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 to 1918. It was based in the historic Carlisle Barracks, which was transferred to the Department of Interior from the War Department for the purpose of establishing the school. Throughout its history, over 7,800 children from 140 Native American tribes were enrolled at the school. After the United States entered World War I, the school was closed, and the property was transferred back for use by the U.S. Department of Defense. The property is now part of the U.S. Army War College.
In December 2024, it was designated a national monument by President Joe Biden called the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument and co-managed by the Army and the National Park Service in consultation with Native American tribes.
History 19th century
Founded in 1879 by Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt under U.S. government authorization, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an early federally funded off-reservation Indian boarding school initiated by the U.S. government. The Choctaw Academy in Scott County, Kentucky, was the first such boarding school, but it was initiated by Choctaw leaders and then funded by the U.S. government through the 1819 Civilization Fund Act.
Pratt had earlier supervised Native American prisoners of war, and supported some of them in gaining education at Hampton College. He became convinced that education was the key to assimilation. In his own words, Pratt's motto was, "Kill the Indian, save the man." The US applied this principle to the cultural assimilation efforts of the larger American Indian boarding school system, by requiring children to speak only English, practice Christianity, take on new names and wear European-American style clothing.Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Beacon Press: Boston, 2014, p. 151.
Pratt wrote that he believed that Native Americans were 'equal' to European Americans, and that the school worked to immerse students into mainstream Euro-American culture. He believed that this would enable them to advance and thrive in the dominant society, and be leaders to their people.
After the government assessed the initial success of older Indian students at Hampton Normal and Agricultural School and some in Upstate New York, who were former prisoners of war, Pratt was authorized to establish the first all-Indian school, and founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at the historic Carlisle Barracks in central Pennsylvania, and the property was transferred from the War Department to the U.S. Department of the Interior for this purpose.
As at Hampton, arriving students were shorn of their long hair, and even their names were changed. However, "unlike Hampton, whose purpose was to return assimilated educated Indians to their people, Carlisle meant to turn the school into the ultimate Americanizer". At Carlisle, Pratt established a highly structured, quasi-military regime. He was known to use corporal punishment, which was not uncommon in society at the time, on students.
Carlisle emerged as the model for 26 off-reservation Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools that were ultimately developed in 15 states and territories. Some private boarding schools were sponsored by religious denominations. In addition, the government operated a total of more than 300 schools on reservations, many of which accepted boarding students from other tribes.
At Fort Marion, Florida in the 1870s, Pratt was assigned to supervise former warriors, several dozen Native American prisoners selected from among those who had surrendered in the Indian Territory at the end of the Red River War. He gradually introduced them to classes in the English language, art, guard duty, and craftsmanship. The program became well known. Distinguished visitors began to visit from all over the country, especially as St. Augustine had become a winter resort for the wealthy.
The U.S. Commissioner of Education came to see firsthand what Pratt was doing, as did the president of Amherst College. Pratt's Fort Marion program convinced him that "distant education" was the only way to totally assimilate the Indian. He wrote, the Indian "is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Transfer the savage born infant to the surroundings of a civilization and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit."
Pratt wrote: If all men are created equal, then why were blacks segregated in separate regiments and Indians segregated on separate tribal reservations? Why weren't all men given equal opportunities and allowed to assume their rightful place in society? Race became a meaningless abstraction in his mind...
Pratt believed an industrial school model similar to the Hampton Institute would be useful for educating and assimilating Native Americans.
Pratt and his supporters successfully lobbied Congress to establish the off-reservation boarding school for Native Americans at the historic Carlisle Barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania..
By October 1879, Pratt had recruited the first students for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School; 82 boys and girls arrived one night at midnight at the railroad station. They were met by hundreds of local residents who escorted them to the "Old Barracks". The Carlisle Indian School formally opened on November 1, 1879, with an enrollment of 147 students. The youngest was six and the eldest twenty-five, but the majority were teenagers.
Two-thirds were children of leaders of the Plains Indian tribes, with whom the U.S. had recently been at war. The first class was made up of 84 Lakota, 52 Cheyenne, Kiowa and Pawnee, and 11 Apache. The class included a group of students, former prisoners from Fort Marion, who wanted to continue their education with Pratt at Carlisle.Bell, Telling Stories Out of School, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1998, cited in .
