19th century students from 140 tribes attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School. at Fort Marion in
St. Augustine, Florida in 1875. Several of these veterans later attended Carlisle Industrial School with a young student Founded in 1879 by Lieutenant
Richard Henry Pratt under
U.S. government authorization, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an early federally funded off-reservation Indian boarding school initiated by the U.S. government. The
Choctaw Academy in
Scott County, Kentucky, was the first such boarding school, but it was initiated by
Choctaw leaders and then funded by the U.S. government through the 1819
Civilization Fund Act. Pratt had earlier supervised Native American prisoners of war, and supported some of them in gaining education at Hampton College. He became convinced that education was the key to assimilation. In his own words, Pratt's motto was, "Kill the Indian, save the man." The US applied this principle to the
cultural assimilation efforts of the larger American Indian boarding school system, by requiring children to speak only English, practice Christianity, take on new names and wear European-American style clothing. Pratt wrote that he believed that Native Americans were 'equal' to European Americans, and that the school worked to immerse students into mainstream Euro-American culture. He believed that this would enable them to advance and thrive in the dominant society, and be leaders to their people. At Carlisle, Pratt established a highly structured, quasi-military regime. He was known to use corporal punishment, which was not uncommon in society at the time, on students. Carlisle emerged as the model for 26 off-reservation
Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools that were ultimately developed in 15 states and territories. Some private boarding schools were sponsored by religious denominations. In addition, the government operated a total of more than 300 schools on reservations, many of which accepted boarding students from other tribes. At
Fort Marion, Florida in the 1870s, Pratt was assigned to supervise former warriors, several dozen Native American prisoners selected from among those who had surrendered in the
Indian Territory at the end of the
Red River War. He gradually introduced them to classes in the English language, art, guard duty, and craftsmanship. The program became well known. Distinguished visitors began to visit from all over the country, especially as St. Augustine had become a winter resort for the wealthy. The U.S. Commissioner of Education came to see firsthand what Pratt was doing, as did the president of
Amherst College. Pratt's Fort Marion program convinced him that "distant education" was the only way to totally assimilate the Indian. He wrote, the Indian "is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Transfer the savage born infant to the surroundings of a civilization and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit." Pratt wrote: If all men are created equal, then why were blacks segregated in separate regiments and Indians segregated on separate tribal reservations? Why weren't all men given equal opportunities and allowed to assume their rightful place in society? Race became a meaningless abstraction in his mind. Pratt believed an industrial school model similar to the Hampton Institute would be useful for educating and assimilating Native Americans. Pratt and his supporters successfully lobbied Congress to establish the off-reservation boarding school for Native Americans at the historic
Carlisle Barracks in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. By October 1879, Pratt had recruited the first students for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School; 82 boys and girls arrived one night at midnight at the railroad station. They were met by hundreds of local residents who escorted them to the "Old Barracks". The Carlisle Indian School formally opened on November 1, 1879, with an enrollment of 147 students. The youngest was six and the eldest twenty-five, but the majority were teenagers. Two-thirds were children of leaders of the Plains Indian tribes, with whom the U.S. had recently been at war. The first class was made up of 84 Lakota, 52 Cheyenne, Kiowa and Pawnee, and 11 Apache. The class included a group of students, former prisoners from Fort Marion, who wanted to continue their education with Pratt at Carlisle. Pratt believed Native Americans were the equal of whites, and founded Carlisle to immerse their children in white culture and teach them English, new skills and customs, in order to help them survive. After the end of
Great Sioux War in 1877, the Lakota people were impoverished, harassed and confined to reservations ... many believed that Native Americans were a vanishing race whose only hope for survival was rapid cultural transformation. Thus the U.S. government urgently sought a 'progressive' educational model to quickly assimilate Indians into white culture. Whether this could be achieved and how rapidly it could be done was unknown. Pratt believed he could make use of the Carlisle facility. He thought its proximity to officials in Washington, D.C. would help him educate officials about the Indian capacity for learning. As part of Pratt's curriculum in cultural and language immersion, the school's students were expected to learn English. School officials also required students to take new English names, either by choice or assignment. This was confusing, as the names from which they had to choose had no meaning for them.
