On one occasion, Osceola acted as guide to a party of horsemen, and
finding that, at starting, they proceeded slowly, he enquired the cause.
On being told that it was on his account, with one of those smiles he
alone can give, he bade them proceed more rapidly. They put spurs to
their steeds, and he, a-foot, kept up with them during the entire route,
nor did he exhibit the slightest symptoms of fatigue, at the close of
day, but arrived at the point proposed, as early as the mounted body. To
Col. Gadsden, sole Commissioner at the Treaty of Payne’s Landing, Osceola
rendered good service, at the head of thirty or forty warriors, posting
himself nearer to the Colonel’s position than the other Indians, and
saying, he was more like the white man than they. He did not sign the
treaty then and there made, nor did he refuse so to do. The fact is, he
was never asked to subscribe his name thereto, being at that time, but a
Tustenugge and of little note. This treaty must not be confounded with
the subsequent agreement that Osceola finally signed, and into which he
is said to have plunged his knife, when called on for his signature. The
negotiations at Payne’s landing were in the time of Tuckasee Emathla, or
the Ground Mole Warrior, Chief of the Micasuky tribe. At that date it was
not known of Powell, as Cotton Mather says of Roger Williams, that “the
whole country was soon like to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a
wind mill in the head of this one man.”