The Castillo de San Marcos--Part 7

by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Hello, readers! Are you ready for more interesting history about the oldest masonry fort on U.S. soil? If you’ve been following along, you’ve learned all about the fort’s founding and how it was passed between Spain, Britain, Spain again, the United States, and even fell to the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Last month, I told you how, for a period of three years during the 1870s, the fort became home to seventy-three Plains Indians. And this month, I’ll share another interesting chapter of the Castillo’s history—the internment of the Apache Indians.

 

Just as we learned in last month’s post about the Plains Indians, the Native Americans of all tribes were struggling to acclimate to the idea of so many white men flooding into what had been their traditional territories. The Apaches were no different, and conflicts sparked between these groups all across Arizona for decades. Fierce warriors that they were, the Apaches fought hard against the incoming settlers, making homesteading in the Southwest a difficult endeavor. The Frontier Army came in and attempted to subdue the Apaches, placing them on reservation lands, but as so often happened, those promised lands ended up being found to have hidden value in the form of gold, silver, or other resources. Or the government didn’t deliver the promised supplies—cattle and other food supplies, blankets and clothing, etc. So new treaties were negotiated, and new boundaries drawn up, shrinking the sizes of reservations or moving them to new locations all together, all so that white men could capitalize on the resources they’d found on reservation lands—or with more promises of better supplies in the new locales. As anyone would, the Apaches grew tired of this shuffling and broken promises. Bands began breaking out of the reservations to go again on raids and make war on the Army and settlements for these unfair practices, as well as to provide for their families. Ultimately, this war went on for years, but slowly ended as Apache leader after Apache leader finally surrendered when they couldn’t keep going.

Apache Men sitting among cannons housed
at Fort Marion, circa 1886

Similar to the Plains Indians, various Apache men were chosen to be sent to Florida for incarceration at Fort Marion. What was different from the Plains Indians incarceration was that women and children were also sent to the fort. They arrived by train on April 16, 1886. Of course, all of St. Augustine came out to gawk at the new arrivals. The oldest men came first, wrapped in their blankets. Following them came the younger warriors. And lastly, the women and children. While large, the fort could comfortably sleep 150 or so, not the 502 who ended up being sent to Florida for imprisonment. Some of the Apaches were made to sleep in the casemate rooms surrounding the inner courtyard, and many others were sent to the gundeck above to sleep in Sibley tents.

 

As you might imagine, life was difficult in a strange new place, particularly in such tight quarters. The Apaches were given a pound of beef per adult per day, with children receiving half that; fresh bread each day; vegetables and grains like rice, turnips, hominy and beans, as well as a small weekly portion of potatoes and onions. The women were expected to cook the food themselves, except for the bread, which was made down the street at St. Francis Barracks and carted over each morning. They drank coffee with sugar, or they had water from the well within the fort’s walls. 

 

Geronimo, one of the most famous Apache
warriors. While he was not held at Fort Marion,
his wife was, and gave birth to his daughter, Marion
(later renamed Lenna), while there.

There were twelve Apache children born during the year they were incarcerated at Fort Marion, the first of which was Geronimo’s daughter (aptly names “Marion”, although she later changed her name to Lenna). Unfortunately, there were also several deaths in that year. When you stop to consider the sheer number of people in such confined spaces, it isn’t surprising that illness ran rampant among them. Colonel Langdon, who was in charge of overseeing the Apache prisoners, brought in Army physician, Dr. DeWitt Webb, to treat the men, women, and children. Despite his best efforts, Dr. Webb reported that he lost numerous patients to various diseases, such as dysentery, acute bronchitis, marasmus (or wasting disease), old age, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and neonatal tetanus. All told, twenty-four Apaches died during that year in St. Augustine. 

 

In order to make more room during the daylight hours, the Apaches were allowed to spread out outside the fort walls on the grounds and go into town, but even so, there wasn’t much for them to do. Children played games while the adults saw to the needs of their families, cooking, mending clothing, and repairing their few belongings. There wasn’t enough space for much else. The women would weave baskets to sell to locals and tourists, and men and boys would make and sell bows and arrows, as well as offer lessons in how to use the weaponry. However, with the overcrowded conditions, it was harder for the Apaches to make and sell their wares than it had been for the seventy-three Plains Indians a decade before.

