Far From Home

"[The Boarding School system] was intended to do the damage that it resulted, but it wasn't necessarily done with malice."

(Mary Pavel)

"The Government, unfortunately, thought they knew what was good for the Indians."

--Father Vine Deloria

FAR FROM HOME

The Carlisle Indian Industrial school, founded in 1879 by Richard Henry Pratt, was the first off-reservation government-run boarding school.

"People thought Indians had to go into manual trades because they were good with their hands. They weren’t educated to be doctors or teachers or lawyers. And so Carlisle had this program where students would spend half the day in the classroom, and then students would be trained in vocational work during half the day. Other schools copied that."

--Brenda Child

"Richard Henry Pratt with students at the Carlisle Industrial School" (Smithsonian Magazine).

“Washington's policy was one of association, equality, amalgamation, — killing the Indian and saving the man. Jefferson 's plan was segregation, degradation, destruction. Washington ' s plan meant health, self help, economy, hope, increase in every way. Jefferson's plan meant and has proven destructive to the Indians, vastly expensive, hopeless, and productive of inertia, disease, and death."

--Richard Henry Pratt

Lt. Col. Pratt created the Carlisle School to help Native Americans assimilate into American society. As a former military officer, Pratt witnessed the military campaigns which drove Native Americans off their traditional lands and onto reservations, and leading to the deaths of thousands of Indigenous people.

“Having wronged the Indian by our driving out and segregating method, den[ying] that he is human and capable of development we, [...] and the man who will lead battalions against him and destroy him [...] publicly applaud, and reward with the gift of every office from President down. Governors, senators, representatives, generals, — all have reached place and fame through destroying Indians."

-- Richard Henry Pratt, 1892

RICHARD'S PERSPECTIVE

“[Natives were] born blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit. These results have been established over and over again beyond all question; and it is also well established that those advanced in life, even to maturity, of either class, lose already acquired qualities belonging to the side of their birth, and gradually take on those of the side to which they have been transferred.”

--Richard Henry Pratt

"While Pratt and his supporters believed they were helping the students, the boarding school experience stripped them of their customs, culture, and heritage. [...] But along with that trauma and tragedy, Carlisle gave students an opportunity to explore the world outside of the reservations they called home."

--Carlisle Indian School Project

Given its methods of training and teaching Native American children, as well as how well it eradicated Native languages, practices, and cultural identity, Carlisle was deemed a "success." Soon after, other off-reservation schools modeled on Carlisle formed. However, later schools failed to replicate the most vital component: the location. Pratt, wanting to genuinely help Indian children assimulate into American society, built Carlisle in Pennsylvania, a heavily white-populated area that generally had less prejudice against Native Americans. On the other hand, the subsequent Indian boarding schools prioritized land gain over assimulation, so they were placed near reservations and in states with heavy Native populations and relatively sparse white populations in the late 19th century.

"Locations of Off-Reservation Indian Boarding Schools in the U.S.," (Carlisle Indian School Digital Resorce Center).

(Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America)

"Twenty years from now Indian reservations will be a thing of the past and the Indian will then realize. [...] We should not attempt to make a white man of him, still his surroundings and necessities are bound eventually to cause him to imbibe the White man's ideas and habits to the detriment and loss perhaps of his own."

--The Oglala Light

"Now the Indians dress in citizens' clothing, wear short hair, forego Indian dances and war paint, live on and cultivate their ranches, [...] and in every way as peaceable and law-abiding a community as can be found in New Mexico."

--Santa Fe New Mexican