School

“The appearance of the Carlisle students is everywhere favorably commented upon, partly because of the excellent physical bearing and gentlemanly conduct of our students, and because of the neat uniforms they wear.”

“The students, in their uniforms, made an excellent appearance. It has been remarked that the Carlisle student is characterized by a fine physique, and a manly and womanly bearing, which no doubt is due to the regular training which all of our students receive in physical culture.”

“The Carlisle plan is to take the Indian from his tribal surroundings and place him in environment of civilization. Removed from influences which are immoral, degrading, slovenly, and tending towards shiftlessness, the young Indian is placed in contact with others of superior tribes, amid surroundings that exemplify civilization and inspire within him the possibility of useful citizenship.” 

A student’s arrival at the Carlisle Indian School began with the stripping of their identity and individuality. A vital aspect of the assimilation process was the uniform. Carlisle in particular had rigid standards for physical presentation, holding the Indian students to the same standards as their white peers. CIIS was held up as a model boarding school experience due to this careful uniformity as well as the demanding physical and academic standards of the institution.

“When these savages arrived at the Carlisle School they would have nothing to do with any of the other students and began to live their lives apart. As they could speak no English, they expressed their thoughts by gestures and in garbled language. In order to experiment, the authorities of the school did not order these Hopis to have their long locks of hair cut, but waited to see if their association with the advanced Indians at the school would not have some good effect upon them. In less than ten days one of the Hopis indicated by gestures that he would like to have his hair cut like the other students, and on the same day another Hopi was discovered snipping off his own locks with a hunting knife.”

The Carlisle Indian School would sometimes host important figures among the American Indian community. Often these were figures that had been vocal in their protests of the assimilation occurring in the boarding schools. In the one instance the quote above is referring to, members of the Hopi tribe who still spoke only their native language, wore their native garb, and had long hair, came to stay. The Carlisle Indian School performed a social experiment on the visiting Hopis by making the decision not to force them to cut their hair. The Red Man labels this experiment a success, declaring that the Indian’s decision to cut their hair shows a willingness to assimilate. Texts such as these were distributed to make those still clinging to Indian traditions feel like outsiders.

“The reservation boarding schools necessarily do less work, the pupils are younger, the facilities more limited. Only three or four trades are dealt with, usually carpentry, blacksmithing, shoemaking* harness making, some painting and bricklaying.”

Pratt argued that boarding school such as Carlisle were a far superior alternative to day schools on reservations. The schools on the reservation did not receive as much funding as the other Indian schools, and therefore were unable to provide a high quality education. The teachers were often under qualified and had not received proper training. The vocational training was limited to just a few subjects, as mentioned in the quote above. Those that received their education on the reservation were often unable to leave and join the rest of society if they so desired - they were not sufficiently qualified to do so. Most importantly to Pratt, the boarding school experience allowed him to completely separate the students from the cultures of their home.

“The Nation is rapidly waking to the fact that education of the right sort, which teaches the elements of knowledge, which does not forget the moral nature, and which gives thorough instruction and training in some vocational activity, is responsible to a very large extent for the progress which the Indian has made on all sides.”

“The Carlisle school places strong emphasis on vocational training. It believes that every boy and girl should have some definite occupation or vocation in life. With that end in view every student of the school takes up some trade or occupation … It is a common comment that the Carlisle boy and girl is not afraid of work when he or she leaves school.” 

“...this education has now become...excellently suited to the needs of the students, and is so conducted as to raise the mental, physical, economic, and moral condition of the Indian people. The work in Government schools has necessarily been of a grammar grade, with strong emphasis on industrial and vocational training, so that the young people would be fitted to take up more efficiently the duties of life and of earning a livelihood.”

The vocational education received at Carlisle offered a respectable professional path forward after graduation. Un-educated Indians found themselves unable to join white society, causing further division between Indians on reservations and those who were educated at boarding schools.

“It has been decided to abolish the Business Department and to discontinue the tinsmithing and carriage-making trades, and to establish in lieu of these, thorough, practical courses in domestic science and agriculture….To get the Indian on the soil—his own soil—and to teach him how to raise food products is one of the ambitions that can be entertained by any true friend of the race.”

The tinsmithing shop pictured above was one of many industrial pursuits offered at Carlisle. From its early days, the school stressed the importance of instruction in vocational trades. Students were instructed in carpentry, shoemaking, harness making, tailoring, sewing, blacksmithing, printing and laundry workshops. As attitudes changed outside of Carlisle’s walls, however, new popular images of the farming Indian became influential. After the Dawes Act of 1887, in which reservations were broken up into individual allotments for Indians to farm (and the remainder to be sold to white farmers), the idea of economic assimilation through agriculture became essential to the Indian education. Although some trades survived the transition, this new focus on farming reveals the extent to which Carlisle was vulnerable to changing public opinion.

“It serves to recall attention to the system of physical training in vogue at Carlisle. Every boy and girl in the school receives regular instruction in calisthenics, wisely adapted to their needs, and combining indoor and outdoor work of a varied and comprehensive nature. Athletic sports are conducted for the many and the success of this school in sport is due to the fact that all the students take an interest in the sports, and all the boys who are physically sound compete.” 

The Carlisle Indian School was revered for the intensity of its physical training program. In addition to the physically demanding vocational training every student went through, the school had an extensive physical education program. Both women and men participated in various forms of physical exercise on a daily basis, and any man who was physically able competed in one sport or another.

“The consistently strong football teams which the Government Indian School at Carlisle, Pa., has turned out for the past ten years, and especially the remarkable record made by the Indians in the last two or three years has caused many to attribute this success to questionable methods of recruiting the team, when as a matter of fact the success of the Indians has been due to the rough, hardy outdoor life that the players have been inured to from the day they were born. In addition to this purely physical explanation, there is a psychological one: the Indians know that people regard them as an inferior race, unable to compete successfully in any line of endeavor with the white men, and as a result they are imbued with a fighting spirit, when pitted against their  white brethren, that carries them a long way toward victory.”

The Carlisle Indian School is often remembered for its dynamic football program, led by the legendary Glenn “Pop” Warner. While at Carlisle, Warner coached Jim Thorpe, who went on to win two Olympic titles and play professional and collegiate football. The Carlisle Indians became a football powerhouse, competing with major collegiate football programs. In The Indian Craftsman, the author identifies their strength as a psychological motive: in this interpretation, football becomes a resistance to racial narratives.

“One characteristic of the Indian School is the Outing System, whereby the students are placed in well chosen homes for a period of four months each year. The girls are engaged as house girls or domestics, and the boys are placed on farms and in shops to be taught farming and the trades.” 

A vital component to the vocational training each student received was the outing provided by the school. Each student was placed in a home for four months each year and received real job experience in whatever their vocational training was. This enabled them to find jobs outside of the reservation when they were finished with their education. It is important to note the names present on the ledger. To complete the assimilation process, each student went out into the world with the white name they had been given upon arrival, symbolizing the start of a life in white society and the cutting of ties between the student and their ancestry and culture.

“Think of the splendid opportunity these girls have to become good housekeepers, for the best house-keepers in the country may be found in these Pennsylvania homes.”

Richard Henry Pratt may have preached equality, but the educational fates of his student reveal how his dreams had fallen short. Carlisle’s reliance on industrial trades and domestic labor ultimately prepared their students to enter only less socially prestigious positions. In particular, the outing system described in the quotation above served to reinforce racial hierarchies.