What was carlisle school

In some cases, the student information card included their name and tribal affiliation. Peters, who grew up in California, is a PhD candidate in Native American studies at University of California, Davis, where she researches the human rights of the dead.

According to Peters, her two great aunts were taken to a welfare home about miles south from their home community by missionaries in after being orphaned. I would guess that the costs today far outweigh the financial burden of two small girls on Saint Paul Island years ago.

Away from their families and communities, Indigenous children were often punished for speaking their native languages, given less access to basic health care services, and sexually abused by their caretakers. The impact of boarding schools, as detailed by the National Native American Healing Coalition , accounts for much of the intergenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous communities, including loss of identity, low self-esteem, no sense of safety, institutionaliz[ation], and difficulty forming healthy relationships.

On the card, school administrators noted her height 4-foot-6 and weight 80 pounds at 12 years old. The current exhumation will begin on June 19 and is slated to take about a month, according to a report from the U.

Office of Army Cemeteries. The cemetery will be closed during that time. Objections from family members and public comments can be mailed to Lt Col. Scott Tasler and Capt. Jason Netteler, the OAC project managers, or emailed. Marion Prison far from their homelands to a hot, humid climate unfamiliar to them. Shortly after their arrival, Pratt removed the prisoners' shackles, cut their hair and issued them military uniforms.

The Indians were expected to polish their buttons and shoes and clean and press their trousers. After a time, they were organized into companies and given instruction in military drill. Eventually, their military guards were dismissed and several of the most trusted Indian prisoners were chosen to serve as guards. Local women, curious about these prisoners, volunteered to teach them to read in exchange for archery lessons.

The Indians were given art supplies to illustrate on paper, their early days as buffalo hunters. With colored pencils, they drew many beautiful pictographic ledger drawings , over a thousand of which survive today. They collected, polished, and sold sea beans as trinkets. They were eventually given the freedom to leave the fort unchaperoned and some found employment as day laborers in the neighboring communities.

Augustine in the 's was the vacation spot of choice for New Englanders traveling by steamboat down the East Coast. Here Pratt came in contact with several benefactors who expressed an interest in the welfare of the Indians who were beginning to resemble white men. During this era, Pratt's philosophy of Indian education began to take shape.

Quaker and missionary reformers explored new methods to 'civilize' the Indians. They were uncomfortable with extermination policies and began to formulate ideas of assimilation.

These methods appealed to Pratt, who was already experimenting with his Ft. Marion charges. He agreed that to 'civilize' the Indian would be to turn him into a copy of his God-fearing, soil-tilling, white brother. By the end of their term of incarceration , Pratt had convinced 17 prisoners to further their education by enrolling in the Hampton Institute in Virginia.

Hampton was founded in by Samuel Chapman Armstrong. It was a government boarding school for African-American children designed to educate by training "the head, the hand, and the heart". Its goal was to train and return them to their communities to become leaders and professionals among their people. This fit Pratt's developing philosophies about assimilation, with the exception of returning to community.

He began to formulate a model similar to Hampton - but exclusively for Indians. In an address to a convention of Baptist ministers in Pratt wrote: "In Indian civilization I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.

He lobbied Washington; he contacted his wealthy supporters in the East and convinced the powers that be that his experiment would be a success. He would take Indian children from the reservations, remove them to a school far away from tribal influences, and transform them. Augustine, headed to Dakota Territory to recruit the students he had been instructed to enroll in his new Carlisle school. Pratt's instructions were to recruit 36 students from each reservation.

Spotted Tail was skeptical. He was reluctant to send his and others' children to be trained in the ways of the men who had violated their treaties and trespassed in their Black Hills. But Pratt was persistent and urged Spotted Tail to reconsider, using the argument that had his people been able to read the white man's words, the treaties would have been better understood and such violations might not have occurred.

Pratt illustrated the problem of communicating such important decisions by insisting they could not speak in confidence, just the two of them - owing to Spotted Tail's inability to speak the white man's language. It was necessary for an interpreter to translate the words spoken, and perhaps the interpreter was not truly conveying the real meaning of their words. It seems not to have occurred to Pratt that had he been able to speak the language of Spotted Tail, greater understanding might have taken place.

Pratt also predicted that no matter what happened, the white man would keep coming and coming and that Spotted Tail's people must "be able to meet him face to face and take care of themselves and their property without the help of either an interpreter or an Indian agent. We are going to give you all the children you want.

I am going to send five, Milk will send his boy and girl, and the others are going to send the rest. He told them of Spotted Tail's consent and got the approval of the Pine Ridge head men.

Red Cloud had no children to send, but sent a grandson. American Horse sent three children. All in all, 82 children from both agencies were sent to Carlisle after medical examinations determined their fitness.

While Pratt was securing the children from Dakota, two of his former prisoners were recruiting potential students from their nations. Both Etadleuh Kiowa and Okahaton Cheyenne agreed to find more children to send to the first off reservation boarding school for Indian children.

Luther Standing Bear was among the first wave of students to travel to Carlisle. He described the journey east in his book, "My People, the Sioux".

He talked of traveling on a moving house - his first experience on a railroad car. As they pulled into stations along the way, crowds of curious people peered into the trains, anxious for a look at these 'wild' children. Pratt had telegraphed Chicago of their stopover and the newspapers had publicized the journey.

This was only three years since the Battle of the Greasy Grass in which Custer had been killed. The group arrived at Carlisle in the middle of the night, October 6, They stepped off the platform to be greeted by hundreds of townspeople, welcoming them and accompanying them to the army post. But when Pratt, Miss Mather and the children arrived at the empty military post, tired and hungry, there were no provisions awaiting them.

