a resounding defeat and they kill 800 Red Sticks. There's reportedly 20 or so survivors. And, you know, widows and orphans come down in Florida and Osceola is part of that group.

• 42:35Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  So, you know, he's in Florida, then Jackson, you know, the guy who killed his people becomes president. And he's got to sit in these meetings where Jackson's representative says, you know, please leave, I'm your friend, I'm trying to help you. And so, you know, he, he comes out of this deep scar of seeing real violence when he's young. He comes down to Florida when he's 10. So he's carrying this profound trauma of seeing his people split in two.

• 43:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  And he starts to see it again happen in Florida and, you know, he won't, he won't stand for it.

• 43:10Steven Rinella?

  One thing that Clay got right in his series on the Seminole Wars and Osceola is Clay starts it out with John Lee Anderson's Seminole Wind.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Tell me.

• 43:20Steven Rinella?

  Um, the famous song, Blow, Blow, Blow Seminole Wind.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:24Steven Rinella?

  And Clay's favorite part of Seminole Wind is when the guy sits on a cypress stump and he can hear the voice of Osceola cry. And this was a huge, like, huge country song. And it would be probably, my guess would be, that that would be the same way, we recently interviewed an individual about.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:51Steven Rinella?

  The Edmund Fitzgerald. And like, the, the, uh, Gordon Lightfoot's, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, is many people's passageway into knowing that there is a thing, a shipwreck called the Edmund Fitzgerald. I would say Seminole Wind. For many people.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:11Steven Rinella?

  Was probably their introduction to these terms. For people that far away from Florida.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and Osceola too.

• 44:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  You know, he's that, he's still the icon of the Florida Seminole football team.

• 44:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so let, let, explain his background, Osceola, because he's gonna, as we're gonna get into the wars, he emerges as a primary figure and you focus on, you might as well do this.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:32Steven Rinella?

  You focus on Osceola.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  You focus on Abraham. So can you give us some biographical sketch of these two, like, really different folks?

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah. So, so I broke down a little what he came out of as a, as a boy.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  He's Greek. He allies himself with a powerful Mika Zuki chief named Sam Jones. Uh, or Abiaka. We called him Sam Jones. And he's a military enforcer figure for him. Uh, he's one of the most famous Native Americans in American history. I mean, he's everywhere in the press. He's in European papers. He becomes.

• 45:20Steven Rinella?

  In his day.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  In his day, yeah, in his day. He becomes this mythologized figure. His character is, how would I describe his character? He's an angry young man.

• 45:37Steven Rinella?

  When, when we meet him in the book. Is when he's imprisoned for five or six, I mean, that's a vivid.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:46Steven Rinella?

  Anecdote.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  I could start there.

• 45:47Steven Rinella?

  It's a memorable introduction.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Andrew Jackson sends down this Indian agent, Wiley Thompson, down to Florida, down to this place called Fort King, which is present day Ocala. And Thompson's job is really to convince them to leave without a war.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Because they don't want to spend the money on a war. So it's cheaper to send someone down and kind of try to convince them, I'm your friend. And if not, we'll fight a war, but we're really friends and I'm a nice federal guy. And these locals, geez, these locals, they're kind of corrupt. Actually, at one point, he says, you've been cheated in the past by these locals, but you know, all bad men are not yet dead, which I wanted for the title. All bad men, they wouldn't let me have it. All bad men are not yet dead. So anyway, he sends him down here and Osceola, who knows who Jackson is, who knows American intentions, has to sit in these council meetings and listen to this, the letters written by Jackson, saying, you know. Killed his family. Yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  So he's like, I gotta sit here and listen to this. So he storms into Wiley Thompson's office in, I want to say, April 1835. It's before the war begins, by about eight months. And he cusses him out. And he says, you know, you say that we have to leave, like, you have to leave. You say that it's gonna be bad for us, it's gonna be bad for you. You know, there's a quote, I'm not sure if it's true because there's so much mythologized, but I put it in. But it appears in nineteen, a little later after the war, 1853, and he says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna leave your body out in the rain and the sun is gonna

• 47:31Speaker 04

  turn your skin black and the vultures are gonna pick the flesh off of you and, yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Which was, as we'll get into, was oddly prophetic. That's what happens. Not oddly prophetic. It's what happens. So this is the second time, or at least in Thompson's records, he says, I had warned him before, you can't talk to me that way. And so Osceola, he doesn't do anything when Osceola. Thompson says, I've told you before, don't come and say this to me. In his records, when he's explaining this incident, he said, I had warned him before, you can't insult me this way, you can't threaten me in this way. And then he said, he did it again. So this had happened before. I see. He doesn't do anything when.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, so on this big, well-known tirade.

• 48:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  And Thompson says, this isn't the first time.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  It's not the first time this has happened.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  And so he locks him up. Now, he doesn't personally do it. He waits till Osceola leaves. And 200 yards outside of the agency house, he has four guards wrestle him to the ground and they struggle and they lock him up for six days. And Osceola is stewing in what passes for a prison. They call it the guardhouse. And the next day, he says, okay, I've changed my mind.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, he's, let's jump in, but.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  He, he, he can't convince him that he's calmed down. So he's like, send this other guy.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  I'll convince him that I've calmed down and then he'll convince you that I've calmed down. Because this is all just so, yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  That's a good correction.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  Because that actually becomes important.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  This was a very memorable, uh, story for me.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, that becomes important. So there's a, there's a, there's a Creek cattlemen who's a chief, whose name is Charlie Amothla. And he's faced with the same decision everyone else is, which is, you know, leave or it's war, more or less. Do you want to put your family through that? And he's got two daughters. He's got a seven-year-old kid. He's Creek. He knows what happened in present-day Alabama and Georgia. You know, what do you want to risk? Do you want to risk it? Are you going to put your, you know? So he decides to leave. Now, some literatures call him a friendly chief. It's not the correct word. But, but he's decided to leave. And so Osceola says, bring Charlie Amothla. You trust him. He's leaving. And I'll talk to him. And he does. He convinces it.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  There's no record of what they said, but, um, but Charlie Amothla goes to Thompson and he says, you know, I'm sure he gets it. He just had a, he just lost his temper, but he understands that he's going to go and you should release him. And he'll come back with 80 of his people and they'll, they'll, you know, true to their professions, they will pledge that they're going to go west. They're going to immigrate with the rest of us. And that's what happens. And not to jump, not to jump ahead, but Osceola kills Amothla. In front of at least one of his daughters as a warning to other leaders not to break off, not to leave because he doesn't want to happen what happened in Alabama and Georgia, what happened to the Creek Confederacy.

• 50:35Steven Rinella?

  How does he kill them?

• 50:36Speaker 04

  There are a few different stories. Some of them seem to me to be clearly made up. The famous version, so he goes with Abraham, Chief Abraham, who's the chief of the Black Seminoles. All the stories put them together. They go to Imothla. One story is they meet him at Imothla's house. And Abraham says, you really shouldn't go. You want to stay, fight with us, keep your army with us. You can't have the army size cut in half, which is what would have happened. And eight of the 13 chiefs, you know, at first agreed to go. So you're going to have your fighting force cut in half. So Abraham says, don't go. He's trying to convince him. Osceola tries to convince him. He's not going to change his mind.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  By one version, Osceola raises a rifle to him and Abraham hits the rifle in the air, preventing his murder. I don't know if that's true. Another version is he killed Imothla on the road. So one of the things that they were going to do before the immigration is they agreed to buy all the Seminole cattle. So they arranged an auction and I think it was going to be December 1st and we're going to have an auction of all your cattle so you, because you can't bring that with you. So the story goes.

• 51:49Steven Rinella?

  Who would be?

• 51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:51Steven Rinella?

  Just, sorry.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Not at all.

• 51:53Steven Rinella?

  Who's going to buy the cattle?

• 51:54Speaker 04

  Locals.

• 51:55Steven Rinella?

  White folks?

• 51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. You have 16,000 white settlers there.

• 52:02Steven Rinella?

  Since we're making you all leave.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:04Steven Rinella?

  And you can't bring your cattle.

• 52:05Speaker 04

  We'll give you a fair price.

• 52:06Steven Rinella?

  These, your new neighbors.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:08Steven Rinella?

  These white folk will buy your cattle.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  At a reasonable price.

• 52:10Steven Rinella?

  At an auction.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  And these people have been sitting there for, you know, a decade or more, kind of rubbing their hands, waiting for the government to do something about the tribes.

