There were some notable exceptions. In the long Seminole war the Indians were led by a remarkable man named Osceola. He was a half-breed, the son of an Indian woman by a white named Powell; but Osceola, though reared amid the environment of Caucasian civilization, never acknowledged any relationship to the whites. The Seminoles preserved the gentile system, in which the child followed the fortunes of its mother, and Osceola acknowledged none but Indian racial laws. Of his mother but little is known; but it is certain that she was a woman of stern and decided character, that she accepted the benefits of white civilization without admitting any gratitude therefor, and that she instilled into her great son the principles which had come down to her from her ancestors. She possessed great influence with her race, as much for her powers of intellect as for her education--for she was excellently taught--and culture; and it is probable that her influence was paramount in the selection of her son as one of the chiefs of his nation. After his rise to fame, we hear no more of her; but that she was a power in her day and way cannot be doubted. This was at a comparatively late date, and the instance is the last that we find of an Indian woman exerting decided influence within her tribe. Long before the dawn of the last century, the aboriginal woman had lost all little power that had once been hers. That this loss was largely due to her own failure to advance, and her consequent retrogression, we have already seen, but circumstances were also largely responsible for the lapse of feminine prestige.