Carlisle Boarding School and Richard Pratt

Pratt arrived in 1875 in Florida with the prisoners and by the end of 1878 he was told that he was free to continue the education of the Indians being released from prison. After spending one year at the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, Pratt was permitted to take his students to an unused military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Thus was the beginning of one of the most significant of the residential Indian schools.

Carlisle and Hampton were the beginning of the system of schooling for Indian children that would prevail into the next century. At one point Pratt was told that an Army officer's place was with his regiment. Pratt answered angrily and with passion with a letter sent to President Hayes:

"Here a Lieutenant struggles to evolve order out of the chaos of fourteen different languages! Civilization out of savagery! Industry and thrift out of laziness! Education out of ignorance! Cleanliness out of filth! And is forced to educate the courage of his own instructors to the work, and see that all the interests of his Govt. and the Indian as well are properly served." (Adams, p.55)

In the opinion of the government and the white Christian reformers, the reservation schools were not only good for the Indian, but they were good for the surrounding community. The schools provided employment for local residents, and regularly purchased supplies from local merchants. The students themselves were a welcome source of cheap labor for the owners of the surrounding farms. At Carlisle, Pratt required students to live with "good white" families for at least part of every school year in order to see the benefits of having good moral character and living in the nuclear family structure as opposed to the tribal structure. This "outing" program, as Pratt called it, was to give the students "first hand" knowledge of civilization, and the beneficial influence of Christianity.

The policy makers proceeded towards their goal of assimilation in an orderly manner. The students, upon their arrival, were required to have their hair cut short, an act that produced much resentment among the new students. Tribal dress or clothing was not permitted as school uniforms were provided and required to be worn. Their children's names were another connection to their home and family and so they too were changed and new "pronounceable" names were assigned to each. No effort was spared when it came to breaking the Native cultural ties.

The school, the new physical environment, was also used as a teaching tool. The wild and natural was pushed back and orderly, managed grounds were constructed. The land was tamed, controlled and conquered and mirrored the process outlined and established to deal with the students, all an expression of the power of the white man. The formality and order of the English garden was an elemental expression of civilization, and therefore another useful, illustrative educational tool. Never think for one minute that the Native children attending these schools were not at every turn reminded of their lesser status in comparison with white society.

There was great effort put into building character, instilling good morals and responsible citizenship, even though it would not be until 1924 that the Curtis Act declared that all Indian people to be citizens of the United States.

As I encounter information about how this period of government schools began and subsequently developed, I find myself wondering how the idea of assimilation never left a sour taste in the reformers collective mouths. The children in these schools were captive in much the same way that a prisoner is captive. Regimentation, structure, discipline and uniform clothing were characteristic of the reservation school system, and all established to produce the glorified end of making one culture disappear into the underbelly of another. The fact that any of these children succeeded in remaining connected to their tribal ways after their experience in the government school system is remarkable. They seemed resilient in the face of oppressive disrespect.

On February 1887, the General Allotment Act, or the Dawes Act became law. By way of offering context and some definition, I offer this short excerpt from Ward Churchill:

"By 1890, fewer than 250,000 Indians remained alive within the United States, a degree of decimation extending into the upper 90th percentile. The survivors were lodged on a patchwork of "reservations" even then being dismantled by the application of what was called the "General Allotment Act." Under provision of this statute, effected in 1887, a formal eugenics code was utilized to define who was (and who was not) "Indian" by U.S. "standards." Those who could and, were willing to, prove to federal satisfaction that they were "of one-half or more degree of Indian blood" and to accept U.S. citizen in the bargain, received a deed to an individual land parcel, typically of 160 acres or less. Once each person with sufficient "blood quantum" had received his or her allotment of land, the remaining reservation land was declared "surplus" and opened up to non-Indian homesteading, corporate acquisition, or conversion into national parks and forests. Through this mechanism, the best 100 million acres of the reserved native land was stripped away by 1930." (Churchill, p.31)

Two years later, the Indian Office directed that all schools use the anniversary of the passing of the Dawes Act as an opportunity to impress on the students the opportunity given to them by this legislation. A new school "holiday" was therefore created, called "Indian Citizenship Day." The Native students were treated as though they were new immigrants in their ancestral land.

