Timeline
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1830 - Indian Removal Act (Trail of Tears)
1851 - Indian Appropriations Act
1854, July - Term “Manifest Destiny” coined
1866 - Civil Rights Act excluded non-taxed Native
Americans
-  1871 - Second Indian Appropriations Act
-  All throughout this time: Wild West Shows
-  1879 - 1918 - Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
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Founded in 1879 by Colonel Richard Henry Pratt.
First off-reservation boarding school.
Focus on English and learning a trade.
Students were stripped of identity, “conquest through
assimilation” (Bess 13).
●  Still, Pratt was somewhat enlightened: he believed it was nurture,
not nature that made the Native Americans ‘inferior’ (Bess 15).
●  “I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we
get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly
soaked” (Pratt, qtd. in Haller 69).
Inside the Academy/Context
●  called “laboratories of domestication, the primary means by
which Native languages, cultures, and identities were to be
pounded out and reshaped.” (Bess 13)
●  “I want to fight my own way to get a good
education” [student quote from Red Man and Helper, the
school newspaper] (Bess 14)
●  Carlisle “emphasized deep acculturation for an increased ease
of assimilation for a practical and useful citizenry” thus
showing his intention to “industrialize” and modernize the
Native Americans (Slivka 226)
“When the whistle blows at half past five,
Once more I am up and still alive.
Then I run down and wash my face,
Then comb my hair and I’m ready for grace.
In fifteen minutes there is a bugle call,
The troops fall in and the roll is called.
Then out in front the troops all stand,
Saluting the flag with our hats in our hand.
While standing in the wind our hair gets wavy
But, just the same, we right face, and march to gravy.
Now this may sound like going a fishing,
But this is my only industrial position.” (Stanciu 34-35)
Zitkala Sa and the School
Zitkala Sa taught music at the Carlisle Indian School in
1899.
Bibliography
Bess, Jennifer. "Casting a Spell: Acts of Cultural Continuity in Carlisle Indian
Industrial School's the Red Man and Helper." Wicazo Sa Review 2011: 13. JSTOR
Journals. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.
Enoch, Jessica. “Resisting the Script of Indian Education: Sitkala Sa and the Carlisle
Indian
School.” College English, 65:2. 117-141. 2002. Print.
Haller, Beth A. “Cultural Voices or Pure Propaganda?: Publications of the Carlisle
Indian School, 1879-1918.” American Journalism 2002: 19. 65-86. Print.
Slivka, Kevin. "Art, Craft, And Assimilation: Curriculum For Native Students During
The Boarding School Era." Studies In Art Education 52.3 (2011): 225-242. Education
Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Sept. 2014.
Stanciu, Cristina. "That Is Why I Sent You To Carlisle": Carlisle Poetry And The
Demands Of Americanization Poetics And Politics."American Indian Quarterly 37.1-2
(2013): 34-76. ERIC. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.
Stewart, Anne H. “Work in the Carlisle Indian School.” The Elementary School Teacher,
5:9, 1905. JSTOR Journals. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.