Fort Marion in Florida saw some 70 Native prisoners far from home arrive in the spring of 1875. The U.S. Government took what they considered the leading warriors and chiefs as a way of keeping “Indian unrest” to a minimum.
The decision came after the Red River War, when most settlers thought the Indian wars were a thing of the past. The Red River War was the last desperate attempt of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa to keep a way of life and to have revenge for both real and imagined wrongs. One of the wrongs was the slaughter of the buffalo and that was the main target of the young warriors. Most White buffalo hunters were well-armed and repelled attacks but isolated farms were another story.
There was a prompt and aggressive response from the U.S. military. With no buffalo to be found and soldiers everywhere the war chiefs surrendered. In total, 72 Indians were selected for deportation, 33 Cheyenne, 27 Kiowa, 9 Comanche, 2 Arapaho and 1 Caddo. An interesting footnote is that 11 of the prisoners were found later to be Mexicans, who had been captured as youth and raised Kiowa or Comanche.
Captain Richard Henry Pratt was assigned the duty of taking the prisoners to Fort Marion. During the trip, people would come out to taunt the Natives because of news stories painting them as savage beasts. Riots nearly started in some places but finally they arrived at their destination. Fort Marion, at this time, held another famous prisoner, Geronimo!
Pratt changed Fort Marion from a prison to an Army Camp giving basic training to his new Indian recruits. The prisoners responded becoming their own guards complete with a military court in which they punished each other.
They built a wooden barracks, some learnt to read and write, clergymen came to give services and some teachers urged that the period of incarceration be extended so they could develop the Indians more fully.
The prisoners became part of the community, drawing tourists and working. They worked at slashing, carrying luggage at the train station, and making handicrafts to sell. Out of this came the Ledger drawings, which they would sell to tourists.
For three years Fort Marion would boast a Native artistic community who showed what they knew of life then. After three years, the government finally allowed the prisoners to go home. Out of the 72 who started out for Florida from the plains, 22 would remain behind to further studies or pursue interests in the East.
Pratt took them to Hampton College but soon convinced the Army to establish a separate school for Natives. The school would become the famous Carlisle Indian Industrial School, considered an ideal model for transforming reservation Indians into assimilated Americans by reformers in the U.S.
The story and the pictures give us a sense of history that we might have never known, a glimpse into the past as it were. You see Pratt as an idealist surrounded by those who didn’t give a damn and those who were prejudiced. It is a part of history we should all take the time to read. It offers understanding of some of the motives behind the residential school system and the associated problems connected to them. It also offers and understanding of the Indians at that time and how they saw the world, and after seeing they could not win, tried to remember and adapt in the only ways they were shown… through art.
It was an art form that died out when they went home to the Plains and weren’t tourist attractions anymore. It lives on though, in museums and collections but best of all in this book that we can all read and look at.
If there is one book you buy concerning Aboriginal history this year, make it this one. It will not disappoint.
