Museum Exhibition Examines Drawings from Fort Marion

A new exhibition at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, California explores the history and legacy of Native American drawings created at Fort Marion between 1875-78. Informed by the knowledge and perspectives of descendants and representatives of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Kiowa Tribes, as well as students at the University of California San Diego, Historic Footprints: Native American Ledger Drawing from Fort Marion showcases a rare group of drawings offering insights into Indigenous resilience during a period of forced assimilation.

In 1875, a group of 73 Native Americans were incarcerated, without trial, at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. During their imprisonment, the fort commander Captain Richard Henry Pratt provided a group of inmates with paper and pencils. The exhibition at the Mingei Museum emphasises the long history of figurative drawing on the Plains as a form of visual record-keeping. Following in that tradition, the works created at Fort Marion reflect the artists' lived experiences during and prior to their incarceration within the broader historical context of Native American displacement and adaptation. “The act of recording affirmed their agency and humanity in the face of a project of cultural genocide,” the curators note. “The hostages incarcerated at Fort Marion preserved cultural continuity and creativity in the face of oppression and imprisonment; they survived, flourished, adapted new forms of expression, and represented their own experiences.”

Historic Footprints is the second exhibition to highlight the resilience of Native American prisoners at Fort Marion through drawing in close collaboration with descendant communities. Between 2022-2024, the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida, and the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma presented Imprisoned but Empowered: Cheyenne Warrior Artists at Fort Marion, co-curated with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Peace Chief Gordon Yellowman.

Historic Footprints: Native American Ledger Drawing from Fort Marion is on view at the Mingei International Museum, San Diego, CA, between April 12 - August 17, 2025.