Native American School Essay

Life at the Carlisle school was very structured and regulated. There was a dress code for the children, boys wore military uniforms and girls wore dressed modeled after the victorian era. The children were not allowed to wear their moccasins, feathers or any of their fur or skins. Their physical appearance was changed drastically by the haircuts and new attire. Not only was their appearance altered, but they were no longer allowed to speak in their native tongues. If any of these rules was not followed or they broke any other rule, they were sent to the court system that was organized in a military system. Disciple was strictly enforced, and the children were made to do regular drill practice and were often beaten for trying to escape, violating …show more content…
In the school newspaper, Pratt wrote " …The author of the letter evidently has the idea of Indians that Buffalo Bill and other showmen keep alive, by hiring the reservation wild man to dress in his most hideous costume of feathers, paint, moccasins, blanket, leggins, and scalp lock, and to display his savagery, by hair lifting war-whoops make those who pay to see him, think he is a blood-thirsty creature ready to devour people alive. It is this nature in our red brother that is better dead than alive, and when we agree with the oft-repeated sentiment that the only good Indian is a dead one, we mean this characteristic of the Indian. Carlisle 's mission is to kill THIS Indian, as we build up the better man. We give the rising Indian something nobler and higher to think about and do, and he comes out a young man with the ambitions and aspirations of his more favored white brother. We do not like to keep alive the stories of his past, hence deal more with his present and his future…" His views on exterminating the Indian out of the man are very clear: he wants them to look beyond their old culture and focus on becoming equal to the white man in every way. The fact that his teachers were open about the superior qualities they saw in Native Americans only encouraged him to take away every trace of past heritage. one teacher had said, "...they have been systematically taught …show more content…
Captain William A. Mercer took over the school and loosened the rings a bit; he strongly pushed for sports teams for the school. One Jim Thorpe-whose former named before it was changed at Carlisle was Bright Path- emerged from the school as a football star and eventually played for the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Braves and won six of ten events at the 1912 Olympics. The experiences for students that attended the school after Pratt left to Mercers arrival were night and day. Many students hated life at Carlisle when it was focused on a military structure, but when Mercer came and toned things down a bit, the children really developed. The last surviving student named Andrew Cuellar died in 2002; he was just two weeks away from being one hundred and four years old. His daughter recollects on all his memories and stories he shared with her. Having attended Carlisle in 1914, he was long past the reign of Pratt and went straight into the system Mercer had set. Andrew 's daughter said, "He took a lot of pictures and learned how to develop them, he was in plays. He always learned whatever he could." Andrew made the most of his experiences and enjoyed his life at the school because it provided him with opportunities to succeed. The opinions and memories of other families are not always similar to Cuellar. Many are