Indian Boarding Schools in America: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School

Hey everyone. Welcome back. 

On October 6, 1879, the first set of students arrived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 

Students were not allowed to bring anything into the school with them - no baggage or suitcases; no trinkets or mementos to remind them of home. School officials intended to remove any sign or symbol of indigenous culture as soon as possible. Upon their arrival, students were stripped of anything that was reminiscent of their community - medicine bags, moccasins, jewelry. Any young men with long braids had their hair cut immediately and before and after photos were taken as a form of pro-assimilation propaganda. And in a final act of submersion, new enrollees were given new English names and were not allowed to bunk with anyone from the same tribe. Of course, everyone was to speak English and was not permitted to speak their native language.

In 1879, United States army Lieutenant Richard Pratt established an institution he believed would finally eradicate the so-called Indian problem. In a now infamous speech he gave in 1892, Pratt expressed a deep commitment to his ethos to quote: “Kill the Indian in him, save the man,” end quote. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first off-reservation boarding school established by the United States and would eventually house thousands of indigenous minors and serve as a model of hundreds of replicas established throughout the country. A system developed to force cultural assimilation, Carlisle had a profound, lasting impact on indigenous communities for generations and was yet another piece in the decades long battle between native communities and the United States.

So this week I am diving into the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. How did it get established? Who was behind its creation? And what were its impacts?

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this.

The idea for Carlisle was the brainchild of Richard Henry Pratt, a United States Army officer and Civil War veteran. Pratt was first inspired when supervising indigenous prisoners of war in St. Augustine, Florida where he decided to experiment a bit and move beyond the standard prisoner relationship. He provided the prisoners with education, including classes in English and art. He also extended the prisoners a bit of agency - allowing them to work as guards and perform supervisory duties. This experience, in Pratt’s opinion, demonstrated that Indigenous communities were capable of assimilating into the more civilized American way of life - they just needed to be given the proper tools - and to be completely separated from their families.

In a speech at a conference in 1892, Pratt touted the proximity to whiteness as being a highly influential tool for improvement. Referring to the millions of Black Americans forced into slavery, Pratt said, “under the care and authority of individuals of the higher race, they learned self-support and something of citizenship, and so reached their present place. No other influence or force would have so speedily accomplished such a result,” end quote. A similar result, Pratt argued, was possible for native tribes. Pratt continued, “The Indians under our care remained savage, because forced back upon themselves and away from association with English-speaking and civilized people, and because of our savage example and treatment of them,” end quote. When it came to how to handle Indigenous Americans, the policy of the United States, Pratt maintained, was ineffective, quote, “We have never made any attempt to civilize them with the idea of taking them into the nation, and all of our policies have been against citizenizing and absorbing them,” end quote. The solution was not the wholesale slaughter of indigenous communities, Pratt argued, nor was it to keep the tribes separate and apart from the rest of the country. The way forward was to Americanize - another word for assimilate - the remaining nations. In what we may view as a bit of a paternalistic description in 2026, Pratt described indigenous people as quote, “it is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition and, life,” end quote. Pratt argued that by removing the individual and surrounding them in quote unquote civilization they too would become civilized. Again pointing to the newly emancipated freedmen and women, and citing the hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the country each year, Pratt argued if they could be assimilated successfully, surely the same could be done with few remaining native communities.

And in Pratt’s opinion - and experience - that meant separating the individual from their community and immersing them in quote unquote American culture and teaching them American values. Thus, the concept for Carlisle was born. Pratt’s idea was not necessarily new - the idea of educating and attempting to civilize Indigenous Americans had been around since before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As early as the 1800s, several nations had incorporated English into their education system, as they understood that knowing the language made it easier to deal with the new white settlers and government agents when it came time to negotiate for their sovereignty. Additionally, Christian missionary groups and the federal government had previously opened day schools in 1870 on reservations - all small attempts to instill some form of American values so the concept of trying to educate and civilize and assimilate the native population was something that was all too familiar. Where Pratt’s plan stood out, however, was in the decision to completely isolate Carlisle students from their families.

The school was built out of an old army barracks, located in the town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the southeastern area of the state. The barracks, dating back to the colonial area, was used as an army training school from 1838 to 1871 before it was transferred to the Department of Interior from the Department of War in 1878 for the purposes of establishing the school. The school’s location was considered ideal since it was far enough from existing reservations so students were separated from their families - and by extension, their cultures - yet it also sat along a railroad line, making transportation to the institute fairly easy to facilitate. For students enrolling in Carlisle, attendance requirements ranged anywhere between 3 and 5 years, with some students staying as long as ten years. Submitting an application to attend Carlisle also meant parents signed away their authority over their children for the duration of their attendance at the school.