• 52:21Speaker 04

  Yes, they have. That's right. They're certainly ready for this and they're ready to become a state and they want to settle the state. So in their minds, that means.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  The native population has to go. So, one of the stories is Imatla was paid for his cattle. He's taking gold back away from the auction. And Abraham is with Osiole, and Osiole shoots him and takes the gold and scatters the gold over his body. And he goes to Abraham, who's in danger of being enslaved. And he says, "See this as the price of your blood," in a way. "See this as the price of your freedom." The problem with that story is, it happens five days before the auction.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  So... I love details like that. It's a problem with good stories. Yeah. So, the story that I believe, and it's a very mundane story, and it circulates, I want to say, in Jacksonville right afterwards, primary source. And it says that he shot him while he was gathering his cattle for the auction in front of one of his daughters. That lines up with the calendar. Yeah. It's more plausible. It's not as dramatic. Guns him down. Guns him down. And this becomes controversial. And I think it's, to some extent, controversial to this day in the Seminole tribe of Florida. You know, Imatla has ancestors too, has descendants too. How are we supposed to look at this? On one hand, you understand where Osiole is coming from. He's trying, you know, he wants to fight.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  On the other hand, you're going to kill a guy in front of his daughter who's trying to avoid war. It's tough, but that's what happened.

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• 54:24Steven Rinella?

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• 55:06Steven Rinella?

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• 55:46Steven Rinella?

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• 56:32Steven Rinella?

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• 57:15Steven Rinella?

  you can still get 10% off your first month. Go visit betterhelp.com/meateater to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash meat eater. If you've got something weighing on your mind, taking a toll on you, don't be afraid to reach out. Betterhelp.com/meateater. Should we take this up to, let's finish up with Thompson?

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 57:41Steven Rinella?

  Before, before we tell the story of Abraham.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do you, do you want me to kill Thompson?

• 57:45Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 57:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. So.

• 57:49Steven Rinella?

  We already kind of broke it by saying that he says, here's what's gonna happen.

• 57:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so Osceola gets out of jail. As soon as Thompson hears about Imothla's murder, he knows it's game over. And he writes Washington and he says, military force is going to be needed. More or less, I failed.

• 58:09Steven Rinella?

  Like these guys aren't gonna leave willfully.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  It's not happening. And now that, now that he did that, it has the result that, that they, no, Osceola didn't do this alone. I'm sure that superiors to him told him, kill Imothla. In any case, this wasn't a rogue action. I don't think he had complete consensus, but it's not him out on his own.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  So, yeah, and so that you have a number of the of the people who are going to leave, who are going to immigrate, they stay. So it does it does have the effect that he wants. So Thompson says, OK, I failed. And he's kind of waiting around to go back home to Georgia. And that's when you have a few of the most dramatic events of the war and in the book happen at the same time. One of which is the assassination of Wiley Thompson by Osceola and forty Mika Zuki warriors or the killing at Fort King. They have a war council and you have troops coming up from Tampa Bay, from Fortbrook.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  You have 100 troops that are marching up what's called the Fort King Road. It's right through the heart of the Indian Reservation and they're planning to attack the Seminoles and the Black Seminoles. And they have a date for the attack, December 31st. And so they meet in council, they say, OK, we've got two priorities. We've got to get Thompson out of the way and we've got to handle Dade and these 108 men who are marching up towards our reservation. And Osceola says, I'll take Thompson. He's my friend and I will see to him.

• 59:47Speaker 04

  And so he goes up to, you know, he's ordered to attack the fort. The fort only has 50 soldiers at the time, but he waits in ambush. He waits for over a day. He later says he lured Thompson's spirit to him.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  He waits in the woods near, so there's the agency house where Thompson lives and works. And then there's a little sutler store, which is the civilian like storekeeper guy. And he's got some clerks and that's some yards, maybe 800 yards or away from down, away from the fort. So Thompson and a companion, I think an officer, they're having dinner. They decide to have a smoke after dinner. Let's have a little stroll with our cigar. And he walks down near the sutler store, near these woods where Osceola and 40 warriors are waiting and.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Osceola's war cry is heard. It's apparently a distinctive shrill war cry. There's two other chiefs there who are denoted by chiefs by their attire, but nobody knows who they are. Osceola has already gotten famous for killing Imatla in the American press. He's also gotten noriety for being loud in council. So his fame starts off because he's the most vocal. So we sort of, you know, the, the records track him because he's put a, a target on his back in a way in his own back. And Thompson is shot 14 times, I believe. There's a, a, a deep knife wound to his breast.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  He is scalped. There may be a clubbed musket to his head. It's pretty, pretty gruesome. The storekeeper also killed in the same manner.

• 1:01:38Steven Rinella?

  What about the dude he was having a smoke with?

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  That guy dies too.

• 1:01:42Steven Rinella?

  So far.

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  Whoops.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  No surprises in this story.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that guy dies too. And the troops are, think it's a feint. They think it's a distraction and they fortify in the fort. They, they get one of the bodies the next day and they bury Thompson at the fort temporarily. And then, and then his wife gets him back and his bones go back to Everton, Georgia. And she keeps his bones under her bed for a year. Yeah. How about that's a different time period?

• 1:02:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's the start of the war. And simultaneously Abraham and, and Chief Mikanopi, who's the head of the, uh, he's the head of, he's the, he's the seminal chief, but he's also ostensibly the head of all of the tribes and bands, attacked Dade.

• 1:02:35Steven Rinella?

  Tell us about, before we get into that attack, which is fascinating. And what did he pick up? With Osceola staking out to kill this guy?

• 1:02:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Steven Rinella?

  And then the, the, the, I know some people call it the Dade massacre, the Dade fight, whatever. You gather, man, these dudes are like one with the swamp.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Steven Rinella?

  I mean, the, the ability to just vanish.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Steven Rinella?

  And to like stake up and hide.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Steven Rinella?

  And surprise people's astounding.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and there's like a big parallel here, I think. To a lot of stuff that I've read about slave rebellions in the Caribbean.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Where it's just the landscape and the ecology of that place.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  Is just sort of used almost as a weapon against the whites, you know, whether they're colonists or the army in this case.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  100%. In fact, Colonel Taylor, who later he becomes president, but he later leads the forces in Florida, and he says, "The climate and the terrain are much more lethal than the enemy." One of the things that they say, that he also says, he says, "We tried to catch them," this is later in the war, "when they have fled from us, not once have we been able to overtake them." There's one of your videos where you say, I think maybe you're in South America, where you're like, "There's no way that I could move through the bush as quickly as some of these indigenous hunters."

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  Some of the dudes that are from there.

• 1:04:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  No, you can't.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and the soldiers are laden down, you know, they're carrying things. They're carrying, they don't know how, you know, they've got rations. They've got, they've got heavy ammunition. They've got, they're carrying, they've got their heavy uniforms. And the Seminole forces are living off the land. They know where the food is. They know where the dry places are. They know where the crossings of the rivers are.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:25Speaker 04

  Which the army does.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  They vanish into the water, man. Yeah, they like eat alligators, they catch fish, they dig roots, they find oranges.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  They do all of that very successfully. And, you know, it's General Jessup, who's a main figure of the book. He says at one point, "The nature of the country is such that an army of, you know, 500 could hold it against an army of 10,000 or something like that."

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Mm.

• 1:04:56Speaker 04

  You know, if, we call it a war, but if you're gonna use the landscape against the enemy. That's, that's not normally how we think of a war. We think of a war where I meet you on the battlefield. We are agreeing to fight. Well, what if I don't agree to fight? Or what if I agree to fight on my terms? That is, okay, I'm here in a perfect position for me to ambush you. Come, come over here. Come walk into my ambush. And so they selected the battlefields. And the army was forced to go into their chosen battlefields.

• 1:05:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. There's a comment someone makes in, I don't know if you covered it in your book, or if I heard someone mention it in Clay's piece, but it would be that they would fight as long as it was going the way they wanted it to go.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Steven Rinella?

  But they were not beholden to sort of a battle plan.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:49Steven Rinella?

  If things look good for an ambush, we'll do the ambush. If they don't, we're out of here.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely. And, and what have you achieved if, if everyone gets away? You know, it's, it's the use of the land and, and the slow, you know, they hire topographers. Like, how do we figure out where we're going? Where is everyone? And they dispersed intentionally. There's a, there's a general named Scott who is briefly in, the head of the war in Florida. And he has like a Napoleonic handbook for like, for, you know, fighting in lines and fields. And, and this is bush fighting. They're not used to this.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  They're not used to guerrilla warfare. That's what this is. There's an early event in the war in which a mail, a mailman is killed, a messenger is killed. And he's going up the Fort King Road and it's a hit and run. It's boom, they take care of business and they're gone. And there's a moment where the general realizes, he says, okay, I have 700 troops at max. That should be enough. Oh, unless they use hit and run tactics.

• 1:07:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  And then he sort of writes a panicked letter like, ah, we might be in trouble here. Cause if they're not going to meet us in a mass, that's a whole different kind of warfare. And one soldier calls it a hunt.

