Diane Glancy - Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education

Diane Glancy inhabits a world of images that breathe life and voice for the voiceless men, women, and children.... No simple history lesson, this, as Glancy examines how language is both captor and savior, another means of imprisonment and also liberation.

Gina Ochsner, author of The Necessary Grace to Fall

This book is mesmerizing and will stay with you for lifetimes.

Jackie Old Coyote, Apsaalooke Nation, former director of education and outreach at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development

Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education

Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education

Diane Glancy

University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln and London

2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear in Acknowledgments, which constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

All rights reserved

Cover: details from Bears Heart, book of 24 crayon drawings, ca. 1875, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, d206231. Cover design by Gabriel Sanchez.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Glancy, Diane.

Fort Marion prisoners and the trauma of native education / Diane Glancy.

pages cm

Summary: Narratives of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and Caddo prisoners taken to Ft. Marion, Florida, in 1875 interspersed with the authors own history and contemporary reflections of place and identityProvided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8032-4967-7 (paperback: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8032-5694-1 (epub)

ISBN 978-0-8032-5695-8 (mobi)

ISBN 978-0-8032-5693-4 (pdf)

1. Indians of North AmericaRelocationFloridaCastillo de San Marcos National Monument (Saint Augustine) 2. Indian prisonersFloridaCastillo de San Marcos National Monument (Saint Augustine) 3. Prisoners of warFloridaCastillo de San Marcos National Monument (Saint Augustine) 4. Indians, Treatment ofFloridaCastillo de San Marcos National Monument (Saint Augustine) 5. Indians of North AmericaEthnic identity. 6. Cherokee IndiansBiography. 7. Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (Saint Augustine, Fla.)History. I. Title.

E 98. R 4 G 53 2014

975.9'18dc23

2014012342

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

They are beginning to read and write. They have learned the Lords prayer.... Here were men who had committed murder upon helpless women and children sitting like docile children at the feet of women learning to read.... It was my privilege to preach to them every Sunday, and upon week days I told them stories from the Bible...

Bishop H. B. Whipple to the New YorkDaily Tribune, March 24, 1876

From Richard Henry Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 18761904

Contents

Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education

18751878

In 1875 at the end of the Southern Plains Indian Wars, seventy-two of the worst prisoners were taken by train from Fort Sill in Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma, to an abandoned stone fort on the Atlantic Ocean: Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida.

The Indians had been defeated by the U.S. Cavalry. The buffalo had been slaughtered. A way of life was gone. After a council in the Wichita Mountains near Fort Sill, the Indians rode with a white flag to surrender.

From Fort Sill the prisoners rode shackled in wagons to Caddo, Indian Territory, some 165 miles east. Then they went by train to Sedalia, Missouri, Kansas City, and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. After two weeks at Fort Leavenworth they traveled across Missouri to the St. Charles trestle bridge into St. Louis. From St. Louis, they went to Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Macon. In Florida they stopped in Jacksonville, where the prisoners went by steamer and then railroad again for the last twenty-five miles to St. Augustine, where they made their way through crowds gathered in the street. Their journey had lasted from April 28 to May 21.

Crowds had gathered at every stop along the way. On May 19, 1875, the Daily Louisville Commercial reported the arrival of the train with the hardest lot of red faces that have ever plundered and murdered Western settlers on the frontier.

But at Fort Marion, Captain Richard Henry Pratt unlocked their leg irons, cut their hair, dressed them in army uniforms, gave them ledger books in which to draw, and taught them to read and write. He also invited Clark Mills to come from Washington DC to make life casts of the captives.

The prisoners wrote letters to the U.S. government for their release, which was granted in 1878, three years after their arrival at Fort Marion. Captain Pratts approach was one of the beginnings of a systematic effort to educate the Indians.

___

Some of the prisoners:

Black Horse, Comanche, his wife, Pe-ah-in, and daughter, Ah-kes

Gray Beard, Cheyenne

Lean Bear, Cheyenne

Ta-a-way-te, Comanche

Making Medicine, Cheyenne

Manimic, Cheyenne

Howling Wolf, Cheyenne

Bears Heart, Cheyenne

Toothless, Kiowa

Wolf Stomach, Kiowa

Sky Walker, Kiowa

Big Nose, Cheyenne

Dry Wood, Comanche

White Horse, Kiowa

Lone Wolf, Kiowa

Spotted Elk, Cheyenne

Heap of Birds, Cheyenne

Wohaw, Kiowa

Straightening an Arrow, Kiowa

Standing Wolf, Cheyenne

Big Moccasin, Cheyenne

Matches, Cheyenne

Hail Stone, Cheyenne

Biter or Zo-tom, Kiowa

E-tah-dle-uh, Kiowa

White Bear, Arapaho

Hu-wah-nee, Caddo

Buffalo Meat, Cheyenne

Chief Killer, Cheyenne

___

All of them had several names: Making Medicine, for instance, was also called David Pendleton Oakerhater, Oakahaton, O-kuh-ha-tuh, Noksowist, Bear Going Straight, and Sun Dancer. Good Talk, a Kiowa, was also called To-keah-hi, To-un-ke-uh, To-un-keah, To-keah, Taung-ke-i-hi, Waterman, and Paul Tounkeuh.

In the morning I hear the birds before I see them. They are early risers. I put new seed in the feeder, and they shovel through it looking for sunflower seeds or what they want. Then, when the feeder is empty, they remember the seed they tossed out and hunt for it on the ground. The different tribes come for the seedKiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Caddothose were the tribes.

April 28, 1875, Fort Sill, Indian Territory

After the Indians surrendered, the soldiers loaded them on wagons. It was in the darkness of midnight when soldiers chained them to the sides of the wagons.

The wife and daughter of Black Horse climbed into a wagon with him. One of the soldiers saw them. He tried to remove them from the wagon but they clung to Black Horse.

The soldiers couldnt take his wife and daughter from himthere was no one to care for them. Didnt the soldiers have a wife and child?Would they leave them?

The soldiers argued.

Hide between usBlack Horse told his daughter. That soldier was going to get someone. Another soldier shouted to move aheadthe wagon jumped forwardthe other wagons followed. Black Horses wife and daughter were with himthe soldier let Black Horse have them. There was some honor to those men.

They traveled for several days from Fort Sill to Caddo. Then they saw the box-on-wheelsThey heard it scream EEEEEEEE ! They saw it send up smoke. It was the house-that-walks. It was the box-that-moves.