Native American pupils at Carlisle Indian School, c. 1900.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School, (1879 - 1918), was an Indian Boarding School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt at a disused barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The so-called “noble experiment” was a failed attempt to forcibly assimilate Native American children into the culture of the United States. The United States Army War College now occupies the site of the former school. Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... Coordinates , Government County Cumberland County Founded 1751 Mayor Kirk R. Wilson Geographical characteristics Area     City 14. ... General Richard Henry Pratt (December 6, 1840–April 23, 1924) was an American soldier and educator. ... Official language(s) None Capital Harrisburg Largest city Philadelphia Area  Ranked 33rd  - Total 46,055 sq mi (119,283 km²)  - Width 160 miles (255 km)  - Length 280 miles (455 km)  - % water 2. ... Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... The United States Army War College is a U. S. Army school located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, specifically in the historic Carlisle Barracks. ...

History

As an officer in the Civil War, Pratt commanded a Buffalo Soldier’s regiment that used Native American scouts as mercenaries. In 1875, Pratt was transferred to Fort Marion, a POW camp in Florida where several Native American leaders were held hostage to allow the U.S. Government to coerce their respective nations. At Fort Marion, Pratt set about “civilizing” his captives: taking away their traditional clothing in favor of military uniforms, cutting their traditional braids, teaching them English, etc. Combatants United States of America (Union) Confederate States of America (Confederacy) Commanders Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant Jefferson Davis, Robert Edward Lee Strength 2,200,000 1,064,000 Casualties 110,000 killed in action, 360,000 total dead, 275,200 wounded 93,000 killed in action, 258,000 total... Buffalo Soldier For the 2001 film of the same name, see Buffalo Soldiers (2001 film). ... The Castillo de San Marcos is a Spanish built fort located in the city of St. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A hostage is a person (sometimes another entity) which is held by a captor (often a criminal abductor) in order to compel another party (relative, employer, government. ...

"It seems curious that church people, humanitarians, and idealists should fall so much in love with Pratt. He was a quite ordinary army officer who had developed a marked ability for knocking the spirit out of the Indians and turning them into docile students who would obey all orders. Pratt was a domineering man who knew only one method for dealing with anyone who opposed his will. He bullied them into submission." (Hyde, 1979, p. 289)

Pratt’s founding principle for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” "Pratt saw his education program with the Native Americans as analogous to his domestication of wild turkeys" (Fear-Segal 329). Apparently, he took a nest of wild turkey eggs to be mothered by his barnyard hen, and they became as assimilated as his best domesticated turkeys. They only needed, in Pratt's words, “the environment and kind treatment of domestic civilized life to become a very part of it" (Fear-Segal 329). Pratt believed that the Native Americans should be totally uprooted from their tribal past in order to “achieve full participation.” In practice, this meant erasing, as much as possible, any trace of Native American customs, culture, language and religion from the children at the school.

"They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get ‘civilized’….It means ‘be like the white man’… And the books told how bad the Indians had been to the white men—burning their towns and killing their women and children. But I had seen white men do that to Indians. We all wore white man's clothes and ate white man's food and went to white man's churches and spoke white man's talk. And so after a while we also began to say Indians were bad. We laughed at our own people…” Sun Elk, Taos Pueblo, Carlisle, 1890 [1] Taos Pueblo, circa 1920 Taos Pueblo (or Pueblo de Taos), continuously inhabited for over 1000 years, is the ancient town of the Northern Tiwa speaking tribe of Pueblo people, Native Americans. ...

Student recruitment

Parents were often coerced – or outright forced – to send their children to schools like Carlisle. Indian Affairs Commissioner Thomas Jefferson Morgan explained: "I would...use the Indian police if necessary. I would withhold from [the Indian adults] rations and supplies...and when every other means was exhausted...I would send a troop of United States soldiers…” [2] The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the Department of the Interior charged with the administration and management of 55. ...

"None of us wanted to go and our parents didn't want to let us go….I remember looking back at Na-tah-ki and she was crying too….Once there our belongings were taken from us, even the little medicine bags our mothers had given to us to protect us from harm. Everything was placed in a heap and set afire. Next was the long hair, the pride of all the Indians. The boys, one by one, would break down and cry when they saw their braids thrown on the floor. All of the buckskin clothes had to go and we had to put on the clothes of the White Man.” -- Lone Wolf, Blackfoot [3] Bear Bull The Blackfoot Confederacy is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana. ...