I am going to quote some lengthy excerpts from Adams' book "Education for Extinction," because I think one can get a better sense of the pressure of the assimilationist intent from reading the original wording. The excerpts are from a stage production written by Helen Ludlow and performed at Hampton in 1892. The name of the piece is "Columbia's Roll Call." All of the "players" are, of course, Indian students. How much more "instructional" it is to be able to participate in a stage production than to merely view it. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for some of the students, and how rewarding and edifying for their teachers. It seems to me that it takes a certain kind of twist in a mind to create something such as this, and force Native students to be a part of it.

The pageant's structure revolves around the mythic American goddess Columbia, who summons forth, one by one, familiar historical figures upon whom she bestows a badge of citizenship.

"The first figure to step forth is none other than Columbus...he describes the moment when land is sighted.

Then boomed the Pinta's signal gun!
The first that ever broke
The sleep of that new world - the sound
Echoing forest depths profound,
A continent awoke!

Captain John Smith comes forward then Miles Standish and Pricilla Alden, next is John Eliot the puritan missionary, followed by George Washington. As these historical heroes, all of them white, make an appearance, each is given the badge of citizenship.

The next to speak is an "Indian" character who pleads:

You have taken our river and fountains
And the plains where we loved to roam, -
Banish us no to the mountains
And the lonely wastes for home!
Our clans that were strongest and bravest
Are broken and powerless through you;
Let us join the great tribe of the white men,
As brothers to dare and to do!

Indians were now willing to join the white man's march of progress.

And the still ways of peace we would follow -
Sow the seed and the sheaves gather in,
Share your labor, your learning, your worship,
A life larger, better, to win.
Then, foeman no longer nor aliens,
But brothers indeed we will be,
And the sun find no citizens truer
As he rolls to the uttermost sea.

Columbia replies by challenging the Indians to name individuals of their race equal to those white heroes "that have made me great and established my throne in the New World."...One by one they come forth. There is Samoset, whose lines are, "I said to my paleface brother, welcome Englishmen." There is the chieftain who says to Washington, "We welcome you to our country." And an Indian convert recites a Bible verse in Algonquian.

In the end Columbia is convinced. She gazes upon a group of Indians dressed a farmers, teachers, and mechanics. Their plea for a place of honor and citizenship seems too reasonable to deny, and she says to her Indian wards: "You have gained your cause. Your past, your present, and your purposes for the future prove your right to share all I have to give. Take my banner, and your place as my citizens." (Adams, pp.196-9)

What arrogance and gall it took to write those words and demand that they be spoken by Native tongues. How like salt ground into the wounds already inflicted on the Native people. The idea that children were coerced to speak these words that reversed the truth is hard to imagine. Indian people were being told that they in effect had a right to "share" in what had belonged to their ancestors. The divinely driven concept of Manifest Destiny could be couched in no more descriptive words than those of Helen Ludlow.

Many Indian parents resisted sending their children to the reservation schools, and opposition was widespread. Indians agents had strong powers of persuasion in this regard. Sometimes rations were withheld from uncooperative families, and in cases where there was continued resistance, police were sent to take the children by force. The "fanaticism" of the Ghost Dance was blamed for some of the opposition to sending Native children to the boarding schools. Some students, after arriving at the school became so ill that they had to be sent home and some students displayed their resistance by running away. The children who remained frequently practiced their culture and spoke their language in secret and in fear. In any case the schools had difficulty both in gaining the student's cooperation and attracting the support of the parents. For those students who did not resist, it was a matter of practicality; many were convinced that their choice was between assimilation and extinction. Past associations with whites had taught Indians that they were never again to be permitted to live on their own terms. The buffalo were all but gone and the freedom to travel as their ancestors had, was gone.

Graduation ceremonies at the schools gave further opportunity to reiterate the white agenda.

"Two themes permeated commencement rhetoric. The first was transformation; Indians arrived in a state of savagism, but now returned thoroughly civilized. This had been the school's quintessential mission. "the Indian is DEAD in you," the Reverend A. J. Lippincott proclaimed at one Carlisle commencement. "Let all that is Indian within you die!...You cannot become truly American citizens, industrious, intelligent, cultured, civilized until the INDIAN within you is DEAD." (Adams, p.274)

The reformers who had so strongly supported the idea of education as a tool for assimilation began to see that the desired end was not forthcoming. Some students returned to their homes and to their tribal ways and others although not returning completely to their old ways, became in a sense "bicultural". Those who so strongly supported Indian education viewed neither of these situations as a success.