A poetic imagining of what it meant for Native American warriors from the American Great Plains to be imprisoned on a stone fort on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and be educated in the culture of their captors.

The factual history of the prisoners at Fort Marion is well established. In 1875, seventy-two of Native Americans were captured on the Great Plains of the American Midwest. They were considered the most dangerous leaders of various tribes; Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, and Cheyenne and Caddo. One wife and one child accompanied the men. They were taken by train from Fort Sill in what is now Oklahoma to Fort Marion in St. Augustus, Florida. Over the next three years, they were taught to read and write English by Richard Pratt. After three years, twelve of the men had died and about 40 were allowed to return to the West. Others chose to continue their education at Hampton Institute, an institution which Pratt established to educate both Plains Indians and ex-slaves.

Diane Glancy is part Cherokee. She has spent her lifetime teaching in public schools and colleges about the tensions between Native American and European American cultures. She has published numerous books of poetry and prose relating to the topic. In this innovative book, she gives us details and perspectives we could not glean from reading traditional history–“the history that is not in history books.” She dares to explore a new way of understanding the past that is unlike the alleged objective methods of professional history. She does not claim that all history should be approached in this way, but that history is always assembling fragments. In her view, there are many valid stories to be told including many that have never been told.
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