ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century, the federal government established a series of day schools and boarding schools across the trans-Mississippi West in yet a further attempt to forcibly assimilate American Indians into the expanding nation. At the top of this system of government schools sat off-reservation boarding schools, institutions designed to completely de-Indianize their students and prepare them to provide both a “civilizing” influence in their home communities and desperately needed labor for the United States’ rapidly industrializing economy. The model for these off-reservation schools was Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1879 under the direction of former army officer, Richard Henry Pratt. This chapter describes the Carlisle model for American Indian education, while also examining what the model looked like in practice and why the model ultimately failed in its mission of forced assimilation.
