Carlisle School Curriculum

By Carter Revard, <ccrevard@socwork.wustl.edu>, 15 February 1995

Paula Curley asked about the Carlisle and other curricula in late 1800's; I don't know much but maybe it is worth citing an article reprinted in THE AMERICAN INDIAN READER: EDUCATION, edited by Jeanette Henry for the Indian Historian Press back in 1972. The article was originally printed in HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE for 1880, and is titled, Indian Education at Hampton and Carlisle, and in the Indian Historian reader is on pp. 38-50. I expect Paula Curley has long since got through the old histories of Indian education listed by Brewton Berry in the AI READER on p. 31: Martha Layman, A HISTORY OF INDIAN EDUCATION IN THE U.S. (Minnesota Ph.D. 1942), covering 1542-1942 is said to be by far the best and most comprehensive.

There is also the account by Jason Betzinez, a younger follower of Geronimo whose 1959 autobiography, I FOUGHT WITH GERONIMO, describes his being put into Carlisle Indian school about 1887. The book, an as told to W. S. Nye, was published in Harrisburg, PA by The Stackpole Company, 1959. Betzinez returned from Carlisle where he learned to be a blacksmith to Fort Sill in 1900. I have talked a little about this book in relation to Geronimo's autobiography in a piece in THE DENVER QUARTERLY (1980): History, Myth and Identity Among Osages and Other Peoples (pp. 84-97). I don't know whether biographies of Pratt and others or histories of Carlisle/Hampton would offer much help. And it is always likely such suggestions as I offer here will have been long familiar. Anyhow, best of luck.