After the Civil War, the federal government, to make way for the railroads and the closing of the American frontier by white settlers, confined American Indians on reservations in the West. The bison, or buffalo, an animal that once had swarmed the great plains in the tens of millions and fed and clothed generations of Plains Indians was all but extinguished by white settlers and buffalo hunters. Indians now have no choice but to live off the paltry largesse of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Traditional tribal cultures were endangered. >> Richard Henry Pratt, a former colonel in the Union Army, believed that Native Americans could survive only if they were assimilated into the white mainstream. He called it, quote, killing the Indian to save the man. Pratt persuaded the US Interior Department to authorize his establishment of an experimental Indian industrial school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The first Indian children and youths arrived at the new school in the fall of 1879. Enrolling hundreds of young people from the reservations, Carlisle was the inspiration for other federally sponsored Indian boarding schools. Quote, killing the Indian, meant giving Carlisle students English names, dressing the boys in military outfits or jacketed uniforms, and the girls in frumpy Victorian dresses, and operating the school as a type of military institution. Military rigor required military style haircuts, which the Indian children regarded as shaming. English was the only language allowed. Serious breaches of Carlisle's code of conduct, including trying to get out of the place, were punished by incarceration in a six foot thick limestone guardhouse. In one case, two girls who tried to burned down the school were shipped off to a state women's prison. >> Education at Carlisle followed the industrial model championed by northern philanthropists. Elementary school studies co-mingled with industrial training in carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe making, and other vocations. Ironically, Carlisle's fame rested not on its program of Indian assimilation, but rather on its illustrious football program. Under coach Pop Warner, Carlisle fielded some of the best football teams in the United States, frequently, knocking off the nation's top collegiate teams. It helped, of course, that Warner had the talents of Jim Thorpe of the Sa, Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, arguably the best all-around athlete in US history. We conclude our module on the postbellum era with a signal educational development of the last half of the 19th century, the American high school. This institution, an extension of the common school, arose in splendid architectural forms in cities of the north and Midwest, took root in the rural areas of those states, and lagged in the south. [MUSIC]
