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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 1879 at the site of an old military base, used during the colonial era and the Civil War.
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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 its founding in 1879 through 1918. It was based in the historic Carlisle Barracks, which was transferred to the Department of Interior from the War ...
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- HISTORY Vault: Native American History
Native American tribes are still seeking the return of their children.
“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
That was the mindset under which the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Native American children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools in the late 19th century. Decades later, those words—delivered in a speech by U.S. cavalry captain Richard Henry Pratt, who opened the first such school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania—have come to symbolize the brutality of the boarding school system.
The history of this forced assimilation is far from settled. On August 7, 2017, the U.S. Army began exhuming the graves of three children from the Northern Arapaho tribe who had died at Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the 1880s. The children’s names were Little Chief, Horse and Little Plume—names they were forbidden to use at the school.
Students at Carlisle and the roughly 150 other such schools that the government opened were susceptible to deadly infections like tuberculosis and the flu. During Carlisle’s operation between 1879 and 1918, nearly 200 other children were buried in the same cemetery as the Northern Arapaho boys, according to The Washington Post.
Carlisle and other boarding schools were part of a long history of U.S. attempts to either kill, remove, or assimilate Native Americans. In 1830, the U.S. forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi to make room for U.S. expansion with the the Indian Removal Act. But a few decades later, the U.S. worried it was running out of places to relocate the country’s original inhabitants.
From Comanche warriors to Navajo code talkers, learn more about Indigenous history.
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- Becky Little
Jul 9, 2021 · The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which Pratt opened in 1879, would become the most prominent of the 25 federally funded off-reservation boarding schools that would open over the next few ...
PRATT, FT. MARION PRISONERS AND HAMPTON. The story of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School begins with a brief introduction to its founder. Richard Henry Pratt spent eight years (1867-1875) in Indian Territory as an officer of the 10th Cavalry, commanding a unit of African American "Buffalo Soldiers" and Indian Scouts. During this time, he was ...
Sep 6, 2024 · American Indian boarding schools A map depicting the locations of American Indian boarding schools in the United States between 1819 and 1969. (more) The foundation for a Native school system was laid when the U.S. Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act in 1819. The law provided funding for the education of Native children, with the goal of ...
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The Carlisle Indian Industrial School. By 1917 there were 750 students enrolled from over 50 tribes. Children were not the only ones sent to the school; men in their 20's and 30's were also sent to Carlisle and forced to live in the barracks. 1 The founding of Carlisle lead to the founding of several other schools of this nature.
