Richard Henry Pratt
Encyclopedia
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879 at Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the school was the first off-reservation boarding school, and it became a model for Indian boarding schools in other locations...
at Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle is a borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The name is traditionally pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2010 census, the borough...
.
Military career
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Pratt's father had moved the family to Logansport, Indiana, where he enlisted in the 9th Indiana Volunteer Infantry and later served with the 2nd Indiana Volunteer Cavalry and the 11th Indiana Volunteer Cavalry and was mustered out of the Volunteer Service in May 1865. He served the entire Civil War as a volunteer, from Private to brevet Major, fighting in the battles of Nashville and Chicamauga.After being mustered out of the army, he returned to Logansport, Indiana, and married Anna Mason and ran a hardware store, but after two years in the hardware business, he reentered the Army in March 1867 as Second Lieutenant in the 10th United States Cavalry, taking charge of the African-American regiment composed of freedman and recently freed slaves famously known as the "Buffalo Soldiers" in Fort Sill in the Oklahoma Territory
Oklahoma Territory
The Territory of Oklahoma was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 2, 1890, until November 16, 1907, when it was joined with the Indian Territory under a new constitution and admitted to the Union as the State of Oklahoma.-Organization:Oklahoma Territory's...
. Pratt's long and active military career included 8 years in the western Great Plains
Great Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
, which involved participation in some of the signal conflicts with Native Americans of the southern plains, including the Washita campaign
Battle of Washita River
The Battle of Washita River occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S...
of 1868-1869 and the Red River War
Red River War
The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874, as part of the Comanche War, to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Native American tribes from the Southern Plains and forcibly relocate them to reservations in Indian Territory...
of 1874-1875. He was promoted Captain in February 1883; Major in July 1898; Lieutenant Colonel in February 1901; and Colonel in January 1903. He retired from the Army in February 1903 and in April 1904 he was advanced to Brigadier General on the Retired List.
Fort Marion and Carlisle
After the Indian warsIndian Wars
American Indian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between American settlers or the federal government and the native peoples of North America before and after the American Revolutionary War. The wars resulted from the arrival of European colonizers who...
subsided he experimented in educating Native Americans, believing that they must be taught to reject tribal culture and adapt to white society. In the 1870s at Fort Marion, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, he introduced classes in the English language, Christianity, art, guard duty, and craftsmanship to several dozen prisoners who had been chosen from among those who had surrendered in the Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
at the end of the Red River War.
On November 1, 1879, he founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
Carlisle Indian Industrial School was an Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1879 at Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the school was the first off-reservation boarding school, and it became a model for Indian boarding schools in other locations...
at Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Carlisle is a borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The name is traditionally pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2010 census, the borough...
, the first of many nonreservation boarding schools for Native Americans.
Pratt did not regard his innovations at Fort Marion as limited to Native Americans only. He developed the compulsory education paradigm that would be used for many different demographic minorities in the United States and its territories, including African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, Asian-Americans, and Mormons. He took his pedagogical inspiration from the Puritans.
Cultural assimilation of Native Americans
Americanization (of Native Americans)
The Americanization of Native Americans was an assimilation effort by the United States to transform Native American culture to European-American culture between the years of 1790–1920. George Washington and Henry Knox were first to propose, in an American context, the cultural transformation of...
by forced cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
, which he effected both at Fort Marion and Carlisle, was later regarded by some as a form of cultural genocide
Cultural genocide
Cultural genocide is a term that lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed in 1933 as a component to genocide. The term was considered in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples juxtaposed next to the term ethnocide, but it was removed in the final document, replaced with...
. He believed that to claim their rightful place as American citizens, Native Americans needed to renounce their tribal way of life, convert to Christianity, abandon their reservations, and seek education and employment among the "best classes" of Americans. In his writings he described his belief that the government must "kill the Indian to save the man". Pratt was outspoken and a leading member of what was called the "Friends of the Indian" movement at the end of the 19th century. He believed in the "noble" cause of civilizing the Indians. He said, "The Indians need the chances of participation you have had and they will just as easily become useful citizens." At Fort Marion and Carlisle, he sanctioned beatings to force Native Americans to stop speaking their own respective languages. Later schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Carlisle model were marked by kidnapping and imprisonment of children at the schools, disease, sexual abuse, and suicide. Nevertheless, Pratt's approach was forward-thinking for its time inasmuch as he regarded Native Americans as being worthy of respect and help, and capable of full participation in society, whereas most of his contemporaries regarded Native Americans as nearly subhuman, who could never be lifted into Anglo Saxon society.
Pratt became an outspoken opponent of tribal segregation on reservations
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
. He believed the system as administered and encouraged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was hindering the education and civilization of Native Americans and creating helpless wards of the state. These views led to conflicts with the Indian Bureau and the government officials who supported the reservation system. In May, 1904 Pratt denounced the Indian Bureau and the reservation system as a hindrance to the civilization and assimilation of Native Americans. This controversy, coupled with earlier disputes with the government over civil service reform, led to Pratt's forced retirement as superintendent of the Carlisle School on June 30, 1904. This did not, however, end Pratt's support for Native American causes. A tireless speaker and letter writer, he continued his campaign for fair and humane treatment of the Native American. The legacy of Pratt's boarding school programs is felt by modern Native American tribes, where he is often remembered not as a champion for Native American rights but as leader of a cultural genocide that targeted children.
Retirement
From his home in Rochester, New York, during his retirement years, Pratt continued to lecture and argue his viewpoints, but without great success. He died on April 23, 1924, at the Letterman Army HospitalLetterman Army Hospital
The Letterman Army Hospital was located on the Presidio of San Francisco and was established around 1898.- History :The hospital, built in 1898 and named in 1911 for Jonathan Letterman, was featured in every US foreign conflict in the 20th century and remained in service until the army base was...
in the Presidio of San Francisco
Presidio of San Francisco
The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...
.
In the 2005 miniseries, Into the West, produced by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and Dreamworks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming...
, Pratt is played by Keith Carradine
Keith Carradine
Keith Ian Carradine is an American actor who has had success on stage, film and television. In addition, he is a Golden Globe and Oscar winning songwriter. As a member of the Carradine family, he is part of an acting "dynasty" that began with his father, John Carradine.-Early life:Keith...
. His role at the Carlisle School is addressed in the 2008 documentary, Our Spirits Don't Speak English
Our Spirits Don't Speak English
Our Spirits Don't Speak English is a documentary film about the Native American boarding schools, which youths attended chiefly from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It was filmed by the Rich Heape company and directed by Chip Richie. Native American storyteller Gayle Ross narrated the film...
..
External links
- Richard Henry Pratt Papers. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.