Carlisle Indian Industrial School

“ As schooling is compulsory between the ages of six and sixteen years, and from the more distant boarding-schools the pupils are not even allowed to go home for the summer vacation, most of them would otherwise grow up in ignorance of their natural heritage, in legend, music, and art forms as well as practical handicrafts. The greatest difficulty in the way is the finding of competent and sympathetic teachers.
At Carlisle there are and have been for some years two striking exemplars of the native talent and modern culture of their race, in joint charge of the department of Indian art. ”

“ Government service and the liberal professions are already overstocked, and it is absolutely necessary to check the tendency of young Indians to go in for a merely literary education for which, even if it were more thorough than it can be under existing conditions, there is no longer any sufficient outlet. The demand which is arising all over India for commercial and industrial development should afford an unrivalled opportunity of deflecting education into more useful and practical channels. ”

“ Many of the graduates of the Carlisle school are today filling responsible positions in the business world, and especially in the Indian service, in which they are employed as teachers, clerks and all the way to laborers. ”

“ Such considerations led the Government, under the last Administration, largely to increase the number of Indian pupils at the Normal School at Hampton, Va., and to establish an institution for the education of Indian children at Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, where the young Indians would no longer be under the influence of the Indian camp or village, but in immediate contact with the towns, farms and factories of civilized people, living and working in the atmosphere of civilization. ”

“ Investigation has shown, however, that very few graduates of any school ever do reassume Indian dress or ways. Of those who have attended school but two or three years in all, a larger proportion may do so. A northwestern school reports that out of a total of 234 graduates only three are known to be failures. The most recent Carlisle report shows that of 565 living graduates, all but 69 are known to be profitably employed in a wide variety of occupations; 110 are in the Government service. There are also 3,800 ex-students, not graduates, of whom a large majority are successful. ”

“ As they advanced in years, the better qualified could be sent on to Carlisle and Hampton, and places of that grade. The training of the Indian boy or girl should be largely industrial, but as much as possible in the line of previous acquirement and future application. ”

“ But Carlisle is not a college or university, although, because of the wonderful athletic prowess of its students, they have met and defeated the athletes of many a white university on the football field. Its curriculum is considerably below that of the ordinary high school; it is a practical or vocational school, giving a fair knowledge of some trade together with the essentials of an English education, but no Latin or other foreign language. Consequently its graduates must attend a higher preparatory school for several years before they can enter college. ”

“ Except in Bombay, the introduction of modern methods of manufacture was almost entirely confined to the European community. The opportunities for gaining experience were not easy for Indians to come by, and there was no attempt at technical training for industries until nearly the end of the century, and then only on an inadequate scale. The non-existence of a suitable education to qualify Indians for posts requiring industrial or technical knowledge was met by the importation of men from Europe, who supervised and trained illiterate Indian labor in the mills and factories that were started. ”

“ The schools established at Hampton and Carlisle for the education in the rudiments of knowledge and of the industrial arts of Indian youth of both sexes have already, in the practical excellence of their plan and methods, and in the gratifying success of their work, engaged the hearty sympathy of a widely extended constituency. ”

“ The one complaint of engineering students is that they find it enormously difficult to gain opportunities for learning the practical side of their work. Firms are most reluctant to admit them as apprentices. France and Germany welcome them, and Continental firms extend to them the aid the English firms deny. Is it always to be so? Other nations gaining that esteem and gratitude which England should so jealously acquire and guard. Americans, too, are winning the good will of the Indian student both in India and abroad. They have well-equipped schools and colleges all over India. ”

“ But even if there is substance in the count, we must take note also how far the past policy of Government is responsible. We have not succeeded in making education practical. It is only now, when the war has revealed the importance of industry, that we have deliberately set about encouraging Indians to undertake the creation of wealth by industrial enterprise, and have thereby offered the educated classes any tangible inducement to overcome their traditional inclination to look down on practical forms of energy. We must admit that the educated Indian is a creation peculiarly of our own ”

“ He is a warm friend and admirer of General Pratt, founder of Carlisle School; and believes the true solution of the Indian problem consists in educating the children of the white and red race in the same school and thus making American citizens of both, instead of a citizen of one and a ward and dependent of the other race. He thinks, moreover, that an Indian should be treated exactly as any other man. ”

“ The native squalor of the Indian boys and girls rapidly gives way to neat appearance. A new intelligence, lighting up their faces, transforms their expression. Many of them show an astonishing eagerness to learn, quickness of perception, pride of accomplishment and love for their teachers. Visiting the Carlisle school, I saw Indian boys, from ten to fifteen years old, who had arrived only five months before without the least knowledge of the English language, writing down long columns of figures at my dictation and adding them up without the least mistake in calculation. ”

“ The Carlisle school, “the first non-reservation school established by the government,” whose origin is due to “the efforts of General R. H. Pratt, when a lieutenant in charge of Indian prisoners of war at St Augustine, Florida, from May 11, 1875, to April 14, 1878,” was opened in November 1879 with 147 Indians, including 11 Florida prisoners; it had in 1906 an enrolment of over 1000 pupils of both sexes, under both white and Indian teachers, and an average attendance of 981. In 1906 there were in attendance members of 67 tribes, representing at least 22 distinct linguistic stocks. ”

