Introduction to Pawnees at Carlisle Indian Industrial School

Carlisle Indian Industrial School was founded in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, by Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt under U.S. governmental authority. During the Red River War of 1874, Pratt had commanded a contingent of Indian Scouts, including at least eighteen Pawnee men.

Carlisle was the first of many federally funded off-reservation boarding schools to coercively assimilate Indians into western society. This planned ethnocide called for removing Indian youth from their families and placing them in distant schools where they would be remade in mirror images of white Americans. School policy punished students for speaking their native languages and violating school rules. Pratt’s infamous motto, “Kill the Indian, save the man” was the fundamental basis of the cultural assimilation efforts to eradicate traditional ways of life and knowledge. An estimated eighty-three Pawnee students attended Carlisle from 1879 to 1918 when the school closed.