Especificaciones de los campos de los registros
5.1 Registros de tipo 1
Across America from the 1890s until the 1930s, reacting to an increased foreign- born population in the United States, native-born Americans tried to Americanize
278 Graham, Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine, 175, 266, 301, 315. In 1897, the War Department closed Fort
Marion to civilian visitors because of unrest in Cuba, but this lasted only for a week as St. Augustine’s local army colonel insisted that, “the fort was more a tourist attraction of historical interest than a real military base.” Graham, Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine, 341.
279 Graham, Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine, 398, 404. President Harding also visited St. Augustine, for
nineteen consecutive years, and chose his cabinet in town. Lane, “Presidential Days in the Nation’s Oldest City.”
immigrants, instructing them in the English language, American government, and
American history.280 A colonial revival, a movement that idolized America’s origins and the Founding Fathers, was a part of this phenomenon. A lot of public art in this period was created in order to instill patriotism in new citizens. Teachers Americanized youth by taking them to historically significant places.281 The Colonial Dames of America, a society of women descended from colonists who lived in British America, formed as a result of colonial revivalism, and their activity in St. Augustine sought to teach the public about the history of a colonial structure.
A congressional act approved bronze plaques, designed by the Colonial Dames of America, to be applied upon the façade of the Castillo. Unveiled by President-elect Warren Harding, they remained there until the late twentieth century. Mrs. Chas P. Lovell designed the plaques, Allen G. Newman, “of national reputation,” sculpted them, and Paul E. Cabaret & Co. of New York City did the bronze work.282 The design, as
reported in an article from 1920, “faithfully embodies Mrs. Lovell’s ideas for figures representing four epochs of Florida history – American Indian – Spanish Explorer – English Gentleman – American Pioneer.”283 Yet the writing on the panels did not pay equal homage to each of these groups. As seen in the far left of Figure 3-1, the Dames did depict an American Indian. But the only written mentions on the bronze plaques of Indians were of one such Indian killing a “Spanish adventurer,” of “a band of Apalachee Indians Captured in war…put to work on this Building,” and of “famous Indians”
280 William B. Rhoads, “The Colonial Revival and the Americanization of Immigrants,” in The Colonial
Revival in America, ed. Alan Axelrod (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), 341.
281 Rhoads, “The Colonial Revival,” 342.
282 “Data Concerning Tablet for Fort Marion St. Augustine” Military Construction, Fort Marion. February
27, 1920. CASA Archives, St. Augustine Historical Society.
imprisoned at the fort in the nineteenth century.284 The plaques were riddled with errors; Apalachee were drafted into labor, not captured. The Dames made out Indians to be killers and convicts. They worshipped individual French and Spanish explorers that paved the way for an American settlement in Florida. The company doing the bronze work, Paul E. Cabaret & Co., said the project was the most “artistic and most unusual they had ever worked on.”285
Figure 3-1. The bronze plaques and figures that hung above the entrance (in the plaza de
armas) of the Castillo de San Marcos until the late twentieth century. From left to the
right the figures are supposed to represent the American Indian, the Spanish explorer, the English gentleman, and the American explorer. “Fort Marion Tablet. Presented to the U.S. Government. By the COLONIAL DAMES of FLORIDA At St. AUGUSTINE. FEB. 22nd 1921.” CASA Archives. Fort Caroline. National Park Service.
The unveiling of the tablets, an event the St. Augustine Evening Record covered in detail, took place in 1921. The procession accompanying the unveiling was called “The
284 “Text for bronze plaques installed over the entrance to Ft. Marion in 1920 by the Colonial Dames of
America,” transcribed by Charles Tingley, CASA Archives, Fort Caroline, National Park Service.
