Although neither a hereditary nor an elected chief, Osceola was the defiant young leader of the Seminole in their resistance to forced Indian emigration. In 1835 he plunged his knife into the treaty he was asked to sign that would move his people from their swamplands in the Southeast to the unoccupied territory west of the Mississippi, saying, 'This is the only treaty I will make with the whites.' This action precipitated the Second Seminole War (a seven-year game of cat-and-mouse in the Florida swamps against federal troops.) In 1837, Osceola came under a flag of truce to confer with General Jesup; but, in what is one of the blackest moments in military history, he was arrested and imprisoned. He died in prison of malaria at the age of 34. A peace treaty with the United States was never signed, and today the Seminole remain an independent nation.