• 1:07:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  This has dissolved, this has devolved into a hunt. And, and you know, a lot of people quit because of that. There's no glory to be had in that kind of a fight.

• 1:07:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you quote different guys, soldiers that get sent down there. And after a couple of days, you're like, this ain't what I signed up for.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  You know, there's.

• 1:07:34Steven Rinella?

  I signed up for a big gunfight that we win.

• 1:07:36Speaker 04

  That's right. That's right. Where's my, where's my gunfight? There's a sequence in which, you know, the war has started and you, you have in New Orleans, uh, reports in the newspaper of things that are not happening. It's like, oh, the, the Indians are killing all of the settlers and, and they're slaughtering everyone and it's a, it's a war of extermination. This is not happening. But they're using as it, as recruitment. And so there's an American flag outside of the customs house and all the soldiers sign up and they take up.

• 1:08:07Speaker 05

  Is that like social psychology you're talking about?

• 1:08:09Steven Rinella?

  There you go.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  There it is. Yeah. Well, that's what it is. So, I mean, if somebody said that, to me, I would sign up. Like, okay, you know, let's go. Those are my people.

• 1:08:19Steven Rinella?

  When, when the truth is more like, they're trying to get a, stay away from you out in the swamps, living a subsistence lifestyle.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  They just want to.

• 1:08:26Steven Rinella?

  Hoping you just go away.

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  Mostly, yes.

• 1:08:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, you know, Abraham retreats into the cove with the coochie along.

• 1:08:33Steven Rinella?

  You gotta give Abraham's background.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  Sorry, yeah.

• 1:08:35Steven Rinella?

  In the dade fight.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:37Steven Rinella?

  Cause this is early. We gotta back up to early in the war.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  There's, yeah. There's a lot of exposition in this story. There's a lot of context. So Abraham is a, I love, I love Abraham. He, he's a diplomat. He's very poised. He is nominally Micconope's interpreter. So Micconope is the Seminole chief. The whites think he's just the interpreter. He's more than that. He is also Micconope's sense bearer, along with this cheap name jumper.

• 1:09:08Steven Rinella?

  The concierge.

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  The concierge, like the privy counselor or the prime minister. He's the advisor. He's the keeper of the king conscience. So he's the interpreter and the advisor. And he is, the traditional story is that he escaped from an owner in Pensacola. I found evidence that, from him directly, he can't say where he was born, but he was born among the Seminoles in Florida. And there's several other pieces of evidence that, to me, without a doubt, say that he was born amid the Seminoles.

• 1:09:41Steven Rinella?

  Does his age line up, like, his age lines up with that potential?

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:09:46Steven Rinella?

  That he was maybe, maybe his parents were escaped slaves?

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  It would not surprise me if his parents were POWs taken in Creek raids during the Revolutionary War. That would not surprise me.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  So his parents are maybe brought into Florida by the Creek? And then he, because it wasn't chattel slavery, he rose to, he was born among the Seminoles, rose to a position of prominence to where he's like a right-hand man to achieve.

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  He's formally adopted, and he's formally freed in 1830. There's maybe 15 of this 500, or maybe 20, who are formally free.

• 1:10:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:10:27Speaker 04

  What else can I say about Abraham? He's described by the army as having a "continence which none can read." He's described as a real Martin Van Buren, as a political animal. He is, he speaks softly with a genteel emphasis. He is said to have a great deal of fun about him. He is said to be artful. He is said to have more wit in his left eye, because his right eye angles inward, than most men do in both.

• 1:11:04Steven Rinella?

  He's a regular, he's a regular Ben Franklin.

• 1:11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, he's, he's a, he's a strange character to observers.

• 1:11:13Speaker 04

  You know, there's a role going back to at least 1802 where you have black interpreter advisors. So there's the, in the core Seminole line, you basically have Cowkeeper, and then you have King Payne, and Bolek, and then Micunope. And there's evidence tying Abraham to Payne. Now Payne was, and Payne had a black Seminole advisor, I think his name was Harry. And he was involved in colonial diplomacy. So I think Abraham had black Seminole mentors who acted as translators and advisors for the tribe as early as 1802. And he comes into this position, I find him again in 1822,

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  working as an interpreter, it appears, as an apprentice for another black Seminole interpreter. And then he becomes the chief interpreter of the tribe. And he is also described in 1838 in a New Orleans newspaper as the chief principal interpreter of the tribe, and the chief of the Iste Luce, which in the Muskogee language of the Creek and Seminole means chief of the dark people. Or chief of the black people.

• 1:12:20Steven Rinella?

  And he's, and he dresses according to Seminole custom.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  He dresses in the Seminole way.

• 1:12:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  When he, when, there's a trip he later takes as a, as an older man to New York, and they say, "He looks like Othello reborn."

• 1:12:34Steven Rinella?

  You gotta be kidding me.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  No, that's what they say. He has, he has less servility than is usually apparent in, in African south of the Potomac.

• 1:12:47Steven Rinella?

  Huh. Can, you know, I want to get into brief tactical things before we get into the day, the day of fighting Abraham.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Steven Rinella?

  Because you're talking about Seminole dress. As much as they're slipping up on people and tomahawking them unawares and everything, what are they, what's what the red turbans are running around in?

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Are they wearing red turbans? There are a few of them, not all of them.

• 1:13:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but what, like, why that? Like, Osceola's always portrayed like that.

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  With a red turban?

• 1:13:13Steven Rinella?

  With, something like a, like a, what do you call it?

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, I mean, you can look on the cover there, that's a little later, that's 1852.

• 1:13:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  And you can see Abraham has kind of a different style of turban. And they have this kind of a hard, sorry for the mic, side of a hard circular thing that they've got there. I don't know what it is.

• 1:13:32Steven Rinella?

  So, but I might have picked this up, I don't know where I picked it up. So they didn't wear red headcloth?

• 1:13:37Speaker 04

  No, not uniformly.

• 1:13:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:13:40Steven Rinella?

  Why do people use the word turban in describing them? What are they talking about?

• 1:13:44Speaker 04

  Headdress. I think it's probably the closest reference that we would have to it. Headdress is probably more appropriate.

• 1:13:51Steven Rinella?

  Got it. So if someone had some kind of cloth wrapped around, they might have described it as a turban.

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, Abraham's got it on right there in the picture at the top there.

• 1:13:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  For whatever reason, it strikes me as something that comes from African culture. Like, it's a blending of traditions.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. So there's one good way to introduce Abraham and kind of give you a picture of the Black Seminoles is this wonderful folk tale. It's a Black Seminole folk tale. And so in, there's a writer named Zorah Neherstyn. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance. And she goes down to Florida as part of the Federal Works Project, you know, where they paid writers, part of the New Deal, to go and write things. And she goes down to Florida and she hears this story about Uncle Monday, which I found I have her original document. And the story of Uncle Monday is, in short, this is a story that locals are telling her 100 years after it happened.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Uncle Monday was a great African medicine man of the crocodile clan that practiced kinship with the fierce reptiles. Not long after he was stolen from his home and taken to America, he escaped from Georgia or South Carolina and made his way down into the Indian country, which is now Florida. He and others settled among the Seminoles. This is the 1830s, the days of that haughty Asiola. That's a quote. And when the white men attacked, he led some of the Indian African forces in battle. They fought as fiercely as they could, but were defeated in the end or succumbed by the end by greater forces and weaponry. They met, Abraham and the survivors, met near the Blue Sink Lake to debate and decide

• 1:15:35Speaker 04

  what to do. He told the people what the deities had told him in a vision or a dream, that it would no longer, it's no longer of any use to keep fighting. Still, the medicine man would not yield to death or enslavement at the hands of the invaders. He promised that he would change himself into an alligator and reunite with his reptilian kin in the Blue Sink Lake until the trouble was over. Hmm. And so, there is a ceremony on the banks of the Blue Sink, where the people drum African and Indian beats on their instruments. As Uncle Monday danced, he began to shift in form.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  His skin grew rough, his face grew long and very terrible. And he cried, his voice became like thunder. And in response, a thousand alligators bellow and come out of the Blue Sink. And he is now the largest of the reptiles, and he strods regally into the Blue Sink. And they disappear altogether, bellowing into the lake. It was said that for many years, it was said that he remained in the Blue Sink for many years, and that every so often, he would transform back into a man and roam the land and cast his spells on the people.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  So, so what does this story tell you? What is it preserved? Going back to your point about bringing African traditions in and melding them with indigenous traditions. Yeah. You know, in Zambia, they still have a crocodile clan. In northern Zambia, that may be too far east through the transatlantic slave trade, but Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola, Central West Africa, the Congo River, full of crocodiles, you have crocodile veneration. You have societies there that are matrilineal, like the Seminoles. So, the royal line descends from uncle to nephew, not from father to son.