Change of Flags Over the Old Fort.”286 The flags carried in the ceremony were the 1638 Spanish Cross of Burgundy, the 1763 British flag, the 1783 old Spanish standard, the 1821 United States flag, the 1861 Confederate flag, and the 1921 American “Flag we Love Best,” quite a patriotic statement.287 By then the American flag flew over the Spanish fort and the fort was to be a point of pride for both Florida and the nation as a whole. The unveiling ceremony very much felt like a military affair. Veterans from World War I attended, along with Company F, the old Jacksonville Rifles, President-elect Harding, senators, majors, and generals.288 The fort was continuously a place of military
boasting. The event was held on George Washington’s birthday and the one-hundredth anniversary of the United States’ purchase of Florida from Spain.289 The Dames’ bronze plaques may have acknowledged the Indians as being part of Florida’s past, but Florida was now an American prize. It was celebrated for its longevity as a conquest for Americans of European descent. The time of the Indian in Florida was seen as a base step, from which Florida evolved to foster European and American values.
Yet despite the military nature of the unveiling ceremony, a transition had taken place in the fort in 1900. Fort Marion was no longer an active defensive fortification. The fort was to be defined in the twentieth century solely as a tourist destination. When, in June of 1921, the War Department provisionally listed the fort for disposal and Major Lamen voiced his opposition, Fort Marion’s status as America’s oldest fortification was cited as reason for its preservation.290 Its architectural style was almost extinct and the
286 “Part of Program Tablet Unveiling Given Herewith,” St. Augustine Evening Record (St. Augustine, FL),
February 19, 1921.
287 “Part of Program Tablet Unveiling Given Herewith.” 288 “Part of Program Tablet Unveiling Given Herewith.”
289 “Tablet Unveiling at Fort Marion on February 22nd,” Evening Record (St. Augustine, FL), February 18,
1921.
bronze tablets from the Colonial Dames had just been erected. Lamen’s full quotation was:
To allow a spot so intimately connected with the history of this country to pass into the hands of private parties or to be controlled by state or municipal
authorities would outrage local public sentiment in a manner somewhat similar to what would follow the suggestion that Washington’s Monument or Arlington Cemetery be disposed of.291
To additionally compare the local significance of Fort Marion to that of Arlington Cemetery meant that St. Augustinians saw the fort as a memorial to the city’s past and saw that past as integral to America’s identity. This growing attitude ensured the preservation of the fort.
Continuing examination of the fort’s environs contributed to interest in its past and dredged up the history of groups of people the public had been keen to ignore. In the 1920s at the fort, the St. Augustine Evening Record brought to locals’ attention the
unearthing of human remains on the river side of North Beach. One skeleton was found with nine brass rings, remnants of black silk, and blue and pink beads.292 The first of a pair of stories, published on April 24, speculated on the cause of death of this presumed woman and why a woman would die with so many rings. Two days later, the Evening
Record published a follow up article titled, “Skeleton May Have Been of Indian.”
William F. Brown, custodian of the fort at the time, told the Evening Record that three Indians, two men and one woman, died thirty years ago in the fort and were buried in an unmarked grave near North Beach point.293 The dates were not exact, but the article continued, “Many in St. Augustine will remember the quartering of a band of Indians,
291 Major William Lamen quoted in Arana, “Defenses and Defenders,” 172.
292 “Mystery Solved Only By Accident,” St. Augustine Evening Record (St. Augustine, FL), April 24, 1923. 293 “Skeleton May Have Been of Indian,” St. Augustine Evening Record (St. Augustine, FL), April 26,
said to have been Apaches from the west, in the old fortress.”294 At the request of the tribe, allegedly, the deceased individuals were buried near the ocean with certain significant items.295 These articles speak to how quickly St. Augustinians forgot, or
never commemorated in the first place, the burial of Indian prisoners who died at the fort. Less than one generation after the Apache incarceration, when a skeleton was unearthed at North Beach, the public was flummoxed about the identity of the body, and what these brass rings signified. It took another article from the local paper to remind the public of the Indian deaths, and that Apache “from the west” had once resided “in the old fortress.” There was soon to be an increase in activity at the fort that further distracted locals from past accounts of captive Indians dwelling amidst them. In an effort to stimulate job growth and an interest in American historic sites, the federal government funded historical research and restoration projects at the Castillo.