Luther Standing Bear (
Sicangu-
Oglala) was one of the first students when Carlisle began operations in 1879. He was asked to choose a name from a list on the wall. He randomly pointed at the symbols on a wall, and was renamed as Luther. The school assigned his father's name, Standing Bear, as his surname. The children were forced to change their manner of dress and to give up their traditional tribal ways. The boys all had long hair, which was a strong tradition in their cultures: it was cut short in Euro-American style. Students were required to wear school uniforms of American-style clothing, and girls were provided with uniform dresses. Standing Bear later wrote of this period: The civilizing process at Carlisle began with clothes. Whites believed the Indian children could not be civilized while wearing moccasins and blankets. Their hair was cut because in some mysterious way long hair stood in the path of our development. They were issued the clothes of white men. High collar stiff-bosomed shirts and suspenders fully three inches in width were uncomfortable. White leather boots caused actual suffering. Standing Bear said that red flannel underwear caused "actual torture". He remembered the red flannel underwear as "the worst thing about life at Carlisle". Some children arrived at Carlisle able to speak some English; they were used by school officials as translators for other students. Officials sometimes took advantage of the children's traditional respect for elders to get them to inform on peers' misbehaviors. This was consistent with accepted practice in the large European-American families of the time, where older children were often required to care for and discipline their younger siblings. School discipline was strict and consistent, according to the military tradition. Students faced 'courts-martial' for serious cases.
Elaine Goodale Eastman, who had supervised government Indian education on reservations west of the Missouri River, later wrote of Carlisle that organizing Indian boys into squads and companies appealed to their warrior traditions. She believed they complied because they wanted to earn officers' ranks, recognition, and privileges. She also observed that there was 'genuine affection' between the Captain and the students. Children who could not adjust at Carlisle eventually returned to their families and homes. Some ran away because of being homesick and unhappy. According to Eastman, several years after one young man ran away, he approached Pratt in the lobby of a New York hotel. He said that he had found a good job, was working hard, and had saved some money. "Hurrah!" the Captain exclaimed. "I wish all my boys would run away!"
Student recruitment In November 1878, Pratt was ordered by the War Department to report to the Secretary of the Interior for 'Indian education' duty. He traveled to
Dakota Territory to recruit Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota students for the new school. These tribes were selected by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra Hayt, because they had resisted ceding more territory to the United States government. It was less than three years after Lakota warriors and their allies had defeated
Custer and the
U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment at the
Little Big Horn. The War Department ordered Pratt to go to Red Cloud (Oglala) and
Spotted Tail (Sicangu), to compel the chiefs to surrender their children. The government believed that by removing the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota children from their homes, the US would have leverage against the tribes in their continuing attempt to acquire tribal land. Pratt said that, "The children would be hostages for the good behavior of the people." Pratt persuaded tribal elders and chiefs that the reason the
"Washichu" (Lakota word for white man, loosely translates to Takes the Fat) had been able to take their land was that the Indians were uneducated. He said that the Natives were disadvantaged by being unable to speak and write English and, if they had that knowledge, they might have been able to protect themselves. Pratt used this speech to convince chief Spotted Tail to send his children to the school. At first he had been reluctant to relinquish his children to the government that had stolen native land and violated their treaties. Spotted Tail, you are a remarkable man. [...] You are such an able man that you are the principal chief of these thousands of your people. But Spotted Tail, you cannot read or write. You claim that the government has tricked your people and placed the lines of your reservation a long way inside of where it was agreed that they should be. [...] You signed that paper, knowing only what the interpreter told you it said. If anything happened when the paper was being made up that changed its order, if you had been educated and could read and write, you could have known about it and refused to put your name on it. Do you intend to let your children remain in the same condition of ignorance in which you have lived, which will compel them always to meet the whiter man at a great disadvantage through an interpreter, as you have to do? [...] As your friend, Spotted Tail, I urge you to send your children with me to this Carlisle School and I will do everything I can to advance them in intelligence and industry in order that they may come back and help you. Consent to send students to Carlisle was often gained with concessions, such as the promise to allow tribal leaders inspect the school soon after it opened. (