• 1:17:30Speaker 04

  You have clans, you have a spiritual relationship with the land. And what is this story? Now, you liberate yourself and you come down and you find tribes that are matrilineal, that have a spiritual relationship with the land.

• 1:17:47Speaker 04

  And there are alligators there. And so, how do you survive? You transform yourself, you're from the crocodile clan, you transform yourself into an alligator.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  I think that's, and it's a magical act. There's something called African Seminoethnogenesis. There's a paper by this guy, Anthony Dixon, Ethno-Ethnic Genesis Birth. And it's about how do you rebuild a culture? You're stitching together your culture from various African traditions that are inherited by your parents, grandparents, and you want to meld them with native traditions, and that's what you're doing. And, and you're, it's a profoundly creative, I mean, it's a magical thing to do, that that's how you're going to survive. I think that's a beautiful summary of, of what they did. And, and it was all about this cultural melding.

• 1:18:43Steven Rinella?

  What a dude to have on the podcast, man.

• 1:18:45Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:18:46Steven Rinella?

  Like, I mean, no, I'm sorry.

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  Not me.

• 1:18:48Steven Rinella?

  Yes, you.

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  Don't mean me.

• 1:18:49Steven Rinella?

  You're great. It's a ton of story. I mean, the guy.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's the guy.

• 1:18:52Steven Rinella?

  But you too. You're here. We invited you on. We came and found you.

• 1:18:56Speaker 04

  Abraham would have been better.

• 1:18:57Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, I'm not talking about even him. I'm talking about the dude, Uncle.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  Uncle Monday.

• 1:19:02Steven Rinella?

  Uncle Monday. Like, be like, picture, okay, you're, you're in Africa. You probably get captured by African slave traders. You get sold to whites. They send you to North America. They send you to what would become the United States.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Steven Rinella?

  You get bought by another white guy.

• 1:19:22Steven Rinella?

  You get turned to plantation work. You escape.

• 1:19:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:19:26Steven Rinella?

  You go south. You meet up with Indian tribes. Then you turn around and start fighting the army of the people.

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:19:39Steven Rinella?

  That's a hell of a journey.

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  What a story. Yeah. What a story.

• 1:19:42Steven Rinella?

  And then meanwhile, people are being born in the United States and not going, not straying more than 40 miles. A lot of people, you're born, you don't stray more than 40 miles from where you were born, and you die with a hole in your hand.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, that's right. There, there is an oral history that puts one of Abraham's fighters as coming from Africa. The Transatlantic Strait Tate is, is officially banned in 1808. But there is, there is a record of this guy, and he remembers what it was like to be in Africa.

• 1:20:14Steven Rinella?

  God, man.

• 1:20:16Speaker 06

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• 1:20:46Steven Rinella?

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• 1:21:31Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22:15Steven Rinella?

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• 1:22:38Steven Rinella?

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• 1:23:22Steven Rinella?

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• 1:23:56Steven Rinella?

  the dispersal of people out of Alabama and Georgia, the creeks, people being displaced, pushed into Florida.

• 1:24:07Steven Rinella?

  The United States starts eyeballing that landscape. Settlers are moving in. President Jackson's like, these guys gotta go. I'll send them out to Oklahoma. Yep. Um, they're not cooperating. They send in the army under the command of this dude, Dade. And Dade's gonna go up there and straighten them all out. Him and 100 guys are gonna straighten them all out. Nicely set up.

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  Nicely said. Yeah, so after Charlie Amathla is killed, they send reinforcements. We need more troops. The problem is, the troops are split. So you have Duncan Clinch with the main force, and it's to the north side of the Indian Reservation. And then you have troops gathering on the Gulf Coast in what is Tampa Bay. That's Fort Brooke. And four companies, a full company is 50 men. So they send 200 men down, not all at once, four companies down, to back up the troops they have there. And the idea is, they're going to march through the Indian Reservation, and they're going to meet up with Clinch, and they're going to attack. That's the plan. And Dade is one of those groups coming over.

• 1:25:12Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it. So the intention was never that, the intention was never that his 100 guys are going to pull this off. It's all part of bringing a bunch of guys together.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  It's, it's more interesting. It's, so you're, what happens is, they're planning for a fight on the, on December 31st. They're waiting for the rest of the 200 troops. They only have, I think, two of the four boats. Two of the, two of the four companies are there. And you don't have many people in that garrison in Tampa Bay. So you're faced with a choice. You can march up the Fort King Road. Now, that's right in the middle of the reservation. It's a 100-mile road, and you're going to go right through, you know, enemy territory. Do you want to do that with 100 men? Do you want to wait for the other 100 men to come? But we could miss the deadline for the fight, December 31st. So Dade, bravely or foolishly, depending on how you look at it, he said, I got this.

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  I'll march up, no problem. I'll go right through the reservation. All I need is 100 people. And there are records of, there are a few native families, I think there's 300 people with 100 warriors, who are, who have chosen to immigrate and haven't changed their mind, who are at Tampa Bay across the Hillsborough River, waiting for ships to take them up to New Orleans and then to Indian Territory, what becomes Oklahoma. And they're sure he's going to die. And they say, and they say goodbye to him, I think it's December 23rd, and they're sure that they would never see him again.

• 1:26:41Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  There's another guy there, Belton, and he says, "I think you're crazy. I would rather resign if I were ordered to march up that road." There are people later who said, "Listen, why did you send troops down the Gulf Coast? You should have sent them down the Atlantic. And you can go right down into Jacksonville." And then they already would have met up. So this is a bone of contention. Why were troops sent to Tampa? Because the only way to get to Clinch is to go right through the reservation. So they start this march through the reservation. And it's eerie, and their camps are harassed at night by Seminoles, by scouts who are following them, by gunfire.

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  And I think it's the fifth night or the fourth night, Dade has a bad dream. He fought in the War of 1812, and he says, "My fallen comrades came to me in my dream." This is apparently from a newspaper several years later. "And they said their names. It's the most bizarre dream I've ever had in my life." Strange. And they walk, they've gone 60 miles of the 100. They're nearing a place called the Wahoo Swamp, which is a perfect place to retreat to. And they're in between Abrahamstown, where he lived, with about 100, maybe as many as 160 black Seminoles, and this swamp.

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  And his forces, and Micconope's, and a chief named Alligator and Jumper is there, set up an ambush. And there's a lake on the right side of the road, and their idea is, we're going to pin them against the lake. They form a semicircle. And Dade walks into this ambush, and Micconope calls out his name, or yells, and shoots him in the neck. Like the first guy? Yeah. Shoots him in the neck, and apparently he was eating a hard-tack biscuit. And he yells, "My God!" And he falls off the horse, and he dies.

• 1:28:49Speaker 04

  And then the first volley, half of the command falls to the ground. Half the command dies in the first volley. A hundred and five ultimately are killed that day. It's the largest loss of life on the US side in any fight with native forces until Custer.

• 1:29:14Speaker 04

  The fight goes on all day. The survivors of the initial volley kind of build a triangular log breastwork. A couple of logs that they cut down and they stack them three logs high or it's two logs high and they try to hide behind it for some cover. The Seminole forces are very patient. There is a little hand to hand fighting, but generally they're very patient. They're firing from concealed positions and they're not risking their lives. They lose three people. You know, they, a hundred and five US forces are killed, they lose three.

• 1:29:46Steven Rinella?

  God, man.

• 1:29:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, you know, they finish them off in a sort of a brutal way with knife work and there's, there's some screaming. And it's, you know, this is fills the newspaper as a massacre and that night, those forces and Abraham and Osceola meet in the, in the Wahoo Swamp and they, they drink all night and celebrate and party.

• 1:30:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's coming back from killing.

• 1:30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're, both missions were successful. Yeah.

• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  The thing that confused me in your book is what was up with the guys that they, when they, when they finally come to bury the bodies, they wait, they're not able to get there for a while.

• 1:30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, 54 days.

• 1:30:34Steven Rinella?

  What was up with the guys in the little, in the little fort they built?

• 1:30:38Speaker 04

  That's the breastwork.

• 1:30:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, what was up with the guys in the breastwork? The bodies in the breastwork?

• 1:30:42Speaker 04

  Oh goodness. So there's a description, there's a US soldier, he says, "It looked like, the bodies looked like they were toy soldiers arranged by a child in his play."

• 1:30:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I didn't understand what that meant. And he said like something about right angles.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  So you think, imagine this triangular breastwork of logs and you've got these bodies that are in various stages of decomposition. I think, I think he's referring to the odd ways that the bodies were positioned.

