New York, 1838. Lithograph, variant printing. Trimmed to edge ruling and laid down on larger paper. Approximately 17 x 13 in. (432 x 330 mm) (sight). Lightly worn. In mat and unexamined out of frame.

Variant printing of George Catlin's lithographed portrait of Seminole leader and warrior Osceola (1804-38). Catlin painted Osceola’s portrait in January 1838, during the final month of his life while he was imprisoned at Fort Moultrie, near Charleston, South Carolina.

Less than a month prior to this portrait Osceola was captured by American forces during the Second Seminole War. On December 31, 1837, he and his family were transported from St. Augustine, Florida, to Fort Moultrie, far from their homes in order to prevent their escape. During the previous two years Osceola had risen to effectively lead the Seminole in war against the United States and their attempt to forcibly remove them to a reservation west of the Mississippi. It was the longest and costliest war between the United States and any Native American tribe.

Born in Alabama to a Creek mother and a white father, as a child, Osceola went by Billy Powell, but as a young man he embraced Seminole culture and became known as Osceola, or “black drink”, after Seminole purification rites. Displaced to Florida following the Creek War of 1813-14, Osceola, like many Seminole, rejected American plans to relocate them, leading to armed resistance. Seminole Indians, like Osceola, who had been displaced due to war, as well as Black Seminole who feared re-enslavement, resisted American designs leading to the outbreak of the First Seminole War from 1817-1818, and then to the Second Seminole War, from 1835-42. Osceola rose to be an effective leader and tactician, and defeated five American generals and eluded capture in the Everglades. Following several defeats at his hands, the Americans turned to deception to capture him. In October 1837, while under a white flag of truce at St. Augustine for the supposed purpose of a truce, Osceola was taken prisoner by American forces on orders from General Thomas Jessup. His death the following year was reported across the globe.

About the warrior, Catlin later wrote, he was “commonly called Powell…(he) is generally supposed to be a half-breed, the son of a white man…and a Creek woman…I have painted him precisely in the costume, in which he stood for his picture, even to a string and a trinket. He wore three ostrich feathers in his head, and a turban made of a vari-coloured cotton shawl—and his dress was chiefly of calicos, with a handsome bead sash or belt around his waist, and his rifle in his hand. This young man is, no doubt, an extraordinary character, as he has been for some years reputed, and doubtless looked upon by the Seminoles as the master spirit and leader of the tribe, although he is not a chief…In stature he is about at mediocrity, with an elastic and graceful movement; in his face he is good looking, with rather an effeminate smile; but of so peculiar a character, that the world may be ransacked over without finding another just like it. In his manners, and all his movements in company, he is polite and gentlemanly, though all his conversation is entirely in his own tongue; and his general appearance and actions, those of a full-blooded and wild Indian.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, Vol. 2, No. 57, 1841; reprint 1973)

The present example differs in size from the first printing (which measured 27.5 x 20.5 in.), has "[copy]" in its imprint, and features only a single line of ornament hanging from Osceola's left wrist, as opposed to two in the first.