“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one[….]In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” –from a paper read by Carlisle Indian School founder, Captain Richard H. Pratt, at an 1892 convention.
Pratt’s words sound terrible to us today, but in his own time, his theory that Indians could be assimilated into American culture–rather than massacred out of it–was more humane than many of his contemporaries’ ideologies.
Pratt was an Army officer in the 10th Calvary,who commanded a unit of African American “Buffalo Soldiers” and Indian scouts in Indian Territory after the Civil War. In 1875 he escorted 72 Indian warriors suspected of murdering white settlers to Ft. Marion in Florida. Once there, he took off his prisoners’ shackles, put them in uniforms, and drilled them like soldiers. Curious locals offered to teach them English. Pratt agreed, feeling that he was “civilizing” his charges. Eventually the Indians’ military guards were dismissed and trusted prisoners were allowed to act as guards, instead.
Pratt’s accomplishments drew positive attention and he gained permission from the Secretary of the Interior to establish a school that would take Indian children far away from their homes and immerse them in American culture. He got permission to use the Carlisle Barracks at a deserted military base to begin his experiment in civilizing the Indian nations through their children.
Richard H. Pratt
Richard Pratt With Prisoners, Ft.Marion, 1875
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Thank you so much for your interest in my blog. I’m afraid you may have lost the gist of what I was saying, so I hope this will clarify. The first section is a quote Pratt is making about a previous general. This quote sets the stage for discussing Pratt’s radical shift in philosophy from that general’s. The point I was making and which may have gotten lost in your justified dislike of the man, was that Pratt was trying to get away from the previous mindset that mass annihilation was the answer to the presence of Indians. His argument that they should not be killed but instead, be civilized via boarding schools and so on, was very much a more humane approach than the absolute genocide then in practice. Though he was absolutely misguided in his thinking, he broke with the then-current idea that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, which is the only point I was trying to make–a historical shift in thought.
Carla
Ignorance is not an excuse for stupidity. The man was in no way a flippin hero. Nowhere in this do you mention the truths that came along with his “kill the indian” save the man. If you knew anything, you’d know about the mass graves of CHILDREN at these so Called Indian Industrial Schools that were literally no more than military style work houses of Children, the abuses that occurred to Native People from all over the US including those from Alaska Villages and the Mass Graves in Canada at their Reserve Schools was part of the biggest attempt at Genocide of a Human Race in US History and in Canada History! It is disgusting that even generations are STILL suffering Because of the Abuses! Look at your history better. Obviously you know Very Little About First Nation /Amerindian Peoples. Click on a few of the pictures! Tell the families of these Kids whose bodies ARE STILL BEING DUG UP to FINALLY SEND HOME.. THat PRATT and the Schools did Good!
https://cumberlink.com/news/local/communities/carlisle/carlisle-barracks-graves-disinterring-and-returning-remains-of-native-american/collection_6a37fb30-595e-5854-a846-5964be2328e7.html