Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904General Richard Henry Pratt, best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, profoundly shaped Indian education and federal Indian policy at the turn of the twentieth century. Pratt’s long and active military career included eight years of service as an army field officer on the western frontier. During that time he participated in some of the signal conflicts with Indians of the southern plains, including the Washita campaign of 1868-1869 and the Red River War of 1874-1875. He then served as jailor for many of the Indians who surrendered. His experiences led him to dedicate himself to Indian education, and from 1879 to 1904, still on active military duty, he directed the Carlisle school, believing that the only way to save Indians from extinction was to remove Indian youth to nonreservation settings and there inculcate in them what he considered civilized ways. Pratt’s memoirs, edited by Robert M. Utley and with a new foreword by David Wallace Adams, offer insight into and understanding of what are now highly controversial turn-of-the-century Indian education policies. |
Contents
Indian Territory 1867 | 1 |
Fort Arbuckle and the Nomads | 9 |
Life at Fort Arbuckle | 22 |
The Washita Campaign of 1868 | 30 |
Fort Sill and Camp Supply 187072 | 39 |
Fort Griffin and the Texas Frontier 187374 | 54 |
The Red River War | 65 |
Campaigning on the Staked Plains | 74 |
Primitive Correspondence and Incidents of Prison Life | 180 |
Recruiting Indians for Hampton | 191 |
Mission to the Indians of Florida | 205 |
The Founding of the Carlisle Indian School | 213 |
The First Year at Carlisle | 230 |
Transformation | 245 |
SelfEvident Truths | 268 |
Progress in the School and in Public Sentiment | 274 |
Kicking Bird Dangerous Eagle and Big Bow | 91 |
Exile of the Hostile Leaders | 104 |
Prison Life at Fort Marion | 116 |
Prison Industries | 128 |
Anthropological Interest in the Prisoners | 136 |
The Kiowa Escape Plot | 147 |
Prison Educational Programs | 154 |
Opinions Progress Appeals | 167 |