Fort Marion and the Case of the Wrong Ghost

The other day as I was flipping through channels, I saw a ghost-hunting special on Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida.  In addition to the tragic souls of two star-crossed lovers of the Spanish era, the ghost-busters were seeking the spirit of Osceola, who had died at the fort after being beheaded on order of the fort's commandant (implicitly a la Mary Queen of Scots or Anne Boleyn, as he was being made out as one of the most tragic figures in history, etc.).  Huh! Wait! What? No!  Osceola died at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina of a throat infection, not in Florida from a Tudor-style beheading, but let's examine the Fort Marion story a little more closely.

With Osceola when he was captured in October 1837 were a number of Seminole leaders and warriors, including King Phillip and his son Coacoochee, John Horse, a close friend of Osceola's known as Coa Harjo and some others.  Among them were several Yuchi.  The Yuchi were a tribe from the Tennessee River Valley area who had been displaced and many of whom sought refuge in Florida with the Seminole.  Among the Yuchi were several relatives or siblings, Yuchi John, Yuchi Bob and Yuchi Billy, among others.  As the captives made their way along the road to St. Augustine, an army doctor traveling with the group noticed that Osceola was unwell.  He had been struggling with malaria on an off for the past several months and may even have had the beginnings of the tonsillitis that killed him. 

The quarters at the old Castillo de San Marcos (renamed Fort Marion by the Americans) were tight, damp and not too clean.  The doctor who had noted Osceola's illness was soon dispatched to other duty and a more senior army physician, Dr. Frederick Weedon, was assigned to care for the captives, visiting them twice a day.  In the overcrowded, unhygienic conditions, the prisoners developed rashes and head lice.  More seriously, in December, 1837, a chicken pox epidemic broke out.  Many of the Natives had no immunity to this routine childhood disease and Weedon recorded that Yuchi Billy was among those who succumbed to the illness and died.  Osceola did not get chicken pox.  Either he'd gotten it as a child or was not in direct contact with Yuchi Billy. 

It was then that a strange side of Frederick Weedon's personality manifested itself.  Upon Yuchi Billy's death, Weedon amputated the head of the corpse, removed the flesh and kept the skull as a souvenir.  In January, 1830, when Osceola finally succumbed to quinsy as part of his tonsillitis while at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, Weedon would remove his head after death and preserve it in alcohol.  So it's easy to see how the beheading theme got going.  Both Yuchi Billy and (Billy Powell) Osceola were beheaded by this same doctor, but only after death and in two separate locations.  Osceola's biographer, Patricia Wickman, is at great pains to excuse Weedon's conduct on the basis of routine 19th century medical practice.  And, probably because Weedon's descendants cooperated with her book and provided access to artifacts and information concerning Osceola.  I'll let anyone who's interested read the book for more info. 

The fact remains that the bodies of these two men, at Fort Marion and Fort Moultrie, were not treated in accord with their own expressed wishes and cultural beliefs.  Most anyone who has had any exposure to Natives, as Weedon claimed, would know that death and the body of a deceased, particularly a deceased warrior or leader, was to be treated carefully and respectfully after death.  Osceola specifically asked Weedon to see to it that his body was returned to Florida for burial and he made personal preparation for death by dressing in his finest regalia.  Weedon was present at the death, saw how Osceola wished to die and the fact that he had relatives and colleagues present who mourned his passing.  Weedon claimed sympathy for Osceola and friendship with him, yet used his body as a medical specimen, insuring that Osceola lies at the gates of Fort Moultrie a naked, headless corpse whose coffin was dropped or tipped at some point so that the body slid to the left and decayed into a pile of jumbled bones.  Some respect for a friend with whom one sympathizes!  (Off soapbox now). 

Legends proliferated at both Fort Marion and Fort Moultrie that Osceola haunts both places, seeking vengeance on the Whites who took his land and disrespected his body.  Whether people believe in ghosts or ghost stories I'll leave to each reader to decide.  However, Osceola did not die at Fort Marion.  The Native warrior whose remains were mishandled and disrespected there was Yuchi Billy, not Osceola.  If anyone has a right to be aggrieved about whatever happened at Fort Marion, it is this Yuchi leader, not Osceola.