What was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School?
Open from October 1879 to August 1918, the Carlisle Indian School was the first federally-managed off-reservation boarding school. It was operated by the Office of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior, and the founder, Richard Henry Pratt, served as superintendent of the school from 1879 until 1904. The school aimed to assimilate Indigenous young people into the dominant white culture of that era by separating them from their families and home communities. The school taught the English language and various academic subjects, as well as trades, domestic skills, and cultural norms that were different from those of their kin. Carlisle was one of more than two dozen off-reservation boarding schools opened by the federal government between 1879 and 1910, and one of several hundred Indian boarding schools of various types across the country.
Why was the school started?
Carlisle was a new development in the movement to operate boarding schools for Indigenous youth. The federal government began opening boarding schools on reservations across the country during the 1860s and 1870s. Many religious groups also operated boarding schools near Indigenous populations. Such Indian boarding schools were seen by progressive reformers as a more humane alternative to the open warfare waged by the U.S. Army against various Native American communities. Richard Henry Pratt argued that Carlisle, as an off-reservation school, was preferable to these earlier schools because the greater distance between the students and their families would speed up the process of assimilation. That was the centerpiece of Pratt’s rationale for opening Carlisle; young people would be far from their families and home communities, and thus more fully immersed in the dominant white culture.
Just as Pratt started lobbying for permission to open an off-reservation boarding school, he learned about the Carlisle Barracks. Located just outside the town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the barracks was an old army installation that had been largely vacant for nearly a decade. By early 1879, Pratt specifically sought to have the new school located there. In the summer of that year, the Army agreed to hand over the barracks to the Interior Department for the purposes of opening the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
For more information see the introduction to the book Carlisle Indian School: Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations.
Further reading:
Jacqueline Fear Segal’s 2007 book White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation. (published by University of Nebraska Press).
Kate Theimer’s 2018 book “A Very Correct Idea of Our School": a Photographic History of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
What were the demographics of the young people who attended Carlisle?
There were 7793 individuals who spent time at the Carlisle Indian School. Most of them were enrolled students, but some among that number include short-term visitors, prospective students who were denied admission or who chose to leave, and even a few adult musicians.
Although about 200 different tribal communities from across the United States were represented, roughly 50% of the students were from just 8 groups – Sioux (928), Chippewa (916), Oneida (485), Seneca (476), Pueblo (306), Mohawk (294), Eastern Cherokee (263), and Apache (229). Others represented by at least 100 students were as follows: Osage (185), Blackfeet (184), Cheyenne (174), Ottawa (152), Winnebago (150), Arapaho (133), Omaha (131), Menominee (130), Onondaga (121), Nez Perce (112), Creek (101), Tuscarora (100). There were also individuals from Alaska (127), Puerto Rico (60), and the Philippines (2).
Girls and young women comprised about 36.5% of enrolled students; boys and young men comprised 63.5%.
Of the enrolled students, 16.5% were readmitted to Carlisle sometime after completing their initial term.
Enrolled students first arrived at the school at an average age of 16. About 14% arrived at the age of 12 or younger. About 10% arrived at the age of 20 or over.
Among the enrolled students, 51% spent more than 3 years attending the school, while about 21% spent less than a year at the school.
Of the enrolled students, 232 died while in attendance, or roughly 3%. The average age of those who died while enrolled was a little over 17 years.
Diplomas were given to 779 students (roughly 10%), and another 480 students received certificates in various trades (about 6%).
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When the school closed in 1918, where did the students go?
On July 9, 1918, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker asked the Secretary of the Interior whether the Army Medical Department could use the Carlisle Barracks for “hospital purposes and for the rehabilitation and re-education of the sick and wounded from the war.” From then until the end of August, the school administrators scrambled to quickly wrap up operations. Many students chose to transfer to one of the other off-reservation boarding schools. Some preferred to return home to their families. A few asked to remain in and around Philadelphia living with and working for their outing patrons.
For more information see “Closure of the Carlisle Indian School.” (Quote from Part 1.2)
Did they get new names when they came to the school?
During the earlier years of the school, some young people were given new names or asked to choose a new name when they arrived at Carlisle. This is described in a published memoir by one of the first students at Carlisle, Luther Standing Bear, in My People the Sioux. This process was the exception, however, rather than the rule. Over the entire history of the school, most students arrived with a name in English that conformed to the Anglo-European practice of having both a first name and then a last name. In a few cases where students did not already have a first and last name, they were not asked to take a new name, such as with Pueblo student Ki-at-se, Cheyenne student White Buffalo, and Peliza (Osage).
How many students ran away from the Carlisle Indian School?
In research done so far, 16% of all students are reported as having left the school without permission on at least one occasion. Most of those who ran away were male students (more than 1200), with just over 30 instances of running away being recorded among the female students. Of those who did run away, only about 25% ever returned to the school.