Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904

by Richard Henry Pratt, Robert M. Utley (Editor), David Wallace Adams (Foreword by)

Overview

General 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806192802
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	02/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	420
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Henry Pratt (1840-1924) was a long-time army officer and the founder of the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Robert M. Utley (1929–2022) served in the National Park Service for 25 years in various capacities, including Chief Historian from 1964 to 1972. Since his retirement from the federal government in 1980, he has devoted himself full-time to historical research and writing with a specialty in the American West. He is author, among many articles and books he has published, of Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier, Revised Edition; Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life; Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers; and The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West. A founder of the Western History Association, Utley has served on its governing council and as its president.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xi
	Introduction	xvii
1.	Indian Territory, 1867	1
2.	Fort Arbuckle and the Nomads	9
3.	Life at Fort Arbuckle	22
4.	The Washita Campaign of 1868	30
5.	Fort Sill and Camp Supply, 1870-72	39
6.	Fort Griffin and the Texas Frontier, 1873-74	54
7.	The Red River War	65
8.	Campaigning on the Staked Plains	74
9.	Kicking Bird, Dangerous Eagle, and Big Bow	91
10.	Exile of the Hostile Leaders	104
11.	Prison Life at Fort Marion	116
12.	Prison Industries	128
13.	Anthropological Interest in the Prisoners	136
14.	The Kiowa Escape Plot	147
15.	Prison Educational Programs	154
16.	Opinions, Progress, Appeals	167
17.	Primitive Correspondence and Incidents of Prison Life	180
18.	Recruiting Indians for Hampton	191
19.	Mission to the Indians of Florida	205
20.	The Founding of the Carlisle Indian School	212
21.	The First Year at Carlisle	230
22.	Transformation	245
23.	Self-Evident Truths	268
24.	Progress in the School and in Public Sentiment	274
25.	Propaganda	282
26.	The World's Columbian Exposition	294
27.	The Carlisle Outing	311
28.	Compelling Respect: Football, Baseball, and Music	316
29.	The Great Heart of America	325
30.	End of Service at Carlisle	334
	Index	339
	Maps and Illustrations	viii
16.	Indian guards at Fort Marion. Courtesy National Park Service, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument
17.	Minimic.
18.	Minimic's picture letter.
19.	Sioux boys at Carlisle, 1879.
20.	Sioux girls at Carlisle, 1879.
21.	Sioux youth at Carlisle in June 1880.
22.	Spotted Tail.
23.	Captain Pratt in 1886.
24.	Chiricahua Apaches on arrival at Carlisle.
25.	Chiricahua Apache students four months after arrival at Carlisle.
26.	The first graduating class at Carlisle.
27.	The Carlisle student body.
28.	The Carlisle Band.
29.	The woodworking shop.
30.	The dining hall.
31.	The sewing room.
32.	The blacksmith and wagon making shop.
33.	Major Pratt in 1898.