 

The prisoners began turning to gambling and card games to pass the time until Colonel Langdon came to the same conclusion that his predecessor, Lt. Richard Henry Pratt, had. They needed stimulation, and it would come through education and assimilation. Colonel Langdon contacted Richard Henry Pratt in Carlisle, PA, to ask him to return to Fort Marion and interview the children to see if any would be a good fit at the Carlisle Indian Residential School, of which Pratt was the founder and headmaster. Upon Pratt’s visit, he selected 103 of the children to return with him to the school, and they young ones were immediately sent on their way under Pratt’s care. At the Carlisle Indians School, they children were given military-style uniforms to wear, their hair was cut short, and they were given Christian names.

Apache children in traditional garb on their arrival at Carlisle Indian School (left).
Many of the same children after receiving haircuts and military-style uniforms (right).

 

Of the roughly four hundred remaining Apaches, Colonel Langdon again called upon St. Augustine’s women to begin educating the Natives. Just as with the Plains Indians, Miss Sarah Mather and other local women set up classes so the Apache adults could learn to read, write, and speak English, as well as some simple arithmetic, science, and other subjects. Those children who were not taken to Carlisle, PA, were taken each weekday to a local nunnery where the Sisters of St. Joseph educated them in similar subject matter. Unlike Lt. Pratt before him, Colonel Langdon did not implement a physical training program or having skilled craftsman teaching the Apaches their crafts—more than likely because there were too many prisoners and not enough space for such education.

 

After roughly one year, those Apaches left in St. Augustine were moved again, this time to a reservation in Alabama, and later to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, where they remained.

 

Award-winning, best-selling novelist Jennifer Uhlarik has loved the western genre since she read her first Louis L’Amour novel. She penned her first western while earning a writing degree from University of Tampa. Jennifer lives near Tampa with her husband, son, and furbabies. www.jenniferuhlarik.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

AVAILABLE NOW!

 

Love's Fortress by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

A Friendship From the Past Brings Closure to Dani’s Fractured Family

 

When Dani Sango’s art forger father passes away, Dani inherits his home. There, she finds a book of Native American drawings, which leads her to seek museum curator Brad Osgood’s help to decipher the ledger art. Why would her father have this book? Is it another forgery?

 

Brad Osgood longs to provide his four-year-old niece, Brynn, the safe home she desperately deserves. The last thing he needs is more drama, especially from a forger’s daughter. But when the two meet “accidentally” at St. Augustine’s 350-year-old Spanish fort, he can’t refuse the intriguing woman.

 

Broken Bow is among seventy-three Plains Indians transported to Florida in 1875 for incarceration at ancient Fort Marion. Sally Jo Harris and Luke Worthing dream of serving on a foreign mission field, but when the Indians reach St. Augustine, God changes their plans. However, when Sally Jo’s friendship with Broken Bow leads to false accusations, it could cost them their lives.

 

Can Dani discover how Broken Bow and Sally Jo’s story ends and how it impacted her father’s life?

 

The Castillo de San Marcos--Pt 6 (and a giveaway!)

 

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

Hello, readers! Time for your next installment of the history of the Castillo de San Marcos. If you’ve been following along over the last handful of months, you’ve read about the Spanish building this large masonry fort in St. Augustine, Florida, how the fort came into British possession, was returned to Spanish control for a brief time, became an American acquisition, and then traded hands between the Federal and Confederate armies during the Civil War. So what happened after the war’s end? Life in the St. Augustine fort was quiet for only a decade before it next came into use.

 

The north wall of Fort Marion,
including the wooden barracks the
Native American prisoners built
on the upper gun deck.

As many of you may know, the western territories were fraught with conflict. Not just between lawmen and outlaws, but also with conflicts between the Native American tribes and the western settlers. Many battles cropped up between settlers and Indians, with much bloodshed on both sides, until the Frontier Army and the Native American tribes such as the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others, were in an all-out war. There were many instances where whites attacked and massacred sleeping camps of Indians, and others where Indians wiped out whole wagon trains or military units. It was a long, drawn-out period where many lives were lost—a tragic piece of America’s history.

