Did It Happen: Osceola Stabbed a Treaty with a Knife

This is one of the most enduring motifs of the Osceola legend.  Representatives of the United States and the Seminole Nation meet to discuss a treaty which will require the Seminoles to give up more land.  As the talks turn heated, all eyes in the room focus on a younger warrior who appears to be more upset about what is going on then most.  When it looks like the older chiefs will succumb to pressure to sign, Osceola springs to his feet, his sheath knife in his hand.  He strides over to the table where the treaty is displayed and drives the knife into the document, impaling it to the table.  "This is how I shall sign!" he says, giving notice of his unilateral declaration of war on the White men invading his homeland. 

It makes for great copy, but did it happen?

While a good story like this makes possible a distinct mark of the threshold crossed when a up-and-coming young warrior becomes a leader in his own right, the short answer is that it probably didn't happen this way.  First, there are two treaties involved in the story.  Most often the treaty that gets knifed is the Treaty of Payne's Landing, 1832.  However, in later years, the National Archives in Washington is supposed to have claimed to have the original of the Treaty of Fort Gibson, 1833, in its possession, with a crease in the paper said to have come from Osceola's knife.  So, which treaty got it?  Payne's Landing?  Fort Gibson?  None of the above.

The windup to the Treaty of Fort Gibson began in 1832, when Indian Agent Wiley Thompson and other representatives of the Jackson Administration met to discuss moving the Seminole people out of Florida entirely.  The meeting occurred at Payne's Landing on the Oklawaha River, in Florida.  As Thompson explained the proposals, which would require the Seminoles to give up Florida entirely, the temperature in the room became heated.  This was news to them, as the earlier Treaty of Moultrie Creek, 1823, promised them a reservation in central Florida, where the land was considered too swamp for farming and useless to Whites.  Now, the United States was pressing them to agree to remove to Oklahoma along with the Creek Nation?  Since many Seminoles had Creek ancestry, the Whites assumed that the Seminoles would simply live with the Creeks on their allotted land in Oklahoma.  They did not take into account that the Seminoles did not consider themselves to be Creeks and there were some hard feelings between the two tribes.  Nevertheless, seven Seminole chiefs agreed to go to Oklahoma and inspect the land allotted to them.  If they found it acceptable, they would agree to move, or so the White authorities believed.

The fact is that no one knows for sure how the discussions at Payne's Landing progressed because there were no minutes taken, despite the fact that there were secretaries there for that purpose.  Osceola did become angry at one point because Black Seminole leaders were excluded from the discussion.  These included Chief Micanopy's trusted translator, Abraham.  The elderly chief appeared to be harassed and confused and Osceola, who was serving as his bodyguard on that occasion, believed that he was being coerced into signing and that the translation wasn't done properly.  Osceola and Wiley Thompson had words on both accounts and, at one point, Osceola himself was barred from the talks.  Although he was angry, and may have drawn his knife to emphasize his displeasure, it's unlikely that he got near enough to the Treaty of Payne's Landing to stab it.

The chiefs toured Oklahoma and in March, 1833, signed a statement saying that they found the land acceptable and would cooperate with arrangements to move their people.  Consternation broke out in Florida when the treaty was brought back there for discussions.  This time, Osceola did not wait to be invited into the room.  He made his way in, though he let the chiefs and more senior warriors carry the discussion for the Seminole side.  While some chiefs stuck by their word and agreement to move, others claimed that they had been coerced into signing.  Micanopy stated that he had not signed at all, but that his mark was forged.  Osceola was protective of the old man, who had sponsored his rise in the Seminole Nation.  He now sprang up, his knife in his hand, and made an impassioned appeal for the leaders of his people to disavow both agreements and fight to remain in their homeland.  On this occasion, he would have been close enough to the documents lying on the table to have nicked one of them with his knife, had he been so inclined.  But that story only became current in 1841, three years after his death, when Osceola was a national hero and martyr. 

Both current Osceola biographers, Patricia Wickman and Thom Hatch, discount the story that Osceola actually stabbed the treaty, let alone ran his knife through the table.  While it is possible that he used the knife to say, "this is the only way I will sign", or words to that effect, he might have marked one of the documents.  Notice, though, that the Archives said that the Fort Gibson treaty had a crease, not a full-blown stab hole in the document.  What was more important, though, was that Osceola, who was not a chief, had the courage to stand and speak before his elders and the government representatives with his own career and reputation at stake.  His speech became a rallying cry and while some leaders and their people prepared to go to Oklahoma, most were willing to take their chances in Florida.  It was a pivotal enough moment that one almost wishes it had happened the way legend dictates.