Carlisle Indian Industrial School
|
| “ | 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. | „ |
| ~ Luther Standing Bear, a student at Carlisle, describes life at the school. |
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle Barracks, which was transferred to the Department of Interior from the War Department.
After the United States entry into World War I, the school was closed and this property was transferred back to the Department of Defense. All the property is now part of the U.S. Army War College.
History edit
Founded in 1879 under U.S. governmental authority by General Richard Henry Pratt (then a Captain), Carlisle was one of the early federally funded off-reservation Indian boarding schools. The Choctaw Academy at Great Crossings, Kentucky was the first.
In his own words, Pratt’s motto was, “Kill the Indian, save the man;” a mentality which was then applied on a larger scale to the ethnic cleansing and cultural assimilation efforts of the Native American boarding school system.
After the government assessed the initial success of older Indian students at Hampton Normal and Agricultural School and some in upstate New York, who were former prisoners of war, General Richard Henry Pratt was authorized to establish the first all-Indian school, Carlisle, in 1879 at the historic Carlisle Barracks in central Pennsylvania. The property was transferred from the War Department to the Department of Interior for this purpose.
As at Hampton, arriving students were shorn of their long hair, and even their names were changed. However, "unlike Hampton, whose purpose was to return assimilated educated Indians to their people, Carlisle meant to turn the school into the ultimate Americanizer". At Carlisle, Pratt attempted to "Kill the Indian: Save the Man". He 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 who exhibited Native behavior, so that they would rely only on themselves.
Carlisle became the model for 26 off-reservation Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools in 15 states and territories. Some private boarding schools were sponsored by religious denominations. It has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. In addition, the government operated a total of more than 300 schools on reservations, many of which accepted boarding students from other tribes.
From 1879 until 1918, more than 10,000 Native American children from 140 tribes attended Carlisle. The school's 1911 Annual Report included the results of an employment survey of 532 graduates and 3619 other ex-students. Tribes with the largest number of students included the Lakota, Ojibwe, Cherokee, Apache, Cheyenne, Alaska Native, and Iroquois Seneca and Oneida. The Carlisle Indian School exemplified Progressive Era values. Some believed Carlisle provided an excellent education, while others have criticized it for continuing the process of eradicating Native American culture.