Freedom & Captivity Primary Source Sets

Captivity Outside of Prison

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Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans.

Source: Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271.

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man….

It is a sad day for the Indians when they fall under the assaults of our troops, as in the Piegan massacre, the massacre of Old Black Kettle and his Cheyennes at what is termed “the battle of the Washita,” and hundreds of other like places in the history of our dealings with them; but a far sadder day is it for them when they fall under the baneful influences of a treaty agreement with the United States whereby they are to receive large annuities, and to be protected on reservations, and held apart from all association with the best of our civilization. The destruction is not so speedy, but it is far more general.

Indian schools are just as well calculated to keep the Indians intact as Indians as Catholic schools are to keep the Catholics intact. Under our principles we have established the public school system, where people of all races may become unified in every way, and loyal to the government; but we do not gather the people of one nation into schools by themselves, and the people of another nation into schools by themselves, but we invite the youth of all peoples into all schools. We shall not succeed in Americanizing the Indian unless we take him in in exactly the
same way.

It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.

Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and then moves them out into our communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or the colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have.

When we cease to teach the Indian that he is less than a man; when we recognize fully that he is capable in all respects as we are, and that he only needs the opportunities and privileges which we possess to enable him to assert his humanity and manhood.

Source 3 - Document

LISTEN TO THE SOUND RECORDING

Transcript (written copy of the sound recording):

My great-grandfather was a Tribal leader, Peter Paul. There’s a collection, an archive on him at the University of New Brunswick, which I didn’t know until later in life. Although as a child, my gramp would say to me, you know, ‘You come from good people,’ or whatever.

I did know my, on my mom’s side, my great-grandmother, who we called Grammy Paul, who was a brilliant woman and a healer, and very strict and very correct and mannerly and tidy and so forth.

But I was raised by my mother and my grandfather. He came from Kingsclear, New Brunswick, First Nations. And he told me when I was young that he had been sent to residential school. And his experiences there very much affected him, and then in turn, our family.

My gramp didn’t speak English when they sent him away. He spoke French and he spoke two different Native dialects. I know one was Maliseet, Passamaquoddy dialect. I don’t know what the other one was, it might have been Micmac. And he said, ‘I learned English quick enough.’ Because they would beat him, obviously, for speaking. And, uh, he said they locked him up, you know, in a closet, which I know was typical. My granddad was one of the ones who just couldn’t and wouldn’t accept it. So he told me he kept running away. And he ran away from the residential school in Canada four or five times, and they kept bringing him back.

Now my gramp was an intelligent man. He never graduated from high school. Um, he was brilliant in his way. But I think that generationally, he didn’t have a chance to fulfill his potential because of what happened to him. And so, you can see how quickly the effects of his being taken from his family then shaped the succeeding generations.

Because when you start damaging the family relationships, then people don’t have the kind of support network that they should have. And so I think it makes you easier to succumb to things like substance abuse, because people give up. You know, the despair is so powerful. And then, once you introduce the substance abuse, then you’re adding another layer of problems onto the family structure. And so here we are.

You know, my gramp was born in 1912, and that in that span of time, how much is lost? And I was the only one of four that was taught by him. So I’m the last person in my family to have any sense of a traditional upbringing. To have any knowledge, to have a strong cultural identity. You know? That I have fully internalized. And it’s sad to me to think that my siblings and their children only know of their cultural identity indirectly as a sort of a fact. They don’t have the living experience of it.

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Freedom & Captivity Primary Source Sets developed in collaboration between the Maine State Archives, Maine State Library, and Maine State Museum.

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