• 1:31:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the right angle, he said something like that they're at right angles. I couldn't tell what the hell he meant by that. I mean, it didn't sound, it didn't look great.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  I think he's saying it was weird.

• 1:31:20Speaker 04

  No, like it was not natural.

• 1:31:22Steven Rinella?

  Got it, got it, yeah.

• 1:31:25Speaker 04

  You know, and, and. The jaws have dropped because the muscles are deteriorated and the fingers are kind of clawed up like this. And some say they were scalped, some say they weren't. The most reliable, what I thought, one person says, there's too much deterioration to know if they were scalped.

• 1:31:45Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 1:31:46Speaker 04

  Which seems probable. And they didn't rob them. And I think they were sending a message. You know, before that ambush, they set out a cow in the road, a slaughtered cow in the road. And it's split wide open in the middle of the road. It's a warning sign. Don't come in here. We don't want to do this.

• 1:32:08Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:09Speaker 04

  And even Mika Nopi, before he shoots him, there's evidence that he was hesitant.

• 1:32:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  And he knows Dade. You know, Dade has been there before. Dade has attacked native villages before. Um, okay, we warned you.

• 1:32:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, now you get the damn county name.

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dade County.

• 1:32:26Steven Rinella?

  Down in Miami, right?

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  That's right. Dade County.

• 1:32:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's him.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  That's Dade.

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  And you got Custer County.

• 1:32:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  Is there?

• 1:32:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  I heard that there's new research that says it wasn't exactly a last stand. Do you know anything about that? That the fighting was more spread out? It wasn't in one location?

• 1:32:46Steven Rinella?

  Well, I wouldn't say new, but there's a, Custer wasn't the last, that, his little hill.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Steven Rinella?

  Area.

• 1:32:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Steven Rinella?

  Wasn't the last holdout.

• 1:32:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:32:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, it was earlier in the fight.

• 1:33:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:03Steven Rinella?

  It wasn't, you know, he wasn't the last guy standing there.

• 1:33:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, just in the, um, there was nothing that remarkable about his positioning.

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:33:14Steven Rinella?

  And it wasn't, it didn't build up to that moment.

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:33:18Steven Rinella?

  It was just part of a broader.

• 1:33:19Speaker 04

  Not the grand finale.

• 1:33:20Steven Rinella?

  Part of a broader fight.

• 1:33:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:33:22Steven Rinella?

  And was probably to the participants, was like an unnoteworthy little spectacle.

• 1:33:26Speaker 04

  Ah, okay. That makes sense.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Now that we're in the fighting.

• 1:33:32Speaker 03

  The parallels between this conflict and Vietnam are just almost too much to get into, but on a very superficial level, between the tactics and the strategy, and then the duration of the conflict and the cost of the conflict, like.

• 1:33:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, and a feeling from the soldiers that they were maybe betrayed by Washington or not quite, you know, this is, what are we doing here? So if you look at, there's some military organizations, veteran organizations in Florida, and organizations that study the Seminole War. And a lot of the guys that were interested in it before were Vietnam vets. And then they were Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

• 1:34:19Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:34:20Speaker 04

  And I think they, they see them, you know, they see the story as very simple.

• 1:34:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. So after this Dade fight, there aren't big, there aren't big definitive battles. To the point where, I know that Clay had mentioned this, that if you start walking us through the conflict, the conflict never formally ended.

• 1:34:48Speaker 04

  No, no, the, so the survivors, as many as 600, in, excuse me, in 1842, when the US sort of unilaterally withdraws, they never sign anything. The US says, oh, it's kind of over and, you know, we won mostly. And the few survivors, it's only 300, it's probably double that, you know, we should be nice to them. It's because it's just so few, and it's really a noble gesture of us to restrain ourselves and unilaterally withdraw. But that's why they call, that's why they call them the unconquered people, because there never is a capitulation.

• 1:35:33Speaker 04

  Sam Jones, who is the Mika Zoki chief, who really led it, and there, he's really the big hero of the war for the survivors, for those who stayed in Florida. And Osceola is kind of his, one of his warriors. You know, he.

• 1:35:54Speaker 04

  He outwitted them. He outlasted them. And he did it by setting up these villages on these little islands, these hammocks in the Everglades, connected by canoes. And when the army came, he would just go to the next one. And so he had this network of refuges and just let the land, let the land kill them. You know, there's a third conflict. There's a third Seminole War where they try again. And I think 55 soldiers die and it's a three-year war. So like, what do you, what is that? How do you describe that? You're wandering around and not fighting people.

• 1:36:31Steven Rinella?

  Dying of malaria.

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. There are some bigger battles, but, but the Dade, the Dade massacre, the Dade defeat, that's the largest death count.

• 1:36:41Steven Rinella?

  Why do they break the wars into the, why do they break it into the first Seminole War? The second Seminole War, which we've been mostly discussing, like this Dade fight kicks off the second Seminole War.

• 1:36:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:36:54Steven Rinella?

  And then the third Seminole War, like, why? Because they're not as clean as like World War I, World War II.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:02Steven Rinella?

  World War III, you know?

• 1:37:04Speaker 04

  The Seminole tribe of Florida would agree with you. So.

• 1:37:07Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they would agree that this whole breaking it up, it's like, these aren't different things. It's all the continuation of the same thing.

• 1:37:13Speaker 04

  They object to it.

• 1:37:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I didn't know.

• 1:37:15Speaker 04

  If you go on their website, they'll say, "We objected this. We call it, we call it the long war."

• 1:37:20Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:37:20Speaker 04

  They call it the long war. And they frame it as a, you know, continuing colonial aggression, trying to get them off the land, which it was.

• 1:37:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But just for, just for people's understanding.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Steven Rinella?

  When they hear this first, second, third, can you tell, can you explain a little bit what that means? Now, I want to get into, like, Osceola's capture and where, how that fits into this chronology of these wars. But first of all, what does it mean when someone says first, second, third?

• 1:37:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So, so the formal dates are 1817, 1818. That's the first Seminole War. And that's when you have Andrew Jackson coming down into Spanish Florida. There's a few fights. He burns some villages. It's nothing crazy.

• 1:38:06Speaker 04

  And then he retreats. And it's really what he's doing there is he's pressuring Spain to relinquish the territory to the United States. It's like, "Look, I had to go and do this police action. You've got trouble in your borders. You can't control it." And then he retreats. Uh, have claiming, claiming victory. Uh, the second Seminole War is most, as you say, the focus of this. It's 1835, 1842. What's, what happens in 1842? That's when the US, I think it's Tyler, President Tyler, he declares, we're done. He says, the war is over. We're not, we're not gonna fight anymore. Got it. He claims victory and withdraws the troops. This is the Tippy Canoe and Tyler two, right? Isn't that the guy? Is that him?

• 1:38:50Speaker 04

  I don't know anything about Tyler. I just, I just remember his name. You're probably right. Tippy Canoe and Tyler two? I'm sure you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not kinda addicted. William Henry Harrison. Yeah, that'd be your next book. Okay, good. I'll look into it. And, and then, and then the third, uh, effort is 1855 to 1858. So 13 years goes by. Yeah. And then someone's like. We're gonna try again. Let's get into that. To root them out. Let's try again. And that's when they're down in the Everglades. And that's the long, in. Cat and mouse. Yeah, it's cat and mouse. It's, it's Navy, riverine warfare and, uh. In the Everglades. In the Everglades. And it's, it's not much action. Uh, they find empty villages. They burn the villages, but.

• 1:39:35Speaker 04

  Cause they know they're coming and they just move out of the way. Well, they find them. Yeah, they, exactly, exactly. Yeah, and they have canoes and they'll just go to their, another sanctuary. Okay. So. So that's the third Seminole War. That's the third Seminole War. And to the Seminole, it's just the long war. Yes. Yeah. Do the Seminole view, I don't want you to, put you in a position where you're like, well, you don't understand how they view it. Yeah. Or their official stance. Tell you what I know. The, the Seminole, do they view that they, is their story that they withstood and won? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cause they're there. Yeah, yeah, and there, and if you go to the, I went down to Florida to see a lot of the sites that are in there.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  And if you go to the Ahatikey Museum, which is a Seminole museum, in what was the natural Everglades, but it's been drained, as you know. You'll see, it's a great museum. You should go. And there's actually, there's a wonderful kind of Cypress Swamp Cypress Dome attached to the back of it, which is sort of fun. You can go on a walkway through. But, you know, they're very rich. I think they may be the richest, or they're one of the richest. They own Hard Rock Cafe. They made a lot of money from casinos.

• 1:40:48Steven Rinella?

  I've been on, I've been on the reservation down there.

