the scarf that Osceola had customarily worn being wrapped around the neck, and immediately before the funeral ceremony removed the head and shut the coffin's lid. Weedon kept the head for himself, as well as other objects belonging to Osceola, including a brass pipe and a silver concho. Capt. Pitcairn Morrison, the U.S. Army officer in charge of the Seminole prisoners who had been transported with Osceola, made a last-minute decision to take other items belonging to Osceola. The historical evidence suggests that it was Morrison who decided that a death mask should be made, 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. The process of "pulling" the first mold, which was soon displayed in the window of a Charleston drugstore, destroyed the original cast. Weedon apparently preserved Osceola's head in a large jar of alcohol and took it to St. Augustine, where he exhibited it in the family drugstore. Captain Pitcairn Morrison sent the death mask and some other objects collected by Weedon to an army officer in Washington. By 1885, the death mask and some of Osceola's belongings were being held in the anthropology collection of the Smithsonian Institution. The death mask is currently housed in the Luce collection of the New-York Historical Society. 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. Shriver traveled around the state in 1967 to gather support for his project. Archaeologists later proved that Shriver had dug up animal remains; Osceola's body was still in its coffin. In 1979 the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma bought Osceola's bandolier and other personal items from a Sotheby's auction. Because of the chief's significance, over time some people have created forgeries of Osceola's belongings. Rumors persist that his embalmed head has been found in various locations. Related media Literature Osceola (1858) by Thomas Mayne Reid In the Wilds of Florida: A Tale of Warfare and Hunting (1880) by William Henry G. Kingston "Osceola" (1889), a poem by Walt Whitman, featured in Leaves of Grass. "Osceola" was an early pen name used by Danish author Karen Blixen (1885–1962),