“Are you addressing me?” he inquired in a tone that evinced not the slightest anger or excitement.
“Who else than you?” replied the commissioner abruptly. “I called you by name—Powell.”
“My name is not Powell.”
“Not Powell?”
“No!” answered the Indian, raising his voice to its loudest pitch, and looking with proud defiance at the commissioner. “You may call me Powell, if you please, you, General Wiley Thompson,”—slowly and with a sarcastic sneer, he pronounced the full titles of the agent; “but know, sir, that I scorn the white man’s baptism. I am an Indian; I am the child of my mother (Note 1); my name is Osceola.”
The commissioner struggled to control his passion. The sneer at his plebeian cognomen stung him to the quick, for Powell understood enough of English nomenclature to know that “Thompson” was not an aristocratic appellation; and the sarcasm cut keenly.
He was angry enough to have ordered the instant execution of Osceola, had it been in his power; but it was not. Three hundred warriors trod the ground, each grasping his ready rifle, quite a match for the troops at the post; besides the commissioner knew that such rash indulgence of spleen might not be relished by his government. Even the Ringgolds—his dear friends and ready advisers—with all the wicked interest they might have in the downfall of the Rising Sun, were wiser than to counsel a proceeding like that.
Instead of replying, therefore to the taunt of the young chief, the commissioner addressed himself once more to the council.
“I want no more talking,” said he with the air of a man speaking to inferiors; “we have had enough already. Your talk has been that of children, of men without wisdom or faith: I will no longer listen to it.
“Hear, then, what your Great Father says, and what he has sent me to say to you. He has told me to place before you this paper.” The speaker produced a fold of parchment, opening it as he proceeded: “It is the treaty of Oclawaha. Most of you have already signed it. I ask you now to step forward and confirm your signatures.”