• 1:40:50Speaker 04

  Have you? Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So all the cars in that parking lot are like, you know, it's like Corvette, Porsche. And the jet, the chief of the nation has a jet. It's named after Sam Jones, after Abiyaka. It's called Arpieka. That's his, that's his own personal jet. So, yeah, I mean, they're proud. They should be proud.

• 1:41:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  They, they stayed. And, and, you know, the, the 600 Mikazukis and the 1800 members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, that's, that's their heritage.

• 1:41:28Steven Rinella?

  Do you remember, you say it in your book, I don't know if you remember it off the top of your head, when Jackson was doing it, what was the name of his, what was the name of his policy, his?

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  The Indian Removal Act of 1830.

• 1:41:42Steven Rinella?

  Can you remind me what they budgeted? They had a budget. And it was like, it'll cost us like a buck 70, right? Or whatever it was. Like a buck 70 or 27 bucks or something to move every Indian to Oklahoma. It'll like, it'll be like, they had it narrowed down to like a per head cost.

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:42:01Steven Rinella?

  It's in your book.

• 1:42:03Speaker 04

  It is. It's, it's Jessup. So Thomas Jessup, Jessup was, he's known as the father of the modern quartermaster corps.

• 1:42:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he's a logistics guy.

• 1:42:12Speaker 04

  He's a logistics guy.

• 1:42:13Steven Rinella?

  Like a budget logistician.

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Makes sense. And, and he comes in in the end of 1836. And in his records at the Library of Congress, I found this document in which he's laying out the mathematics of per head cost of removal. And it, I don't remember what it was. It was something like 9,000 a person that you had, you need this many wagons and this many rations over this many days. And you need these boats and that sort of thing. The Indian Removal-

• 1:42:43Steven Rinella?

  No, no, it wasn't 9,000 bucks per person.

• 1:42:46Speaker 04

  How much was it? It's in the-

• 1:42:47Steven Rinella?

  No, it was like- Like 20 bucks or something.

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  It it may have been less than that. It could have been. Uh, uh, it was far less than they paid. You know, the the war effort was ended up being 40 million dollars.

• 1:43:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, hit. No, I'm sorry. I hate to hit you with like a.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  No, it's all good.

• 1:43:04Steven Rinella?

  It was like they had calculated per just the one you move, for the people you move, for the people you were going to move to Oklahoma, it was going to cost you some surprisingly low amount of money, like just the trip.

• 1:43:18Speaker 04

  I know exactly what page this is on.

• 1:43:20Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:43:21Speaker 04

  It's not in the Indian Removal Act. It's it's I found this in Jesup's files. All right, let's see what he says here.

• 1:43:32Speaker 04

  Transporting one even Indian removal to him was a numbers game.

• 1:43:36Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  By his estimate, transporting 1,000 Indians to west of the Mississippi necessitated 13. You're right. I'm just not 9,000.

• 1:43:45Speaker 04

  13 wagons for 120 days, 80,000 rations, 200 ponies and three hired hands. He calculated the cost to American taxpayers at $26 per head. Little less than 9,000.

• 1:43:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's amazing, man.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it ends up being however many multiple, you know. It's it's the budget of the American government, the outlays of the American government in 1835 are 17.5 million. And this war ends up costing 30 to 40 million dollars.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  It's the longest, deadliest.

• 1:44:17Steven Rinella?

  That's part of the debate too. Like, it's so similar to the ill-defined wars that we've engaged in since then of at some point, people are like, this is very costly. It's not working. There are morale issues. There are moral issues.

• 1:44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:37Steven Rinella?

  This was supposed to be quick.

• 1:44:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Steven Rinella?

  You'd all promised us that this is going to be over in a month.

• 1:44:42Speaker 04

  That's right. That's right. I mean, at one point, Jesup says the the country, the country that we are quote unquote conquering is not worth a tenth of the cost in in lives and treasure.

• 1:44:53Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:54Speaker 04

  He said, and he's like, can I quit? This was a bad idea. And also, after he starts losing, sort of, or he can't succeed, can't we just allow them to stay in the south of Florida? We're not going to plant there. And they do stay, you know, Abiaka's people and Seminole and the Seminole people who stayed, they do stay in the South. It doesn't cause anybody any problem. Jess, what I mean, kind of right? He's like, do I have to do this? Can't we just let them stay in the South and I can come, I can go home to my farm?

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  Chances are, it's already on a shelf near you, or head to blackbuffalo.com and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative. It's everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. At what point does Osceola get... There's a really gory detail about this whole thing, but like, how does Osceola get caught?

• 1:49:10Speaker 04

  Osceola is captured under a white flag in, I want to say, November 1837 by Jessup. There's some Andrew Jackson letters in there that I haven't seen cited in which he's writing, he's out of office, but he's writing, the Secretary of War points that and he says, Jessup should have captured Osceola, just take him. Why didn't he take him? There's six letters in which he mentions this, and I found in Jessup's files in the Library of Congress excerpt from Andrew Jackson 20 days before he takes Osceola, Jessup should have captured Osceola. 20 days later, he captures him under a white flag. This is a controversial action. This is a violation of the sacred rules of war.

• 1:49:52Steven Rinella?

  And when you say he captured him under a white flag, you mean Jessup?

• 1:49:56Speaker 04

  Jessup's forces.

• 1:49:58Steven Rinella?

  Is they're flying them?

• 1:50:00Speaker 04

  I mean, the meeting, so there's a meeting outside of, I think it's near St. Augustine, it is near St. Augustine, and there's Osceola, and I think there's Cohajo, and there's maybe 70 Mikazukis there, I think it's a group of around 70 people, and Jessup had given them white fabric to be used as a white flag, and he says, anytime you want to talk to us and have a meeting, this flag will protect you, we won't capture you, and it's your pass.

• 1:50:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because in this story, there are a lot of parlays.

• 1:50:31Speaker 04

  For sure. And sometimes they're talking while they're fighting at the same time.

• 1:50:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, which you realize, like, which now, in our own current conflict, which now goes on. I mean, you'll always be reading news accounts of, you know, like, one minute, you know, you're on the, well, Maduro, one minute they're on the phone, the next minute he's in jail. Like, people are, there's conversations happening.

• 1:50:53Speaker 04

  That's right. So this was one of the many conversations, and it was protected under a white flag, and Jessup gave the order just to seize them, as Jackson had suggested, and I don't know if he read that letter before he did it. Now later-

• 1:51:06Steven Rinella?

  To lure him in, make him talk, and then just grab him.

• 1:51:10Speaker 04

  Just grab. He gives various justifications afterwards, but those are pretenses. And they put him in the Castello di St. Marcos, which is the big Spanish fort in St. Augustine on the north side. They called it Fort Marion at the time, and Osceola becomes a prisoner in this old Spanish castle on the Atlantic.

• 1:51:35Speaker 04

  And at one point, there's a very dramatic, he's sick at this point. It's unclear what he had. Wickman talks about this in the Bear Grease podcast. He probably had malaria. When he's in captivity, he gets head lice. They're measles. I think it's what it is breaks out. People start to die. It's not a great place to be. I visited it and I saw the room that they were in. And it's like, you know, it looks like the set of a Robin Hood movie or something. You know, it's stone and it's damp and there's a little tiny window called a loophole.

• 1:52:11Steven Rinella?

  You can go to the room he was in.

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  You can go to the room they escaped from. Now, he didn't escape, so he may have been, and it's called a casement. These are like little rooms that are in, kind of inside the walls.

• 1:52:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:22Speaker 04

  And there's a very dramatic escape of 20, including the Black Seminole John Horst, Afro-Indigenous heritors. He had a Seminole father and a Black Seminole mother. He's there. Chief King Philip, his son Wildcat, is there. Two women escape. And they escape out of the window. And Wildcat talks about it. You have a first-person account from Wildcat. You have the report of the head of the fort. The next day, he says they went out the window. You have a formal board of inquiry the next day and they said they went out the window. So all of the sources suggest that they took the forage bags that they were sleeping on. They were using them for beds.

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  They stuffed hay in them and they made ropes out of them, attached them probably to one of the bars that were outside of that window. It's a, the loophole is five feet high and at its narrowest, it's eight inches. The story is, as Wildcat tells it, because they were sick at the fort, they convinced the guards to let them go out and get these special roots as medicine. What the roots were actually for was for them to lose weight. And so they they they fasted and they took these roots and they waited for the dark of the moon, I guess, the the moment in which the the moon has the least light.

• 1:53:48Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:49Speaker 04

  And they got it wrong by like one day, but they but they basically got it right. And they twenty of them escaped out of that window into the ditch. It did it would be a mope, but there was no water in it and it's forty feet below the window.

• 1:54:01Steven Rinella?

  Dropped into that ditch.

• 1:54:03Speaker 04

  Dropped into that ditch and escaped.

