Osceola (1804 – January 30, 1838, Vsse Yvholv in Creek, also spelled Asi-yahola), named Billy Powell at birth, was an influential leader of the Seminole people in Florida.

When he was a child, they migrated to Florida with other Red Stick refugees, led by a relative, Peter McQueen,[1] after their group's defeat in 1814 in the Creek Wars.

[2] Osceola led the Seminole resistance to removal until he was captured on October 21, 1837, by deception, under a flag of truce,[3] when he went to a site near Fort Peyton for peace talks.

[1]: 217–218  [4]: 115–116 Osceola was named Billy Powell at his birth in 1804 in the Upper Creek village of Talisi, which means "Old Town".

[5] His mother was Polly Coppinger, a mixed-race Creek woman, and his father was most likely William Powell, a Scottish trader.

[7] Billy Powell's maternal grandfather, James McQueen, was a ship-jumping Scottish sailor who in 1716 became the first recorded white person to trade with the Muscogee Creek Confederacy in Alabama.

This is an anglicized form of the Creek Vsse Yvholv (pronounced [asːi jahoːla]), a combination of vsse, the ceremonial black drink made from the yaupon holly, and yvholv, often translated "shouter" but referring specifically to the one who performs a special whoop at the Green Corn Ceremony or archaically to a tribal town officer responsible for offering the black drink.

[9][10] In April 1818, during the First Seminole War, Osceola and his mother where living in Peter McQueen's village near the Econfina River, when it was attacked and destroyed by the Lower Creek allies of U.S. General Andrew Jackson that were led by William McIntosh.

[11] In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain (see the Adams-Onis Treaty), and more European-American settlers started moving in, encroaching on the Seminoles' territory.

[12] Lt. John T. Sprague mentions in his 1848 history The Florida War that Osceola had a wife named "Che-cho-ter" (Morning Dew), who bore him four children.

[13][4]: 58 Through the 1820s and 1830s American settlers continued pressuring the US government to remove the Seminole from Florida to make way for their desired agricultural development.

In order to secure his release, Osceola agreed to sign the Treaty of Payne's Landing and to bring his followers into the fort.

Jesup suffered a loss of reputation that lasted for the rest of his life; his betrayal of the truce flag has been described as "one of the most disgraceful acts in American military history.

[7]: 233  When he was close to death, as his last wish he asked the attending doctor, Frederick Weedon, that his body be returned to Florida, his home, so that he might rest in peace.

The historical evidence suggests that it was Morrison who decided that a death mask should be made,[4]: 174  a European-American custom at the time for prominent persons, but it was done without the permission of Osceola's people.

An acquaintance of Morrison, Dr. Benjamin Strobel, a native of Charleston, made a plaster cast of Osceola's face and upper torso.

[4]: 178  Weedon apparently preserved Osceola's head in a large jar of alcohol and took it to St. Augustine,[4]: 181  where he exhibited it in the family drugstore.

[36] In 1966, Miami businessman Otis W. Shriver claimed he had dug up Osceola's grave and put his bones into a bank vault to rebury them at a tourist site at the Rainbow Springs in Marion County.