The Castillo de San Marco is in St. Augustine, Florida. I planned to visit there because I found out that Osceola, the renowned Seminole warrior and several other key Seminole leaders, had been invited to the fort to discuss peace, after years of war with the U.S. The U.S. had been trying to evict them from Florida. When they arrived, did the government negotiate with them? No, they did not. In fact, they did the opposite. They captured them and held them prisoner in the fort. General Jessup was responsible, and when the public found out about this dishonorable thing he had done, he was met with no small amount of anger.
On a very hot humid summer morning, I keyed the Castillo into my GPS and drove the 162 miles there from my sister’s home, aiming to get there as close to opening time as possible. When I got within view, my heart sank. It was an enormous stone fortress. It felt utterly foreboding.
The second group to be imprisoned were the Apache, in 1886. The Apache are from the area of Arizona, NM, and Texas. But they were transported 2000 miles away, by train, to the fort/prison in St. Augustine. Their crime? Evading and fighting the U.S. army which was trying to take away their land. In addition, the army elected to separate Geronimo from the others and left him in Pensacola. His three wives, one pregnant, had to go on without him.
The third group were Plains Indians, including Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Caddo. Their crime? The same thing. Resisting the people who were hellbent on taking their land away from them. They were shackled with irons. Can you imagine how humiliating and infuriating it would be to be shackled like a common criminal when all you wanted to do was preserve the land that your ancestors had lived on for a very very long time?
Can you imagine once having had vast lands available to be walked upon and ridden upon and hunted on, and then to be locked in a heavy stone fortress? It would be enough to break your heart, I imagine.
(There is much more to say, but I want to at least share this much.)