Oglala Lakota) at Carlisle Indian School, c. 1879 (Oglala Lakota), at Carlisle, June 1880 The first group of inspectors, some 40 Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota chiefs representing nine Missouri River agencies, visited Carlisle in June 1880. Other tribal leaders followed. Before tribal delegations returned home, they usually spent a few days in Washington where they received the plaudits of government officials for allowing their children to participate in the Carlisle experiment. Some tribes initially consented to sending their children to off-reservation boarding schools, but many were skeptical of the school system and its intentions. Many tribes did not believe the promises of the schools, as they were scarred by the genocidal tactics of the U.S. government. Once students were in school, communication with home was virtually cut off. Letters from parents were left unsent by Indian Agents, and parents were not notified promptly when their children were ill or even after they died. Although the
Civilization Fund Act of 1819 required parental consent for children to be sent to off-reservation boarding schools, in practice children were regularly forcibly removed. US officials justified the practice of forceful removal because they believed that native parenting practices were seen as inferior to mainstream white parenting. John S. Ward, a
US Indian Agent, said that "The parents of these Indian children are ignorant, and know nothing of the value of education... Parental authority is hardly known or exercised among the Indians in this agency. The agent should be endowed with some kind of authority to enforce attendance. The agent here has found that a threat to depose a captain if he does not make the children attend school has had a good effect." Ward reiterated the US government's self-appointed position as a patriarchal ward over natives. Government officials treated tribal nations as dependents, and acted as if they could justifiably force a childlike nation to do what was best for them. The US officially legalized the denial of native parental rights in 1891, leading to mass forced removal of native children from their families. It was not until the 1976
Indian Child Welfare Act that this practice was ended.
American Horse Oglala Lakota Chief
American Horse was one of the earliest advocates of 'western' (Euro-immigrant) education for Native Americans. While recruiting at
Pine Ridge Reservation, Pratt had met strong opposition from Chief Red Cloud. He distrusted white education but had no school-age children. American Horse "took a lively interest" in what Pratt had to say. He was a tribal leader and head of a large household with at least ten children. He believed that his children would have to deal with whites, and perhaps live with them, whether they liked it or not. He decided to send two sons and a daughter for the first class at Carlisle in 1879.
Model U.S. Indian Boarding School Pratt was so successful in his correspondence and methods that many Western chiefs, whose people were suffering from cold and hunger on their reservations, begged him to bring more children East. The chiefs also wrote to Washington with a request to educate more of their children. News of the educational experiment spread rapidly, and many whites went to Carlisle to volunteer services and professional talents. Pratt developed a photographic record of the school for publicity and documentation. The institution and the school were photographed during the school's existence by approximately a dozen professional photographers. The first and best known photographer of the Carlisle Indian School was
John Nicolas Choate. After Indian dress was replaced with military uniforms and the children's hair was cut in Anglo fashion, the Indians' physical appearance was transformed. In an effort to convince doubters of the transformation possible, Pratt hired photographers to present this evidence. Before and after "contrast" photos were sent to officials in Washington, friends of the new school, and back to reservations to recruit new students. The minimum age for students was fourteen, and all students were required to be at least one-fourth Indian. The Carlisle term was five years, and the consent forms which the parents signed before the agent so stated. Pratt refused to return pupils earlier unless they were ill, unsuitable mentally, or a menace to others. Between 1899 and 1904, Carlisle issued thirty to forty-five degrees a year. In 1905, a survey of 296 Carlisle graduates showed that 124 had entered government service (often with reservation agencies), and 47 were employed off the reservations. Anniversaries and other school events attracted whites of distinction. US senators, Indian commissioners, secretaries of the Interior, college presidents, and noted clergymen were among those invited to present the diplomas or address the graduating class upon these occasions. The gymnasium held 3,000 persons and was generally filled with an audience of townspeople and distinguished visitors showing their support for aspiring Carlisle students. ==Community==