 

That war finally came to an end on the western plains in the mid-1870s. In 1874 and 1875, the various Indian tribes surrendered to the Army. Investigations were done into some of the most horrendous of attacks perpetuated by members of these tribes, and those who led them were singled out to be made examples of. The rest were sent to the reservations in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). While some Indians were tired of the decades of conflict and were willing to live peacefully, others chafed at the American government being able to tell them where and how they should live. Those in the latter group often attempted to stir up trouble within the reservation lands, leading their other tribesmen to rebel. So these men also were singled out for further punishment. In total, there were seventy-three men from five tribes—the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo—who were to be punished. Their punishment was to be sent to distant Florida, far from their tribal lands, and completely cut off from their people, to be incarcerated in Fort Marion (aka the Castillo de San Marcos). 

 

Some of the seventy-three Plains
Indians, posing with Lt. Pratt,
soon after their arrival at
Fort Marion.

The trip from the west took roughly a month, and during that time, these seventy-three men traveled by wagon to reach the railroad, then by train all the way to the panhandle of Florida. There, they disembarked the train and boarded a steamboat for a brief ride south. Then another short train ride, and finally, they arrived at the fort they would call home for some unspecified time. Their travels east were not without difficulties. While the men were used to galloping for miles on horseback, the unfamiliar movements and sounds of the train made many of them sick at their stomachs. There was at least one escape attempt during a brief stop-over, leading to one of the seventy-three men being shot and left behind under military guard until he was well enough to travel. By the time these prisoners of war reached St. Augustine’s fort, they were shells of the fierce warriors they’d once been. Instead, they were thin and bedraggled, wrapped in blankets with shackles on their hands and feet. They shuffled through crowds of St. Augustine residents to reach the stone fort and face their punishment.

 

Uniformed Indians performing
morning drills.

The man who was placed in charge of the Indians’ care was one Lieutenant Richard
Henry Pratt. He quickly realized that his charges were wasting away with little to do, so he struck upon the idea to give them men structure. First, he instituted military drills and physical exercise, just like the Army soldiers were made to do. Then, Pratt began noticing that the casemate rooms in which the men slept each night were moldy. He put the Indians to work scrubbing the walls and ceilings. With each new task, the men’s outlook seemed to improve. They liked to work. It wasn’t long before Pratt approached his military superiors to ask about teaching the Indians reading, writing, simple arithmetic, and even trades with which to make money in the white man’s world. After some discussion, he was granted approval for the progressive plan, and Pratt teamed up with various women in the St. Augustine community to begin classes. Two of the most prominent women were Sarah Ann Mather and Rebecca Perit, who did much to further the lives of freed slaves and the Native Americans in St. Augustine. With their help, Lt. Pratt even began weekly church services within the fort, led by local ministers from the St. Augustine area.

 

Just like on the reservations, there were some who took to the new ways, and those who didn’t accept it as easily. But by and large, the Indians cooperated enough to make the plan work. For several hours each weekday morning, they would sit in class and learn to speak and read English, work simple math problems, and other academic subjects. In the afternoons, they would learn trades like shoe cobbling, blacksmithing, farming, and other skills that they would be able to carry into life after incarceration.

 

Example of Ledger Art drawn by one of the 
Plains Indians, depicting their travels
to Fort Marion.

As they embraced their new, structured day and showed themselves to be trustworthy, Pratt begin giving them more freedoms. When a local jeweler approached Lt. Pratt with the request to have the Indians gather and polish “sea beans” for him to sell in his store, they went to work. They were given time to go across Matanzas Bay to Anastasia Island and gather then beans, then spent hours polishing the beans to a high shine. They turned over thousands of the trinkets and were paid handsomely for their efforts. This led to other money-making ventures. Drawing “ledger art” and selling it outside the fort. Making bows and arrows to sell to tourists. Teaching those same tourists how to use the authentic weapons. In addition, they also began putting on cultural displays—powwows, Native dances, “buffalo” hunts (using cattle from local ranches and the worst of the nags the local livery stables had to offer). 

