Choate, J. N. (John N.), 1848-1902

The United States Indian School at Carlisle, Pa., was founded in 1879 by Gen. Richard Henry Pratt, a Civil War veteran and former commander of the Buffalo soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. Through his experiences in the far west, Pratt developed a loathing for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which he regarded as hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, and he was led to develop his own solutions to the "Indian problem." After being appointed commander at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Fla., guarding over Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho hostages who refused to live on reservations, he had his first opportunity to act on his theories, which were intended as an alternative to extermination for both pacifying Indians and alleviating their social conditions.

Pratt's thoughts on Indian education drew upon disparate sources. Influenced by Quaker educators, who had eighty years of experience in attempting to instill white values in Indians, Pratt latched onto the idea of using boarding schools as a means of separating Indians from their native cultures and socializing them into "civilized" life, while preparing them for work in industrial and manual labor. Given new white names to replace their Indian ones, the students were prohibited from speaking their native languages, were instructed in Christianity, and were fed, clothed, and housed under strict military discipline.

For his first foray into Indian education, Pratt arranged for 17 Kiowa and Cheyenne prisoners at Fort Marion to enroll at the newly founded Hampton Institute, a school dedicated to providing a vocational, industrial education for freed slaves and Indians. At the same time, he lobbied the government to allow him to establish his own vocational school, receiving permission from the Department of the Interior during the summer of 1879 to use the abandoned barracks at Carlisle, Pa., for that purpose. That September, he recruited 82 Lakota students from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Agencies, including five of Spotted Tail's sons, a daughter, and a granddaughter. Two of his Hampton students recruited other students among the Kiowa and Cheyenne, and on October 6, 1879, the first students of the Carlisle Training School took residence.

Over the course of its 39 years, over 10,000 students were enrolled at the Carlisle School drawn from tribes all across the continent. Until it closed in 1918, Carlisle served as a model for dozens of other boarding schools who adopted the concept of "civilizing the Indian" by stripping away Indian identity.

From the guide to the Speck-Choate Photograph Collection, 1879-1881, (American Philosophical Society)