Help in History 2 650 words Reflection

Excerpt from Pratt’s speech: “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man, ” 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.

We shall have to go elsewhere, and seek for other means besides land in severalty to release

these people from their tribal relations and to bring them individually into the capacity and

freedom of citizens.

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. I do not care if abundant schools on the plan of Carlisle are established. If the

principle we have always had at Carlisle—of sending them out into families and into the public

schools—were left out, the result would be the same, even though such schools were established,

as Carlisle is, in the centre of an intelligent and industrious population, and though such schools

were, as Carlisle always has been, filled with students from many tribes. Purely Indian schools

say to the Indians: “You are Indians, and must remain Indians. You are not of the nation, and

cannot become of the nation. We do not want you to become of the nation.”

We make our greatest mistake in feeding our civilization to the Indians instead of feeding the

Indians to our civilization.

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. These

results have been established over and over again beyond all question; and it is also well

established that those advanced in life, even to maturity, of either class, lose already acquired

qualities belonging to the side of their birth, and gradually take on those of the side to which

they have been transferred.

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; when we act consistently towards

him in accordance with that recognition; when we cease to fetter him to conditions which keep

him in bondage, surrounded by retrogressive influences; when we allow him the freedom of

association and the developing influences of social contact—then the Indian will quickly

demonstrate that he can be truly civilized, and he himself will solve the question of what to do

with the Indian.