Carlisle Indian Industrialization School
The Carlisle Indian Industrialization School was established from the idea that Native Americans needed to assimilate further into the American dominated society. Henry Pratt, a Civil War Veteran Lieutenant, created the school these schools with the sole purpose to “kill the Indian, save the man”. He believed that it was essential for Native Americans to become Americanized as it was the only way for them to live in the country. He planned to take kids from their native tribes in order to detach them from their culture and implant American values and beliefs into their minds.
The recruitment of the Native American children was put into motion very tactfully. Pratt ended up recruiting Native Americans from tribes of the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota. The US government sent Pratt to specifically go talk to Spotted Tail of the Lakota Tribe. Pratt used the argument that sending the children of the Native American Lakota Tribe to Carlisle would allow them to learn how to read and write. Pratt specifically talked about how Spotted Tail had been tricked into signing a treaty that would lose lots of Indian Land. As Spotted Tail did not know how to read and write, he had no way of knowing what he was signing. This enticed Spotted Tail to send the Native American children to the school as he wants them to be educated.
This effort in trying to educate the Native American children into the may have seemed like a noble effort to Pratt, however, it came with a brutal cost. By separating the Native American children from their families, it destroyed a lot of the relationships in families. Native American children would come back home, and their once loving relationship with their mothers had become distant. Also, out of the 12,000 students that attended Carlisle, only a fraction of the students ever graduate and 180 students died from disease or other complications.
This was very interesting to read about because I learned more about the process and logistics of Pratt’s Carlisle School. Adding on to the forced assimilation of Native Americans, it is also interesting to note the huge impact these boarding schools have had on Native Americans. The last Indian Boarding School did not close until 1973; historians estimate that there were still 60,000 Native American children in a school that year. Although the United States has not forced enrollment since the 1930’s, Indian Schools still existed well throughout the 1900's, most with the purpose of assimilating and stripping Native Americans of their culture.
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This blog was very interesting to read because it gave me an idea on the what the Indian schools were trying to accomplish. I found that it was very interesting that people would take such extreme measures to convert the Indians into American culture. Although it seems like a very foreign idea today to convert cultures through these schools or concentration camps, it is still found all around the world today.
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