Ep. 18: A Warrior’s Account (feat. Native American Prisoners of War)

Glitter & Doom

After the Red River War in 1874, drawing was one of the few sanctioned ways that the prisoners of Fort Marion were able to keep their cultural traditions alive. Back home on the Plains, they would have commemorated a successful battle by depicting it on a buffalo hide, but in Florida, where they had been shipped off and stripped of their communities, these men drew what they knew on what they had – and for some, it was lined ledger paper. Emil Her Many Horses (curator, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian) speaks about the history, the practice and the people at Fort Marion.