Fort Marion: Richard Henry Pratt’S Recreation of Penitential Regimes at the Old Fort and Its Influence on American Indian Education
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Volume 1, Issue 7, 2018 The Experiment at Fort Marion: Richard Henry Pratt’s Recreation of Penitential Regimes at the Old Fort and its Influence on American Indian Education Sarah Kathryn Pitcher Hayes, Seminole State College Between the Atlantic Ocean and Florida Territory, to the United States. St. Augustine’s historic district stands While several nations occupied the fort Castillo de San Marcos, a large at various times, it was never taken Spanish fortress built in the sixteenth by force and never fell (“Fort Marion” century to protect Spanish occupied 2010). The National Park Service now St. Augustine from British forces. The operates the Castillo as a national fort withstood two sieges by the monument. Visitors to the monument British in the first half of the are struck by the ground’s ocean eighteenth century, and changed views and the fort’s towering coquina military occupation several times; it walls. Through the fort’s double was twice exchanged between Spain entrance lies the fort’s central and Great Britain, and in 1821 the courtyard, which is surrounded by British ceded the fort, along with all casemates that once served as guard 1 rooms, storage rooms, and a chapel. A prisoners-of-war under his care for staircase to the right of the entrance three years. Thirty-two Cheyenne leads to the terreplein and the four men, two Arapahoe men, twenty- diamond-shaped bastions that make seven Kiowa men, nine Comanche this fort into the shape of a star. Upon men and one Caddo man made the the terreplein, visitors will find original long, frightening journey by wagon, cannons and several placards train and steamboat.i Among them describing how the fort’s unique were some of the most notorious: construction aided soldiers in battle. Making Medicine (Cheyenne), Lone The casemates on the first floor Wolf and White Horse (Kiowa). This currently house several exhibits paper will focus on these three years describing the fort’s history, design of the Castillo’s history, which I will and construction, the soldiers’ living henceforth call Fort Marion. quarters, the chapel, and the artillery housed and used during battles. There The fort in St. Augustine is are also casemates dedicated to the predominantly remembered as a history of the first Spanish period, the space built and used for war, and second Spanish period, the British rightly so. I give credit to the curators period, and the American occupation. of the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument and the National Park The exhibit dedicated to American Service for dedicating the American occupation primarily focuses on the Occupation casemate to the story of United States’ use of the fort as a Richard Henry Pratt and the prisoner-of-war camp for Southwestern Indian prisoners-of-war. Southwestern American Indian The curators remember Pratt as “An prisoners between 1875 and 1878. At advocate for American Indian the end of the Red River War in 1875, education and civil rights,” and hundreds of Cheyenne, Comanche, mention Pratt’s “program of Kiowa and Arapaho chiefs and warriors assimilation” (American Occupation). surrendered to the United States at In the anti-Indian socio-political Fort Sill in present day Oklahoma. climate of the nineteenth century, Tasked with investigating the war Pratt believed that American Indian crimes of the surrendered was survival depended on American Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt’s Indians’ willingness to physically and investigation incriminated culturally assimilate into Euro- approximately 150 American Indians America. at Fort Sill, seventy-two of whom were arrested and transported to the fort in Pratt began his military career as a St. Augustine, which the Americans Union soldier. After the Civil War, the renamed Fort Marion. Pratt military stationed him in Indian volunteered to escort the warriors to Territory to help pacify growing Indian Fort Marion, where they remained hostilities against white settlers during 2 the Gold Rush. He quickly worked his earned many of them an education way up the military ranks, and in 1867 outside of the fort. Pratt’s seemingly he was promoted to second lieutenant successful experiment at Fort Marion in charge of the Tenth Cavalry, a earned him enough private donations regiment of (mostly) ex-slaves and federal funding to begin an Indian popularly known as the Buffalo education program at Hampton Soldiers. Pratt’s experience leading Normal and Agricultural Institute; the Tenth Cavalry, as well as with however, Pratt believed that American leading American Indian scouts, Indians had unique needs that informed his ideas regarding race and required an exclusively American education. Pratt’s experiences with Indian school, and he therefore slaves turned soldiers informed his opened the Carlisle Indian Industrial belief that nurture, not nature, School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in informed intelligence, and if placed in 1879. This transition from soldier to the right environment and given the jailor launched