“The First Days at Carlisle”: Critical Analysis “The First Days at Carlisle” by Luther Standing Bear takes place in the year of 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the Carlisle school, a federal boarding school. The purpose of the school was to force the Native American children to assimilate to the white man's culture and to eradicate their culture and traditions. At the school Native Americans children were taught the ways of the white man, but they were not given beds, they were not well fed, they were treated like prisoners, and they were taken advantage of. Throughout the short story “The First Days at Carlisle,” Luther Standing Bear shows how the Native American children were not well taken care of at the Carlisle school.
Choctaws are very interesting individuals that have great cultural influence in the southern United States. The earliest mention of the Choctaws was from the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto, around 1540 (“Choctaw Tribe”). Their unique customs have formed the history of Oklahoma and Mississippi. They continue sharing the tribal stories and spreading the legacy of the tribe. They are a member of the Five Civilized Tribes, in which they were the first to be removed from their homelands.
The white men had treated the natives poorly, continued in viewing them as savages and trying to civilize the Native Americans through uncomfortable ways. Native Americans were forced to assimilate into Western culture and have to withstand the racism and discrimination from the Whites during that time. One of the methods that the Whites used to try to have the Indians fit into the Western culture were Native American boarding schools. These schools were established during the late 19th century to educate the Native American children according to Euro-American standards. The boarding schools often established rules for the Native Americans to follow, but most of the Native Americans were not willing to abandon their culture and tribal traditions.
Have you ever wondered who owned this land before us? The Cherokee people called the Appalachian Mountains home along with several parts of the United States we know today as the Carolinas, Virginia and an amount of various other states. This was long before Christopher Columbus discovered the United States. The Cherokee people had the largest population in the United States at the time. The Cherokee tribe was exclusive for their political, economy, and religion.
Native American boarding schools were established in the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s to educate and assimilate children of Native Americans to conform to American standards. Assimilation was meant to make all Native Americans speak English as their primary language, for them to be Christians, to stop wearing their native clothing, wear their hair as the Americans wear their hair and most importantly, to think like Americans. So the best method of assimilation was to focus on the children of these reservations. Most schools started on the reservations by Christian missionaries, their goal was to Christianize Indians so they wouldn’t believe in Wakan Tanka. Their hope was “that an education grounded in Western training and stern discipline would detribalize Native American children
Indian Boarding Schools In the 1800’s, all Native Americans in America were forced onto reservations by the United States Government. The government controlled their food, supplies, and ways of life. However, the government wasn’t satisfied by this. They felt like the Indians were savages and needed to become more like the whites.
Indian Boarding Schools In the 1800’s, all Native Americans in America were forced onto reservations by the United States Government. The government controlled their food, supplies, and ways of life. However, the government wasn’t satisfied by this. They felt like the Indians were savages and needed to become more like the whites.
American Indian boarding schools, emerging in the 19th and 20th centuries, were driven by a systematic agenda to assimilate Native American children into white society, as a means to commit cultural genocide as opposed to physical genocide. These institutions sought to erase Native languages, traditions, and identities, leading to perpetuating cycles of intergenerational trauma and socio-economic disparities, that have left enduring scars on the Indigenous community. The inception of Native American boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries was rooted in a systematic effort to erase indigenous cultures and assimilate Native American children into white society, embodying a form of cultural genocide. Initially established to provide Christian instruction to Native Americans, the focus shifted towards targeting
The American government of the late 1800’s adopted the policy of assimilation because they were influenced by the desire to expand westward into territories occupied by these Native American tribes. All Native American tribes, lived to the west of the Mississippi River. These American Indians, some from the Northwestern and Southeastern territories, were confined to Indian Territory. The Native Americans had endured nearly a century of forced removal westward.
government forced tens of thousands of American Indian children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools. These boarding schools forbid American Indian children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their native way of life.9 In 1928, the Meriam Report assessed that the schools were underfunded and understaffed, too heavily institutionalized, and run too rigidly. Many events in the 1960’s and 1970’s led to the eventual closing of many American Indian boarding schools in the 80’s and 90’s. One of these events include the introduction of The National Indian Education Study, which is designed to describe the status of education for American Indian
“The significance of Native American boarding school was that Americans were trying to assimilate their culture and their way of living.” Many Native Americans today have very different opinions to how their people were placed in Indian boarding school. “Many Native Americans think that it helped their people be more civilized and help them live in american ways. ”While other Native Americans think that boarding schools were a place where they were torchered and a place where they lost their freedom and their culture. “Most people agree that Indian Boarding schools were just trying to help indians be more civilized, but others can see the wrong in the schools.”
Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle Barracks as a demonstration to convince the government that Indians could be reeducated in an American way. After the government agreed to reshape our culture, the numbers of boarding schools and students increased rapidly. They had an enrollment of 3,598 in 1877 and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, 20,000 Indian students were enrolled in 148 boarding schools and 225 day schools. Many of the schools that the children were forced to attend were built extremely poorly. When boys first arrive in the camps they had their hair cut short, many would have had longer hair, for having short hair was looked at poorly in the native American culture because it represented a state of mourning and was associated with death.
This is where the boarding schools come in. The people who believed in assimilation as the solution, or assimilationists, were humanitarians who believed that formal education and conversion to Christianity would help the Natives become functioning members of society. In these schools, reformers assumed that is was necessary to “civilize” the Native Americans. These schools also served as ways to silently advance the belief in Manifest Destiny. By assimilating the Natives that is seen as one less obstacle in their expansion westward.
It is important to ensure that all students feel comfortable among each other and understand each other so they can learn from each other. Therefore, if there are any stigmas associated with American Indians and their education that can be projected by their peers, it is due to the negative images and thoughts provoked by the inaccurate history taught in the classrooms. It is important that students are getting a precise and truthful education so that the lack of understanding towards and about Native Americans can be avoided and how that can be reflected in the education
The government believed that if the children remained with their parents the problems would only increase, with the boarding schools it would make it easier to cut off their culture and religions. They decided it was best to christianize the children making almost every boarding schools either christian or catholic. The Native American kids were forced into going to church two to three times a day. It was against the