As a technical school, the goal was that graduates would be able to get work once they left the institution and thus male students receiving training in trades such as carpentry and bricklaying, and learned how to build furniture. They also learned how to work with raw materials such as wood, steel, and iron - skills that would, in theory, make them employable once they left Carlisle and became contributing members of society. Girls, on the other hand, learned how to be good housewives, taking courses in laundry and baking. Students were also taught basic subjects including geography, math, and English. But they were also immersed in quote unquote American culture by temporarily staying with American families - where they were expected to earn money.

Yet despite being a civilian educational facility, administrators were inspired by their surroundings and enforced a military style discipline. As former student Howard Gansworth wrote of his earliest days at the school quote, “I got up with the rising bell at 5:45, threw the bed clothes back to aid, marched with my company to breakfast, made up my bed, reported for work at eight, had dinner at twelve, polished my shoes, started for school at one, watched the boys drill from four to five, had supper, attended a debating society meeting, and went to bed at nine as the bugler sounded taps,” end quote. Embedded in that military-style discipline was the message that where students came from - their background, their culture, their customs - were all something to be ashamed of. The way to make it in the United States, they were taught, was to speak English, dress in Anglo clothing, and adapt a trade.

In the first year, more than 200 students from various tribes enrolled at Carlisle - those who graduated did so with little more than an 8th grade education. And while some students stayed as long as ten years, many did not survive at all. Shipping kids in from all over the country meant that Carlisle was susceptible to deadly infections like tuberculosis and the flu. Between its opening in 1879 and closure nearly forty years later, nearly 200 students died at Carlisle and were buried on site at its cemetery. Despite this, the school remained popular and according to the National Park Service, over 10,000 students attended Carlisle, averaging about 1,000 students on campus per school year. The popularity of the school required some expansion and thus in 1880 the faculty - and the students - built some additions including a three-story dining hall, a laundry, a hospital, and a warehouse.

Viewed as a success, more than 400 boarding schools were created in Carlisle’s image - many run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. While they were mostly concentrated in the midwest, the boarding schools did spread throughout the country - stretching as far west as California. Each school established had the same military-style discipline and forced assimilation as Carlisle. Children - sometimes as young as five - were separated from their families for years and were often not permitted any contact. They were then told repeatedly that their culture, their language, and their history was somehow tainted. Attendees represented over 140 nations, but most were Sioux, Chippewa, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Menominee, and Alaskan Native. With the United States entering World War I, the Carlisle campus was returned to army control where it became a hospital for injured soldiers. In 1928, the federal government found that children were often suffering from abuse and were overworked and underfed. Although a gradual process, these abuses, along with broader shifts in federal policy contributed to a majority of the schools closing by the 1930s. In 2024, the Interior Department released a report indicating that nearly 1,000 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died while attending one of the over 400 Indian boarding schools during their tenure.

One of Carlisle’s most famous students was football star and all around star athlete Jim Thorpe, who arrived on campus in 1904. Thorpe, who would actually suffer through two other boarding schools before coming to Carlisle, displayed his natural ability just three years after landing in Pennsylvania when he broke a local school record by clearing a high jump set for five feet nine inches. Thorpe eventually blossomed into other sports, and briefly left to play minor league baseball, before returning in 1911 to play his first passion, football.

Those who managed to survive their boarding school experience did so with scars of their own. Indian Boarding schools taught - quite effectively - that indigenous language, customs, and culture was all backwards. This led many graduates to refuse to speak their native language and prevent future generations from learning the words of their ancestors. As historian and Oneida tribal member Doug Kiel asserts quote, “it was a source of trauma,” end quote. The internalized shame contributed to multigenerational trauma and issues with abuse - but it also created pockets of resistance and resilience.

Today, what was Carlisle is located in the U.S. Army War College. In December 2024, the former campus used for the Carlisle School was designated as a national monument. In explaining the motivations and reasoning behind making the designation, the president wrote quote: “establishing a national monument at the historic Carlisle School and acknowledging the Federal Government’s policies aimed at destroying Tribal and Indigenous political structures, cultures, and traditions - including through the Federal Indian boarding school system - takes a step toward redress and national healing in the arc of survival, resilience, and triumph of Indian Tribes (including Alaska Native Villages) and the Native Hawaiian Community,” end quote. The area identified is to be overseen by the National Park Service who is responsible for the management and interpretation of the site.

Founded at a time when many Americans believed that the only future for the nation’s remaining Indigenous communities was either extermination or assimilation, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School seemed to some like a practical answer to what they saw as a national dilemma. And while a number of students did find opportunity there, too many found loss - loss they carried for the rest of their lives. Carlisle represents a difficult truth in American history - that policies born of conviction, even policies that its architects believed were humane, can still inflict irreparable harm. That institutions built in the name of progress can leave wounds that last generations. The story of Indian boarding schools reminds us that the history of the United States is not only about expansion and innovation. It is also about cultural survival - and about whose voices are preserved, and whose are pushed aside.

For decades, the students’ voices were buried in administrative files and government reports. But if we listen carefully, they are still there. Not shouting or accusing. Speaking - softly - waiting to be heard.

Thanks, peeps. I will see you next time.