To save their children from capture, some parents taught their children a hiding “game” to be used when Indian Affairs officers arrived. The Hopi nation surrendered groups of their men to prison sentences in Alcatraz rather than send their children to the schools.[4] Hopi woman dressing hair of unmarried girl. ... Alcatraz Island is located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California. ...

Abuse

Hundreds of children died at Carlisle.[5] While some died from diseases foreign to Native American’s immune systems (tuberculosis, pneumonia, smallpox, etc.) others died while attempting to escape from the school or from physical, emotional and sexual abuse or malnutrition. Beatings were a common form of punishment for grieving, speaking their native languages, not understanding English, attempting to escape and violations of harsh military rules. Other forms of punishment included confinement and being forced to eat lye soap.

"(O)ne of the boys said something in Indian to another boy. The man in charge of us pounced on the boy, caught him by the shirt, and threw him across the room. Later we found out that his collar-bone was broken.” -- Lone Wolf, Blackfoot [6]

The children who arrived at Carlisle able to speak some English were presented to the other children as “translators”. The authorities at the School, however, used these children’s traditional respect for elders to turn them into informants, used to catch other children’s misbehaviors.

Part of the culture the School sought to destroy was reflected in the children’s names. While traditional Native American names reflected relationships and life experiences, the new names were assigned randomly from a list of “acceptable” names.

"The boys and girls at Carlisle Indian School were trained to be cannon fodder in American wars, to serve as domestics and farm hands, and to leave off all ideas or beliefs that came to them from their Native communities, including and particularly their belief that they were entitled to land, life, liberty, and dignity….separated from all that is familiar; stripped, shorn, robbed of their very self; renamed." -- Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna/Sioux, 1994.[7] Cannon Fodder is an expression used to denote the treatment of armed forces as a worthless commodity to be expended. ... Laguna may refer to more than one article: Laguna, a Philipine province; Laguna, Santa Catarina, a city located in southern Brazil; Laguna de Cameros, a municipality in La Rioja, Spain San Cristóbal de La Laguna (also La Laguna), a municipality in the island of Tenerife, province of Santa Cruz... The Sioux (also: Lakota) are a Native American people. ...

Results

By the time the “noble experiment” at Carlisle ended, over 10,000 children had been through the school. Less than 8% graduated while well over twice that many ran away.

Pratt experienced conflict with government officials over his outspoken views on the need for Native Americans to assimilate. This led to Pratt's forced retirement as superintendent of the Carlisle School on June 30, 1904.

American football

Today, the School is most widely remembered for its star American football player, Jim Thorpe and their team the Carlisle Indians, coached by "Pop" Warner. United States simply as football, is a competitive team sport that is both fast-paced and strategic. ... This article is about the athlete. ... Glenn Scobey Pop Warner in a 1997 USA Postage stamp. ...

Battlefield & classroom

ImageMetadata File history File links BattlefieldandClassroom. ... ImageMetadata File history File links BattlefieldandClassroom. ...

Bibliography

• Pratt, Richard Henry (2004). Battlefield and classroom : four decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-80-613603-0.
• Witmer, Linda F. (1993). The Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1879-1918. Carlisle, Pa.: Cumberland County Historical Society. ISBN 0-96-389230-4.
• Pratt, Richard Henry (1983). How to deal with the Indians: the potency of environment. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress Photoduplication Service.
• Eastman, Alaine Goodale (1935). Pratt, the Red Man's Moses. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. LCCN 35021899.
• Pratt, Richard Henry (1979). The Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania : its origins, purposes, progress, and the difficulties surmounted. Carlisle, Pa.: Cumberland County Historical Society.
• Richard Henry Pratt Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

In film

• Part of the 2005 mini-series on Turner Network Television, Into the West, takes place at the school.

Into the West Into the West is a 2005 miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks which began as a six-week event on June 10, 2005 on Turner Network Television (TNT). ...

See also

• Indian boarding school
• Zitkala-Sa
• Cultural Genocide

Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (February 22, 1876 - January 26, 1938), better known under her pen name, Zitkala-Sa (Sioux: pronounced zitkala-ša, Red Bird), was a Native American writer and political activist. ... Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political or military reasons. ...

External links

• Carlisle Indian School Research Pages
• In the white man's image, The American Experience, a production of the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium and the Nebraska Educational Television Network for The American experience ; produced and written by Christine Lesiak; United States : WETA-TV, February 17, 1992.
• Cumberland County Historical Society
• Richard Henry Pratt Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.