 

For three years, these industrious men were incarcerated in St. Augustine’s ancient fort. While many of those seventy-three fell ill to consumption (tuberculosis) and other illnesses, most survived and either returned to the reservations and their families—or, in some cases, followed Pratt on his next venture, which was to found the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 

 

It’s Your Turn: Lt. Richard Henry Pratt fought hard for the seventy-three Native American men he was put in charge of at Fort Marion in 1875. He employed progressive ideas to educate these men in hopes they might be able to one day integrate into society at large. In your opinion, was Pratt a hero for his ideas to help the Indian men learn skills that would help them integrate, or was he a villain for forcing them to embrace a culture not their own? Leave your honest opinion with an email address to be entered into a drawing for an autographed paperback copy of Love’s Fortress (US entries only). (I know this topic can bring some heated feelings, so please be kind in your responses)!

 

Award-winning, best-selling novelist Jennifer Uhlarik has loved the western genre since she read her first Louis L’Amour novel. She penned her first western while earning a writing degree from University of Tampa. Jennifer lives near Tampa with her husband, son, and furbabies. www.jenniferuhlarik.com

 

AVAILABLE NOW!

Love's Fortress by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

A Friendship From the Past Brings Closure to Dani’s Fractured Family

 

When Dani Sango’s art forger father passes away, Dani inherits his home. There, she finds a book of Native American drawings, which leads her to seek museum curator Brad Osgood’s help to decipher the ledger art. Why would her father have this book? Is it another forgery?

 

Brad Osgood longs to provide his four-year-old niece, Brynn, the safe home she desperately deserves. The last thing he needs is more drama, especially from a forger’s daughter. But when the two meet “accidentally” at St. Augustine’s 350-year-old Spanish fort, he can’t refuse the intriguing woman.

 

Broken Bow is among seventy-three Plains Indians transported to Florida in 1875 for incarceration at ancient Fort Marion. Sally Jo Harris and Luke Worthing dream of serving on a foreign mission field, but when the Indians reach St. Augustine, God changes their plans. However, when Sally Jo’s friendship with Broken Bow leads to false accusations, it could cost them their lives.

 

Can Dani discover how Broken Bow and Sally Jo’s story ends and how it impacted her father’s life?

 

Native American Ledger Art

By Jennifer Uhlarik

 

From prehistoric times, Indigenous people across the world have been drawing or etching their artwork on cave walls, boulders, animal hides, and other surfaces. From the earliest times, these drawings or carvings were a way of chronicling life among their various cultures.

Newspaper Rock, Arizona
(copyright Jennifer Uhlarik)

 

It was no different for the Native American tribes of the Great Plains. They drew or painted pictures on their tepees, on their war shields, other animal hide products, and even on themselves or their horses as they prepared to ride into battle against an enemy. Their pictures told stories. Stories of daily life among their camp, courting their loves, successful buffalo hunts, important ceremonies and meetings, and great battles they fought. It was a way to preserve their history when many of the Plains tribes didn’t have written language, but rather an oral tradition.

Two Hunkpapa Sioux tepees adorned with drawings
depicting coup the owners counted during the 
Battle of Little Bighorn. Photo taken circa 1890
(Public Domain)

 

But what happened when the Native Americans were moved to reservations and were no longer going on buffalo hunts to obtain the animal skins in which to record their lives, or no longer living in tepees or carrying war shields on which they could draw? How would the tribes keep track of the important events that defined their existence? They drew on paper, of course! Paper was easily obtained among the Army forts of the west, especially in the form of ledger books. So a new art form was created—Native American ledger art. Adding to the phenomenon was man by the name of Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt was an Army officer who was put in charge of seventy-three Plains Indians who were incarcerated in St. Augustine’s 350-year-old Spanish fort (known today as the Castillo de San Marcos) between 1875 and 1878. While these men were under his charge, he gave them bookkeeping ledger books and colored pencils on which to draw. The artwork that was created by these Native Americans while at Castillo de San Marcos (or Fort Marion as it was known in that day), is some of the most notable examples of this art form that we have today.