Pratt into his life’s work proper tools, American Indians, like in Indian education (Adams 1995). African Americans, could become valuable second-class citizens (Pratt While the National Park Service “Eleventh Report” n.d.). Much of and the curators of the Castillo de San Pratt’s writing, including his Marcos National Monument do an autobiography, Battlefield and excellent job telling the story of the Classroom, repeats this idea that Southwestern Indian prisoners-of-war, “savages” can become citizens, citing their story remains a minor part of the African Americans as success stories larger military history of the fort. and crediting assimilatory practices. Likewise, these three years also Pratt used his time at Fort Marion to remain a minor plot point in the experiment with his idea that “savage scholarship about Carlisle and the Indians” could be transformed into American Indian boarding schools. proper citizens through immersion in a While Pratt’s time at Fort Marion is European-style environment, acknowledged in histories of American education and labor. He provided the Indian boarding schools, most prisoners with the tools he believed scholars devote far more attention to could lead them to citizenship, namely Pratt’s later work founding and education in the English language, running the Carlisle School, labor, commerce and military drill. He deemphasizing Fort Marion as a cut the prisoners’ hair and dressed foundational period in Pratt’s thinking them in military regalia. The prisoners about Indian education. I assert that learned English quickly, attended the scholarship on both Fort Marion Christian services, sold their and the American Indian boarding handmade goods to tourists, and school should pay more attention to choreographed performances that the fort’s role as a laboratory for drew large audiences and eventually Pratt’s experiments in solving the 3 “Indian Problem,”ii because of how Spanish fort becomes a prisoner-of- Pratt’s use of the physical space of the war camp and the seed of the Fort informed the intellectual space of American Indian boarding school American Indian education. The system. Johnston argues that in late physical space of Fort Marion became seventeenth- and early eighteenth- what Norman Johnston (2000) calls a century Europe and nineteenth- “makeshift prison,” which allowed century America, castles (Europe) and Pratt to experiment with ideas of self- forts (America) were no longer needed transformation and citizenship made as blockades for defense and began to popular during the second prison be used as prisons. Because these reform movement; a movement that prisons were not built from the ground occurred parallel to Pratt’s tenure at up for the sole purpose of imprisoning Fort Marion. After examining how Fort people, the structures had to be Marion allowed Pratt the space to remodeled and altered over time to experiment with ideas and practices of suit their newly intended purposes. imprisonment and education, I Fort Marion had been constructed 200 analyze Pratt’s letters, currently years before Pratt’s arrival as a archived at the Beinecke Rare Book structure meant to keep opposing and Manuscript Library at Yale military out; therefore, Fort Marion University, to support my claim that had to be remodeled into a makeshift Pratt was indeed inspired by the prison, i.e. a space meant to keep regimes of the penitentiary during the people in. time he conceptualized his theories of American Indian education at Fort The United States military first Marion. By locating and analyzing used the fort as a prison camp in 1837 primary sources that illuminate Fort to imprison Seminole chief Osceola Marion’s important role as and his fellow warriors during the prison/school, by using spatial theory Second Seminole War, which the to read Fort Marion as a carceral American Occupation exhibit at the space, and by examining Pratt’s monument also highlights. However, letters to highlight how Pratt was some of these warriors escaped the inspired by the regimes of the fort through a nine-inch window penitentiary, this essay argues that placed fifteen feet above the ground in Fort Marion deserves an elevated one of the casemates. While the fort place in the memory of the Indian repelled the British and Spanish, it boarding school. proved weak fortification for its first American Indian prisoners. Because of Fort Marion as Makeshift Prison this escape, President Grant ordered Norman Johnston’s (2000) term United States military engineers to “makeshift prison” offers an especially secure the fort prior to Pratt’s and his useful way to analyze how an old prisoners’ arrival in 1875. Engineers fastened the windows with iron grating 4 and each casemate with a “heavy door soon inform American Indian and bolt…for padlocking.” Therefore, education. Furthermore, it allowed the casemates acted as secure cells Pratt to simultaneously practice because windows look into the modern penitential ideals of courtyard instead of the outside; At surveillance, self-surveillance, and the top of each door was a “narrow labor while also experimenting with slot” for ventilation, and plank floors and redefining the limitations of were installed in some of the imprisonment.