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.
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 tried to remove them but they clung to Black Horse. The soldiers couldn't take his wife and daughter from him.
Black Horse's wife and daughter were with him - the soldier let Black Horse have them. There was some honor to those men.
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.
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 Pratt's approach was one of the beginnings of a systematic effort to educate the Indians.
Bear's Heart-I dreamed they tied a pencil to my hand. I dreamed they tied the ocean to our beds.
Drawing was now their war. The past brought regret and sadness because it was far away. They remembered the cries of their families as they left. How could they draw what they heard?
Tourists came to the fort to look at the prisoners. They stared when the Indians walked in town with Captain Pratt. The prisoners polished sea beans. They sold their drawings to the tourists.
Black Horse had his wife, Pe-ah-in, and his child, Ah-kes, because they had jumped into the wagon as it left Fort Sill. Where were the wives and children of the other prisoners? Would they be taken by others? Would the prisoners see them again? Would the land be there when they returned? Would they return?
Why had the new people come? What council had they sat in? Look at their wagons going farther across the land. Look at their towns where the prisoners stopped. The new people had buildings that could not be moved. They stood as a buffalo herd without legs, as teepees that could not be folded up and moved.
From Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education - Diane Glancy, Nebraska Press
Image: frontispiece, Ledger Book Drawing: The Catch, Bear's Heart