An example of Native American ledger art
drawn by Bear's Heart.

 

The bookkeeping ledgers were an inexpensive source of paper, and they were readily available. No hunting required to get a new “canvas” on which to create art. Just open the cover and find a blank page. Lieutenant Pratt asked “his Indians” to draw pictures in their books that told of their life before coming to the ancient fort, as well as the events that happened while they were there. So these men began to draw pictures of buffalo hunts, of battles, the surrender of their tribes to the Army, the journey they took to get from Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) to Florida on wagons, trains, and steamboats, and then daily life in and around the fort. 

Drawn by Zotom (or "Biter"), this example depicts
the Native American prisoners arriving in Jacksonville, FL
and transferring onto a steamboat for one of the final legs of their
journey to St. Augustine's Fort Marion.

 

While much of this type of artwork is not particularly refined in technique or skill level, it serves an important purpose in telling the story of the Native Americans who created it. The Plains Indians were known for their story-telling abilities. They spent many nights around the fire telling stories of their buffalo hunts or great feats in battle, funny events or tragic happenings. These pieces of ledger art were a way of the Native Americans preserving those stories in pictorial form so future generations could also understand the events that shaped their lives. 

 

This style of art not only tells of the history of people from the past, but it also serves to inspire artists of today. Many artists from within the Native American communities look at what their ancestors did with ledger art and find the vision and creativity to make their own brand of art and a way to put their stamp on the world around them.

"On the Parapet of Ft. Marion, next day after arrival."
Drawn by Zotom (or "Biter").

 

Interestingly, in researching the value of different examples of Native American ledger art for my upcoming novel, Love’s Fortress, which deals with the incarceration of the seventy-three Plains Indians at the fort in St. Augustine and the artwork they drew while there, I stumbled across two different samples that went to auction. The first I found was from an art auction website, where a book of ledger art with twenty-nine drawings was sold in 2009 for over $20,000. The second was even more interesting. In the second case, a book of seventy-six ledger art drawings was inadvertently given to Goodwill in 1993 when the file cabinet it was stored in was donated to the charity. Once found, the organization’s director contacted the Lakota tribe to ask about provenance and wound up getting into a bit of a legal tangle because of the Native America Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, a law from George H.W. Bush’s tenure as president. The book was eventually sold at auction by Sotheby’s for nearly $400,000, and it is now part of the private collection of Eugene and Clare Thaw, though it is kept at the Fenimore Art Museum.

 

It’s Your Turn: Have you ever seen examples of Native American ledger art in museums or on display in cultural centers or historic sites? What is your impression of it?

 

 

Award-winning, best-selling novelist Jennifer Uhlarik has loved the western genre since she read her first Louis L’Amour novel. She penned her first western while earning a writing degree from University of Tampa. Jennifer lives near Tampa with her husband, son, and furbabies. www.jenniferuhlarik.com

 

 

COMING MARCH 1, 2022

 

Love’s Fortress by Jennifer Uhlarik

 

A Friendship From the Past Brings Closure to Dani’s Fractured Family

 

When Dani Sango’s art forger father passes away, Dani inherits his home. There, she finds a book of Native American drawings, which leads her to seek museum curator Brad Osgood’s help to decipher the ledger art. Why would her father have this book? Is it another forgery?

 

Brad Osgood longs to provide his four-year-old niece, Brynn, the safe home she desperately deserves. The last thing he needs is more drama, especially from a forger’s daughter. But when the two meet “accidentally” at St. Augustine’s 350-year-old Spanish fort, he can’t refuse the intriguing woman.

 

Broken Bow is among seventy-three Plains Indians transported to Florida in 1875 for incarceration at ancient Fort Marion. Sally Jo Harris and Luke Worthing dream of serving on a foreign mission field, but when the Indians reach St. Augustine, God changes their plans. However, when Sally Jo’s friendship with Broken Bow leads to false accusations, it could cost them their lives.

 

Can Dani discover how Broken Bow and Sally Jo’s story ends and how it impacted her father’s life?

 

(NOTE: This blurb does not yet match bookseller’s descriptions, but it IS the same book).