• 1:54:05Steven Rinella?

  But not Osceola.

• 1:54:08Speaker 04

  Osceola was sick. He he tells he writes Jessup or there's a letter which explains the next day, he says, hey, by the way, last night they escaped. I could have, but I don't feel like it. I I think he's ill at this point. And they take him to Fort Moultrie in South Carolina with others and he's sort of a national celebrity and everyone wants to come visit him and everyone wants to paint pictures of him. And there's a description, you know, the crowds outside of the window, young and old and more especially female, come to wave at him and we had to bring him to the window.

• 1:54:50Speaker 04

  So he's, you know, in some kind of a weird way, a star. And

• 1:54:57Steven Rinella?

  There's not there aren't equivalents to this. To today, like if you go to the fact that the participants

• 1:55:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:06Steven Rinella?

  At the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:08Steven Rinella?

  So here's here's a group of people that, I mean, they kill, right? In in hand to hand combat, they kill US soldiers. But there's such a moral element to it that participants at that fight become celebrities.

• 1:55:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Steven Rinella?

  Who go on tour.

• 1:55:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Steven Rinella?

  With like Wild West shows and you can go see and meet the people that killed the US soldiers. Like, we don't have, that's not around anymore. Like, at the end of World War II, there weren't famous Krauts that shot a bunch of Americans that you'd go and like pay money to shake their hand.

• 1:55:51Speaker 04

  Maybe Van of Von Braun.

• 1:55:54Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'm saying? That went away.

• 1:55:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:55:59Steven Rinella?

  But we don't have like Al Qaeda dudes that do like tours.

• 1:56:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so how to explain this? In a way, Osceola is a puzzle. You know, he, so part of this is just capitalism, right? Newspapers want to sell copies of their newspaper. You know, if you're a painter, you want, this is an important person, you want to go paint him.

• 1:56:19Speaker 04

  But there's also, to a degree, you know, where, what kind of story about the war do you want to tell? Do you want to tell this story like where there's not, there are many great engagements? And, or do you want to tell, do you want to tell a story where they're being diplomatic? Do you want to tell a story where they're saying they don't want to fight? Do you want to tell a story where they're, you know, at Fort Isard, there's a meeting at Fort Isard where they have a siege of a thousand US troops and the Mikazukis and the Seminoles debate, should we kill them? And the Mikazukis say that we should, and the Seminoles say that we shouldn't, and the Seminoles win, and they spare them. They say, do you want some tobacco? Or do you want some? But that story doesn't get through. What we get is the warrior. What we get is the fighter.

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  So that fighter is necessary for us to recruit people and to project an idea of the war, which is not exactly what, I mean, Osceola is a real person, I don't want to overstate it, but to some degree, he's amplifying him. And I know that's not exactly what you said. You said they're selling people and you can, but there's a way in which Osceola is amplified. You know, I'm in touch with the Seminole tribe of Florida, and to some degree, they don't like... Osceola's elevation over Sam Jones.

• 1:57:38Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:57:39Speaker 04

  You know, they want Sam Jones to get more of the credit. Osceola worked for him. He's the one who outwitted him. He's the one who outfoxed him. But we get this warrior, not to take anything away from Osceola. But part of the puzzle of of his story was me trying to grapple this question. Why is he this famous? And even when he's dying, he's confused as to why the president doesn't want to, wants to paint his picture. And on his deathbed, he says, all I did was kill General Thompson. He has a sense of his fame being disproportionate to his actions.

• 1:58:13Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:58:14Speaker 04

  Which is interesting in itself.

• 1:58:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he just, the, the press grabbed that name and he became a symbol of that conflict. Which people involved in the conflict wouldn't have named him as the primary.

• 1:58:28Speaker 04

  To take nothing away from him.

• 1:58:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 04

  He's one of 15 people who that could have happened to.

• 1:58:34Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Does, does he die of the sick, of his sickness? Or is he, he dies violently?

• 1:58:39Speaker 04

  He dies of sickness at Fort Moultrie, I think in January 1838. And he asks the doctor, uh, this doctor named Whedon, I'd like my bones to be buried in Florida. And there's some account that they were friends. And he dies.

• 1:58:58Steven Rinella?

  He double crosses and bad.

• 1:59:00Speaker 04

  And he cuts his head off and takes his head home. Uh, to, I think, St. Augustine.

• 1:59:07Steven Rinella?

  What a piece of shit, man, you know?

• 1:59:08Speaker 04

  I agree with that.

• 1:59:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, there's a story you can find if you Google it. I think it's called the mystery of Osceola's head or something like that. There's a PDF you can find in which there's a description of how Whedon, this is even worse. When his kids misbehaved, he would hang Osceola's embalmed head or preserved head on the bedstead of his children to punish them.

• 1:59:30Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:59:31Speaker 04

  Imagine that?

• 1:59:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Speaker 04

  But it was normal for people to take prizes. I think Osceola's missing a few fingers. Both sides took kind of, you know, that happened.

• 1:59:38Steven Rinella?

  The past is a foreign country.

• 1:59:40Speaker 04

  Past is a foreign country?

• 1:59:41Steven Rinella?

  I know, but the point is that they, they had this rapport.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Steven Rinella?

  He had a request.

• 1:59:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's kind of, you know, come on, man.

• 1:59:53Steven Rinella?

  Past is a foreign country.

• 1:59:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:56Steven Rinella?

  Is that the quote? Country?

• 1:59:57Speaker 04

  The past is a foreign, the original is, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:00:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:05Steven Rinella?

  That's my new favorite quote.

• 2:00:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:07Steven Rinella?

  That's even better than skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.

• 2:00:13Speaker 04

  Ooh, I like that.

• 2:00:15Steven Rinella?

  Well, I'll trade you.

• 2:00:16Speaker 04

  Okay. Ooh, I'm to it. You can have it. It's a famous line.

• 2:00:22Steven Rinella?

  Gosh, man. And it's never been found.

• 2:00:26Speaker 04

  It's never been found. At some point, it's, it's, and this, this document lays out, it's, he sends it maybe to a phrenologist at some point, you know, where you're measuring like the divots in the skull, you know? This person has a very big bravery bump. Okay. There's actually a great story about Mark Twain visiting a phrenologist. And he goes once, like, in disguise, and they say he's like the least funny person that they've ever met, like a great humor deficit. And then he goes later as Mark Twain, oh, yes, great sense of humor, so great, you could tell, look at this.

• 2:01:05Steven Rinella?

  What is, what is Abraham's, what is Abraham's death?

• 2:01:12Speaker 04

  Abraham dies as an old man. I found, or there are locals in Oklahoma who knew of his grave. It's never been published in a history before. I found one of them and I found his grave. I haven't seen it.

• 2:01:28Steven Rinella?

  He dies in Oklahoma?

• 2:01:29Speaker 04

  Dies in Oklahoma.

• 2:01:31Steven Rinella?

  Why did he go to Oklahoma? When?

• 2:01:33Speaker 04

  Oh, Indian Territory, where they shipped them west of Arkansas, became Oklahoma.

• 2:01:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but I mean, what, what, when did he go?

• 2:01:40Speaker 04

  He goes, most Black Seminoles go in 1838. He, he still has to finish some service with the army. They let him go in 1839.

• 2:01:47Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 2:01:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, so he's there. And then there's a trip, the last chapter in the book, he kind of comes back to Florida. And with the chief of the, or the soon to be chief of the nation in Oklahoma, who's jumper's son, who's like his friend. And William Bolegs, who's one of the most powerful people in Florida, with Sam Jones, with the Biaka. And they go up to New York and kind of have a junket together. And see New York, you know, it's sort of, how do they see us? But he dies on April 10th, 1874. As an old man, he's, you know, he sees the Emancipation Proclamation. His son fights with the Union.

• 2:02:26Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:02:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and they celebrate a day, August 4th, which they call Emancipation Day, which is the day in which the, their Creek Rivals admitted all people of color as full, full citizenships. And the Creek Rivals ended slavery in 1865. And they would celebrate that day and have a barbecue and invite all the white people and invite the Indians. And, and they would ride on horseback down to a flag and a cannon would go off and they would circle the flag and then, you know, have a party. So, his life is a success. He, he shepherds his people to the West successfully. They build a new life. He's got a big family.

• 2:03:09Speaker 04

  You know, I think dying as an old man, surrounded by loved ones, like, that's as good as you can get.

• 2:03:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:15Speaker 04

  You know?

• 2:03:16Steven Rinella?

  How old was Zasiola when he died?

• 2:03:19Speaker 04

  Young.

• 2:03:21Steven Rinella?

  30s?

• 2:03:22Speaker 04

  Mid 30s. I think he's, depending on when you, when you have, if you have his birthday at like 1804, then yeah, he's early 30s. 33, 34.

