Fort Marion Plains Indian Imprisonment, 1875–1878

In 1875, seventy-two Indigenous prisoners from the southern Plains were transported to Fort Marion, now Castillo de San Marcos, at St Augustine, Florida. Their confinement followed the Red River War and removed them far from their families and homelands.

Under military supervision, prisoners were subjected to English-language instruction, Christian mission activity and programmes intended to replace Indigenous identities with Euro-American norms. Some produced ledger art that documented memory, experience and adaptation.

The episode is central to the history of coercive assimilation and later off-reservation boarding schools. Love’s Fortress connects a modern ledger-art mystery with fictional lives shaped by the imprisonment.