No bedding, no food, no clothing - none of the requested necessities. Once again, Pratt had been thwarted by the BIA. The children slept on the floor in their blankets. Upon arrival of the second wave of Cheyenne and Kiowa children, the requested provisions had still not arrived but for the least important item - an organ.

The children were housed in dormitories and classes began immediately. Pipestone Indian School Pipestone, Minnesota Tomah Indian School Tomah, Wisconsin Wittenburg Indian School Wittenberg, Wisconsin Pleasant, Michigan Why might they be clustered in those parts of the country? What state is it in? Why might the U. What kinds of 19th century transportation might they have used to travel from their homes to the school?

How often do you think they visited their families? What language and culture do you think they adopted when they got to the school? Questions for Map 2 1 Who lived at Carlisle? What evidence supports your answer? What buildings were for teachers and staff? Why do you think so? Does your school have a cemetery?

Why or why not? How can you tell? Provide evidence to support your answer. After the U. Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large. It has preached against colonizing Indians, and in favor of individualizing them. It has demanded for them the same multiplicity of chances which all others in the country enjoy. Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and then moves them out into our communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or the colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have.

Carlisle does not dictate to him what line of life he should fill, so it is an honest one. It says to him that, if he gets his living by the sweat of his brow, and demonstrates to the nation that he is a man, he does more good for his race than hundreds of his fellows who cling to their tribal communistic surroundings.

When we cease to teach the Indian that he is less than a man; when we recognize fully that he is capable in all respects as we are…. What identities do you think the speaker might claim gender, race, nationality, etc? In your own words, explain what he believed Carlisle could do for American Indians. Describe traits and activities you think Pratt would view as civilized. The students arrived at the school at midnight on October 6, They came at night so white Americans would not come to stare at them, but even in the darkness a crowd waited.

They were the first of thousands of young American Indians to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School and Carlisle was the first of many American Indian boarding schools. The United States founded the Carlisle school in at the site of an old military base, used during the colonial era and the Civil War. Soldiers also used it as an army training school from to The same buildings were used for the Indian Industrial School.

One reason the government chose this site was because it was on a railroad line. Students could travel there by train. The school was also a far distance from the western Indian reservations.

Some students never returned home. Richard Henry Pratt was a U. He wanted to change what made them different from Americans descended from Europeans, including their clothing, language, and beliefs. After opening the school at Carlisle, Pratt and his supporters forced young people to attend the school for three to five years. Some chose to stay as long as 10 years.

Carlisle Barracks was in good condition when the school opened. Students lived on the north end of the campus. Teachers, staff, and the superintendent lived on the southern side near the entrance.

A large green space or quadrangle separated the grounds from the north and the south. Students and teachers moved across the center of campus while using crisscrossing through footpaths, a bandstand, and a stone guardhouse. In the early s, the American Indian students and the white staff expanded the school campus. They also added a six-foot fence around the perimeter of the campus.

Civilian school officials enforced military-style discipline at Carlisle. Students marched across the grounds to and from their classes, the dining hall, extra-curricular activities, and for regular inspections. They marched in groups like soldiers in military drills.

When officials rang a bell, they shifted to new movements. If a student disobeyed a rule, they went to the guardhouse for punishment or were sentenced to hard labor. School officials tried to make the American Indian students look and dress like white Americans. Students could not keep medicine bags, jewelry, or ceremonial rattles. These items often had special meanings to tribes. While at Carlisle, boys wore uniforms from morning until night and girls wore long, confining Victorian dresses.

The school administrators also assigned a new English name to each child and did not allow native languages to be spoken. Pratt and his teachers taught American school subjects as well as hands-on training. Their goal was to prepare American Indian students to work jobs outside of the reservation. Students studied English, math, geography, and music. Boys learned industrial skills. They were taught to build furniture and work with wood, iron, steel, tin, and other materials.

Girls learned home skills. They learned to cook, do laundry, bake, and perform other caretaking skills. They had to speak English and hold jobs to earn money while they were away from school. Students at Carlisle were in sports teams, debate clubs, and marching bands.

The school teams competed against prominent non-Indian schools and in regional championships. Thorpe won athletic competitions as a Carlisle student, won two gold medals in the Summer Olympics, and went on to be a professional football player. The Carlisle band was famous, too.

It performed at presidential inaugurations while the school was open. Over ten thousand children attended Carlisle between and , with roughly 1, on campus in a given school year.

They came from over Indian nations. These nations had many different languages and cultures. Some students graduated in their late teens or early twenties but others left early due to illness or homesickness. Under the same military-style discipline, students at these schools learned domestic and industrial skills. The staff forced them to speak English and tried to destroy their ties to traditional cultures. In the U. Most off-reservation schools closed by the s when Americans learned about how students were treated.

Politicians chose to stop or decrease funding to the schools. Three schools are still open as of These three schools have military-style discipline but also teach American Indian customs, languages, and skills instead of trying to erase them. The Carlisle campus returned to U. Army control in It was a hospital for soldiers injured in World War I. The historic school buildings in the 21st Century are home to the U. Army War College.

Descendants of Carlisle students and members of tribes represented at Carlisle visit the school to honor the memory of the students. What was the site used for before it became a school? What did they have in common? In what ways do you think they were different from each other? Explain your answers. How did the buildings and landscape support a military culture? I think our school house will be torn down in this spring and rebuilt because Congress has promised to have new school house this coming spring, and I hope may be as large as our Quarters.

It seems too that the Carlisle is going on and on, as you know that I left you in And I came at this school, and saw the old dining room was too narrow and there was but one story high.

The boys were sleeping in the same room sometime sixteen or eighteen boys each room. They made great noise and could hardly think something to study because too much noise. I returned in and I got back and I saw a great big dining room which had been built up since I was away.