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.”