OSCEOLA & THE GREAT SEMINOLE WAR
By Thom Hatch
St. Martins (NYP)

Florida’s Seminoles today pilot visitors on airboat rides through the Everglades and wrestle gators at tourist stops along the Tamiami Trail. But in the 1830s and ‘40s the Seminoles inspired fear and admiration among whites as the fiercest and most tenacious Native Americans they had ever faced in battle. The U.S. fought three wars with the Seminoles. By far the greatest and bloodiest was the second, which lasted 7 years (1835-42), engaged 40,000 U.S. troops, cost $40 million, and took 1,500 white lives. The leader of this uprising was Osceola, and this 90,000-word book is his story as well as a history of the Great Seminole War.

Although Osceola rarely mustered more than a few hundred warriors, his hit-and-run tactics baffled five of America’s best generals, drove President Andy Jackson to despair, and spread panic among Southern slave-owners. The Seminoles were not even a tribe in a tradition sense, but rather a band of renegades from various tribes joined by runaway slaves. Indeed, the refusal of the Seminoles to surrender runaways was a primary cause of the war. Elegant in dress and a passionate orator, Osceola was brave in battle and a cunning strategist. When the removal of his tribe to the West became an imminent threat, he rallied the Seminoles to resist. In one slashing attack after another, Osceola and his warriors assailed white military posts and harassed soldiers on the march until, ill with malaria, Osceola came to negotiate a peace treaty under a flag of truce in October 1837. Osceola’s shameful seizure and imprisonment became a cause celebre sparking nationwide protests against the war. Within months of his capture, Osceola died in prison as the nation’s most famous and respected Native American – his demise noted on the newspaper front pages worldwide. Children, cities, counties, schools, and businesses across America were named after him. His memory kept Seminole bands fighting for years to come, never formally surrendering. This conflict, initiated and directed by Osceola, was the only war the U.S. failed to win against Native Americans.

The only recent biographies of Osceola have been children’s and YA titles. Surprisingly, he has never been the subject of a definitive adult biography. The most recent attempt, Osceola: The Unconquered Indian, by William and Ellen Hartley (1973), is closer to fiction than biography with large swatches of fabricated dialogue. There have been a few books on the Great Seminole War, but they are relatively obscure. Accordingly, readers with an interest in Native American and African-American subjects, military buffs, and schools and libraries will welcome this overdue biography. While the book should do well across the nation in chain and independent stores, Florida’s 400+ independent bookstores, 150+ chain stores, dozens of historic sites pertaining to the Seminole Wars, and the many Seminole tourist shops that sell books offer a solid regional base of support in one of the fastest growing book markets in the U.S.

Thom Hatch, a former reporter and editor and the author of six books, won the prestigious "Spur Award" from the Western Writers of America Award for Best Biography of 2004 – most recently Black Kettle: The Cheyenne Chief Who Sought Peace but Found War (Wiley, 2004), The Blue, the Gray, and the Red: Indian Campaigns of the Civil War (Stackpole, 2003), and The Custer Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the Life of George Armstrong Custer and the Plains Indian Wars (Stackpole, 2002). Hatch is an established researcher and writer on Native American culture, customs, and history and has already has a working relationship with Seminole oral historians.