Pratt believed Native Americans were the equal of whites, and founded Carlisle to immerse their children in white culture and teach them English, new skills and customs, in order to help them survive. After the end of Great Sioux War in 1877, the Lakota people were impoverished, harassed and confined to reservations ... many believed that Native Americans were a vanishing race whose only hope for survival was rapid cultural transformation. Thus the U.S. government urgently sought a 'progressive' educational model to quickly assimilate Indians into white culture. Whether this could be achieved and how rapidly it could be done was unknown. Pratt believed he could make use of the Carlisle facility. He thought its proximity to officials in Washington, D.C. would help him educate officials about the Indian capacity for learning.
As part of Pratt's curriculum in cultural and language immersion, the school's students were expected to learn English. School officials also required students to take new English names, either by choice or assignment. This was confusing, as the names from which they had to choose had no meaning for them. Luther Standing Bear (Sicangu-Oglala) was one of the first students when Carlisle began operations in 1879. He was asked to choose a name from a list on the wall. He randomly pointed at the symbols on a wall, and was renamed as Luther. The school assigned his father's name, Standing Bear, as his surname.
The children were forced to change their manner of dress and to give up their traditional tribal ways. The boys all had long hair, which was a strong tradition in their cultures: it was cut short in Euro-American style. Students were required to wear school uniforms of American-style clothing, and girls were provided with uniform dresses.
Standing Bear later wrote of this period:
The civilizing process at Carlisle began with clothes. Whites believed the Indian children could not be civilized while wearing moccasins and blankets. Their hair was cut because in some mysterious way long hair stood in the path of our development. They were issued the clothes of white men. High collar stiff-bosomed shirts and suspenders fully three inches in width were uncomfortable. White leather boots caused actual suffering..
Standing Bear said that red flannel underwear caused "actual torture". He remembered the red flannel underwear as "the worst thing about life at Carlisle".
Some children arrived at Carlisle able to speak some English; they were used by school officials as translators for other students. Officials sometimes took advantage of the children's traditional respect for elders to get them to inform on peers' misbehaviors. This was consistent with accepted practice in the large European-American families of the time, where older children were often required to care for and discipline their younger siblings.
School discipline was strict and consistent, according to the military tradition. Students faced 'courts-martial' for serious cases. Elaine Goodale Eastman, who had supervised government Indian education on reservations west of the Missouri River, later wrote of Carlisle that organizing Indian boys into squads and companies appealed to their warrior traditions. She believed they complied because they wanted to earn officers' ranks, recognition, and privileges. She also observed that there was 'genuine affection' between the Captain and the students...
Children who could not adjust at Carlisle eventually returned to their families and homes. Some ran away because of being homesick and unhappy. According to Eastman, several years after one young man ran away, he approached Pratt in the lobby of a New York hotel. He said that he had found a good job, was working hard, and had saved some money. "Hurrah!" the Captain exclaimed. "I wish all my boys would run away!"
Student recruitment In November 1878, Pratt was ordered by the War Department to report to the Secretary of the Interior for 'Indian education' duty. He traveled to Dakota Territory to recruit Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota students for the new school. These tribes were selected by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ezra Hayt, because they had resisted ceding more territory to the United States government. It was less than three years after Lakota warriors and their allies had defeated Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Little Big Horn.
The War Department ordered Pratt to go to Red Cloud (Oglala) and Spotted Tail (Sicangu), to compel the chiefs to surrender their children. The government believed that by removing the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota children from their homes, the US would have leverage against the tribes in their continuing attempt to acquire tribal land. Pratt said that, "The children would be hostages for the good behavior of the people."
Pratt persuaded tribal elders and chiefs that the reason the "Washichu" (Lakota word for white man, loosely translates to Takes the Fat) had been able to take their land was that the Indians were uneducated. He said that the Natives were disadvantaged by being unable to speak and write English and, if they had that knowledge, they might have been able to protect themselves. Pratt used this speech to convince chief Spotted Tail to send his children to the school. At first he had been reluctant to relinquish his children to the government that had stolen native land and violated their treaties.