Art and literacy: a new assessment of the Fort Marion drawings

Abstract

During the years 1875-1878, Fort Marion, an old Spanish fortress on the coast of Florida in the city of St. Augustine, was populated by seventy-one Native American prisoners. The individuals were held in exile from their homelands on the Southern Plains of the United States by the Federal Government, which sought to prevent further conflict in that volatile region. The warden of the fort turned prison, Richard Henry Pratt, sought to reform his charges and shape them in his image by implementing an assimilation program designed to teach the body, soul, and mind of the prisoners. Through the program, Pratt attempted to remove the Indian from the prisoners and place them on the white man's road, which would allow them to survive in modern America. While in the prison, not all aspects of Plains life were removed as the men were still allowed to draw and create what is called ledger art. Within the art context of Fort Marion, a number of changes occurred in the conventions that accompanied ledger art on the Plains. One such change was the incorporation of the English language into the images, both as text and as artistic feature. A confluence of two cultures emerged out of the unique circumstances of the prison as a borderland; between the Native American prisoners and the Euro-Americans who visited them. Mediated by the introduction of English, the exchanges that took place between the two cultures can be seen in the artwork, which represents symbolic power relations and the ways the artists negotiated a period of uncertain change.