• 2:03:38Steven Rinella?

  Dude, it's a great story, man.

• 2:03:40Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:03:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:41Speaker 04

  Appreciate it.

• 2:03:41Steven Rinella?

  I'm pretty far, nah, I'm, I don't know, halfway in.

• 2:03:45Speaker 04

  I, I had so much fun writing it. It was such a journey. It was like traveling. It was like going somewhere else.

• 2:03:53Steven Rinella?

  What are you gonna work on next?

• 2:03:56Speaker 04

  I'm toying around with a few ideas. I'm, I'm thinking of doing, you know, there's this cool Bill Bryson book. Maybe I'll stay in this genre, maybe I won't. There's this cool Bill Bryson book called A Short History of Nearly Everything.

• 2:04:09Speaker 04

  I thought that could be fun to do if I could find a cool twist.

• 2:04:12Steven Rinella?

  A short history of everything else?

• 2:04:13Speaker 04

  Like a big history, but do it differently. If there was a new way to do it differently, that could be fun, you know? I'm interested in everything, you know, like what were the Neanderthals like? What was it like before agriculture? You know, Homo sapiens go back to 300,000 years up until the Neolithic agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago. They're hunting, they're fishing. And so there's just so many great stories. I don't know. I'm toying around with a few ideas.

• 2:04:42Steven Rinella?

  You know, the thing that has evaded us for years is a guest to come on and talk about the Neanderthals. You can't find them, dude.

• 2:04:55Speaker 04

  Can you not?

• 2:04:56Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 2:04:56Speaker 05

  No, I just haven't.

• 2:04:57Steven Rinella?

  I've even gone on other podcasts trying to find them.

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  I'll give you a suggestion. I know of one. There's a book that's called Kindred.

• 2:05:06Speaker 04

  Kindred. Does that ring a bell? I didn't read it, but it came across my radar.

• 2:05:11Steven Rinella?

  All due respect, I'll do a writer. I didn't want a writer. I wanted a researcher.

• 2:05:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:15Steven Rinella?

  But I'll take a writer.

• 2:05:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:16Steven Rinella?

  You made me like writers.

• 2:05:18Speaker 04

  Okay, cool.

• 2:05:19Steven Rinella?

  I'll take a writer.

• 2:05:20Speaker 03

  I did a little research.

• 2:05:20Speaker 04

  I did a little research.

• 2:05:21Steven Rinella?

  You know, I was on Theo Von's podcast and I was like, he's got a huge audience. And I'll say like, hey, just by the way, if you're a great Neanderthal guest, let me know. Nothing.

• 2:05:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, nothing?

• 2:05:32Steven Rinella?

  No, we've found other ones and gone to try to get them.

• 2:05:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:35Speaker 03

  I mean, an actual Neanderthal guest would be good.

• 2:05:39Steven Rinella?

  That would be ideal.

• 2:05:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:05:42Steven Rinella?

  Be like, what do y'all think about?

• 2:05:44Speaker 05

  Maybe we should find.

• 2:05:45Speaker 03

  We need to phrase this ask very precisely.

• 2:05:47Speaker 05

  No, we need to get with the genetic testing companies and see if anyone has like by outsized proportion come in with a higher percentage of, right, we know that, but like, is there anyone who's got like?

• 2:06:02Speaker 03

  I think the red hair is a marker.

• 2:06:03Steven Rinella?

  Do you have heavy duty?

• 2:06:06Speaker 03

  No, I've never stuck my, I've never dipped my toe into the water of genetic.

• 2:06:11Steven Rinella?

  It's, you know what? There's a book about this and it's a very, very sore subject in academia to talk about what parts of the globe.

• 2:06:25Steven Rinella?

  Have people that have much greater representation

• 2:06:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Steven Rinella?

  Of Neanderthal genomics or whatever.

• 2:06:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, is it sore? Why is it sore?

• 2:06:35Steven Rinella?

  It's just, it's like this guy in this book, I think it was in The Seven Daughters of, you know, I don't want, I don't want to say what book it was, maybe The Seven Daughters of Eve, I can't remember what book, not, forget that, I don't know that that's the book. There's a book about human history.

• 2:06:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:49Steven Rinella?

  And he talks in there, he's like, this is, this is a thing you do not

• 2:06:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Steven Rinella?

  Discuss.

• 2:06:55Speaker 03

  I think just the implications of certain, you know, being underdeveloped, like the

• 2:07:02Speaker 04

  The Geico commercial.

• 2:07:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 2:07:04Steven Rinella?

  You don't talk about what parts, like when you look at however it worked with the human diaspora, as the diaspora was occurring, certain branches and arms

• 2:07:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:07:17Steven Rinella?

  Carried heavy Neanderthal representation.

• 2:07:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:07:20Steven Rinella?

  And it's just become a taboo subject, uh.

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not normal.

• 2:07:24Steven Rinella?

  Because there's the old idea that it was bad, but then the reason I'm interested in the subject

• 2:07:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Steven Rinella?

  Is everything we find out about them makes them seem smarter.

• 2:07:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they were advanced.

• 2:07:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, oh, they liked art, they liked the firing things.

• 2:07:37Speaker 04

  And, and then there's the Denisovans. It's like, I think I read maybe there's 2%, what is it, Neanderthal, 2% of people have Neanderthal DNA?

• 2:07:45Steven Rinella?

  No, it's more, I think it's more than that.

• 2:07:46Speaker 04

  Is it more?

• 2:07:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:48Speaker 04

  Uh, then there's like

• 2:07:48Steven Rinella?

  Trace.

• 2:07:49Speaker 04

  A trace of it, yeah. And then there's like a ghost species that I was reading about where like there's this, you know, it's, it's not normal to be the only, uh, species left in your genus.

• 2:08:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:00Speaker 04

  Like for most animals, it wouldn't.

• 2:08:02Steven Rinella?

  Prong horns and us.

• 2:08:03Speaker 04

  Right, so it's, so it's weird that we're the only ones that made it, it's kind of a mystery, a mystery to itself, but there's a ghost, yeah, go ahead.

• 2:08:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, there's a point I make, and I think it's in our, in our outdoor cookbook, weird place to make at this point, in the foreword, the introduction to our outdoor cookbook, I talk about, there was a time when you could be in Spain, you could be in northern Israel, all kinds of places, and you would see a fire.

• 2:08:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:31Steven Rinella?

  Okay?

• 2:08:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:08:33Steven Rinella?

  50,000 years ago, 60,000 years ago, you would see a fire burning, and you would have to ask yourself, what kind of people?

• 2:08:44Steven Rinella?

  Not what tribe. Mm hmm. What, what kind of, what, what human species might that be up there at that fire? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, same way like a mule deer can roll up on a whitetail. And you're like for to like an outside eye, they're like, oh yeah, they are a little different. You, there would be dudes running around. Yeah. That some like outsider might be like, oh yeah, they are kind of different. Yeah. And there's like, you know, and then there's interspecies like love affairs, right? And they know when that was happening, ad mixing, they call it. Because mule deer would get it on with whitetails. There you go.

• 2:09:21Steven Rinella?

  And so, huh, I want to get a great Neanderthal person on, man. But yeah, I guess a writer, I don't know. Let's see. Come back in three, four years. Yeah. Well, how long is it gonna take you to do the book? I'm game. I don't know. Three years. We didn't get into your personal life. What's going on? Are you, you married or anything like that? I'm single. Single? Yeah. How old are you? I'm 45. Oh.

• 2:09:43Steven Rinella?

  All right, ladies. Yeah. Tell me if you've got any ideas.

• 2:09:48Steven Rinella?

  I don't, but I mean, you just, you just baited the trap. Cool.

• 2:09:51Speaker 05

  Well, if you're watching on YouTube.

• 2:09:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:09:54Speaker 05

  You can write to.

• 2:09:55Steven Rinella?

  Find me on my Insta, which I, which I don't have.

• 2:09:58Speaker 05

  And we'll forward that.

• 2:09:59Steven Rinella?

  Cool. But well, here, if someone wanted to meet him. Yeah, yeah. They need to wait like us for his Neanderthal book to come out. Yes. And you go to the book event. Perfect. Oh no, go to the book for this. Yeah, February 3rd, The Free and the Dead. And then ask him out to dinner. The Free and the Dead, The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, The Indigenous Rebel in America's Forgotten War by Jamie Holmes. Thanks for coming on. Can't wait to have you back on with your next book. That was so much fun. Thanks. Appreciate it.

• 2:10:57Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. The new dual-threat Pro SD climber is the ultimate companion for both bow and rifle

• 2:11:42Steven Rinella?

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• 2:12:06Speaker 07

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