Richard Henry Pratt is whom began and founded the School of Carlisle. His story begins as an officer for the 10th cavalry, commanding the African Americans and Indian scouts unit the for eight years (1867-1875). There he became familiar with Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho who had been placed in reservations near the Red River. He along with some scouts and freed slave soldiers campaigned to keep the Indians in reservations away from the settlers. A distrust of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) grew in Pratt from seeing the poor conditions that Indians had to undergo in the reservations, such as the poor food conditions they received. This hostility led to his resignation as the superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School in 1904.
As the United States had failed to bring in the most recalcitrant of the Indians in, they instituted a plan to incarcerate them. In April 1875, 72 warriors of the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, and Caddo nations were exiled to St. Agustine, Florida. There Pratt would be their jailer. Women would also volunteer to teach them how to read in exchange for archery lessons from them. With several New Englanders coming down to the East coast and expressing a similar interest regarding the Indians welfare it helped Pratt's philosophy of educating Indians to take shape.
Hampton was intended to educate African American children by training "the head, the hand, and the heart". He began to develop a similar model of Hampton Institute of Virginia but exclusively for Indians. He was relentless in looking for a school where he would reform the children from reservations and take them far away from tribal influences.
By Mid 1879, Pratt had his school in Carlisle Barracks central Pennsylvania where a former cavalry post had been. Pratt instructed to have 36 students from each reservation such as Red Clouds Pine Ridge and Spotted Tails Rosebud. His main argument to get these children into his school was that they didn't understand English which was important for them to understand their treaties and the white people. After all his persuasion he got 82 children from both agencies. When the children and himself arrived at the school he was once again let down by the BIA who had failed to assist them with food and other necessary supplies.
The school consisted of two groups alternating classes from academics in the morning such as reading, writing, and arithmetics and trades in the afternoon. It was a school but the actual life and structure resembled a military life. The children were expected to wear shoes, march to their destination such as classes, and dining halls. They were prohibited to speak their native language. And there were severe consequences as seen in the old guardhouse which was built by the Hessian prisoners during the Revolutionary War. The School received its funding from former abolitionist and Quakers who wanted to be part of the success Pratt had achieved regarding the school.
Pratt was a very intimidating man who wanted so much for the Indians to resemble a white man. He defended the Indians when newspapers told their stories as savages. He conveyed that his school was reshaping the Indians into a "more favorable white brother" and so they should stop telling his old life and tell his present and future story. The Carlisle School grew from its original 82 students to 1,000 students yearly. Even with all his work over the 39-year lifespan of the school, most of the children returned to reservations and Wild West Shows.
November 4, 1886
Four months later
The first thing that I saw was the picture and the picture alone said a lot about the school. They all look unhappy and that just shows how the Carlisle school probably mistreated the Indians. Then, as I read on I discovered how horrible the Indians were retreated it is no wonder they returned to their reservations afterwards.
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