“ The effective cover designs and other art work of the Carlisle school magazine, The Red Man, are the work of Mr. and Mrs. Dietz, who are successfully developing native talent in the production of attractive and salable rugs, blankets, and silver jewelry. Besides this, they are seeking to discover latent artistic gifts among the students in order that they may be fully trained and utilized in the direction of pure or applied art. It is admitted that the average Indian child far surpasses the average white child in this direction. ”

“ In the schools the education should be elementary and largely industrial. The need of higher education among the Indians is very, very limited. On the reservations care should be taken to try to suit the teaching to the needs of the particular Indian. ”

“ Where elsewhere constant demands are met for assistance; your Indians have never asked for any, for in the interviews given to the Chiefs their whole desire seemed to be for schools and schoolmasters, and in reply to questions as to whether they would assist themselves in securing such institutions, they invariably replied that they would be glad to pay for them. (Loud applause.) It is certainly much to be desired that some of the funds apportioned for Indian purposes, be given to provide them fully with schools in which Industrial Education may form an important item. ”

“ Each of the Indian reservations is provided with one or more day schools and the Puyallup and Tulalip agencies have industrial training schools. These latter especially are doing very efficient and creditable work. They are fitting the new generation of Indians for a life of usefulness. Very few of the older generations can be induced to clear and farm their lands, but the time has now come when this is the only practicable thing for them to do and so the purpose of the schools should be to fit the rising generation for a life occupation. ”

“ It was one thing, however, to take the brighter Indian children away from home and teach them the ways of white men, and quite another to persuade the main tribe to support itself by regular labor. The ration system was a pauperizing influence that removed the incentive to work. Trained mechanics, coming home from Carlisle, or Hampton, or Haskell, found no work ready for them, no customers for their trade, and no occupation but to sit around with their relatives and wait for rations. Too much can be made of the success of Indian education, but the progress was real, if not rapid or great. ”

“ The majority of the schools are equipped with shops for shoe- and harness-making, carpentry, blacksmithing, wagon-making, etc., and in several instances the girls are taught cooking and house-work. The largest of these schools is situated at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at which the average attendance during the year 1900 was 961. The extent to which education is spreading through the Indian tribes and its rate of increase are indicated by the fact that the attendance on the Government schools has increased from 3,598 in 1877 to 21,566 in 1900. ”

“ The Indian Department has now adopted the policy of giving industrial training and household economy the chief place in education, varying the instruction to suit the environment in which the boy or girl is to grow up and live and not mixing the needs of Alaska with those of California, or those of Dakota with those of Florida.
In Canada the most notable institutions for the education of the Indians are the Mohawk Institute at Brantford, Ontario ”

“ On the initiative of the pupils the Leupp Indian Art School was built on the campus in 1906–1907, all materials being purchased with the funds of the athletic association and all work being done by the students. The building is named in honour of Francis Ellington Leupp (b. 1849) , U.S. commissioner of Indian affairs in 1905. Carlisle is prominent for the manufacture of boots and shoes, and has machine shops and manufactories of carriages, ribbons, railway frogs and switches, carpets and paper boxes. ”

“ If the industries of India are to develop, and Indians to have a fair chance in the competition to which they are exposed, it is essential that a system of education at least as good as that of Japan should be introduced in India. I am at one with my colleagues in urging the fundamental necessity of providing primary education for the artisan and laboring population. No system of industrial and technical education can be reared except on that basis. ”

“ It is my opinion that a thorough eighth-grade common school education along with a good training in industrial and economic habits would bring far more satisfactory results. It would be more suited to their present stage in their advancement towards civilization, they would then more easily take to farming and other general work, and train them to be self-supporting. ”

“ For many years Carlisle has enrolled about 1,200 pupils each year, keeping almost half of them on farms and in good homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where they work for board and wages in summer, while a smaller number attend the public school during the colder months. They earn and save about thirty thousand dollars annually. ”

“ President James Buchanan and Chief Justice R.B. Taney were graduates. Here are also Metzger College for young ladies, and a well-known United States Indian industrial school, established in 1879 through the efforts of Lieutenant (later Brigadier-General) Richard Henry Pratt (b. 1840) , its superintendent until 1904; the school pays especial attention to industrial and agricultural training, and its athletic organizations are famous. A great effort is made to preserve and develop Indian arts and crafts ”

“ In the case of the larger of the Government Indian schools the Indian children are removed from their homes and placed in institutions where they live for a period of four years under military discipline. In these schools literary is subordinate to industrial training. ”

“ Far too many of our Indians on returning from such schools as Carlisle are inclined to look for clerkships or occupations in towns, and are not willing to perform tasks requiring hard 216labor. They moved along the paths of least resistance. This does not apply to all, but quite a number of them, which gives rise to the popular conception that educated Indians will not work. There is also another problem to be considered. The Indian comes home and he finds that he does not regard the community and people as he did previous to his education. ”

“ He may feel a necessity for a change in his mode of life, but civilization is only a shadowy idea to him. How is he to learn the white man's way? The school is insufficient, in the nature of things, to clear up his mind. To impress him with these things, he must see civilization in its own atmosphere. This led me to do all I could to develop Indian education in the East among the whites. If my administration of the Indian Department leaves no other trace behind it, I shall look upon the establishment of the schools at Hampton and Carlisle with great satisfaction. ”