“Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard.” —Luther Standing Bear “Kill the Indian and Save the Man” -- this was the mission of the the Carlisle Indian Industrial School founded by Capt. Richard Pratt in 1870 . Pratt was known to be a man who had a heart for the Indians, however, his zeal to give Indians more opportunities manifested itself in a school dedicated to re-creating his Indian students in his own white image: “I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked."
Although nearly 200 children died from malnutrition, disease and homesickness at the Carlisle Boarding School, “Killing the Indian” proved harder than Pratt imagined. Many of the students that attended the school had been steeped in the rich history and stories of their people, stories that enabled them to resist the cultural stripping and immersion in white culture they found at the boarding school. In resistance to white influence, many created pieces of art to remember their heritage, their families, and the legacy of their people.
In her memoirs, “An Indian Teacher Among Indians," "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" and "School Days of an Indian Girl," published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900, Carlisle teacher Zitkala-Sa (also known as Red Bird) reflects on her own experience leaving her mother and traveling across the country to attend an Indian Boarding School: “For the white man's papers I had given up my faith in the Great Spirit. For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks. On account of my mother's simple view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed. Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and God. I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very quick.”
“In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.”
"”My daughter, beware of the paleface. It was the cruel paleface who caused the death of your sister and your uncle, my brave brother. It is this same paleface who offers in one palm the holy papers, and with the other gives a holy baptism of firewater. He is the hypocrite who reads with one eye, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and with the other gloats upon the sufferings of the Indian race.’"
The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women’s Writings. Ed. Glynis Carr. Online. Internet. Posted: Winter 1999.
Courtesy of the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center. Tom Torlino, who was Navajo, as he entered the school in 1882 (left), and how he appeared three years later (right).
Maud Swift Bear, Rose Long Face, Ernest White Thunder, & Dora Brave Bull were among the first students to arrive at the school on Oct. 6, 1879 and are all buried in the cemetery.