The Indian To-day: The Past and Future of the First AmericanEastman, Charles A.
History
The Indian To-day: The Past and Future of the First American
Eastman, Charles A.
Indians of North America
Periodical attacks have been made upon the Carlisle school, usually from
political or purely selfish motives; but it has survived them all.
General Pratt's policy was to take the young Indian wholly out of his
environment and the motives as well as the habits of his former life,
and in support of it he has opposed some of the methods of the
missionaries. His advice to his graduates is to remain east and compete
in civilization. He has worked with tremendous energy and great
single-mindedness, and has often been undiplomatic in his criticisms,
thus incurring some enmity. But, upon the whole, his theory is the very
backbone of Indian education, and in fact we are following it to-day.
It is the impression of the most advanced members of the race that he
has rendered to them and to the country a particular service, and that
the wonderful progress demonstrated by the Indian in recent years is due
in large measure to his work, and to its results as seen at Hampton and
Carlisle. These schools are visited by hundreds of people every year,
and have furnished a convincing object-lesson to the many who opposed
Indian education on theory alone. The other thirty-four non-reservation
schools were secured with comparative ease after he had proved his case.
The Indian department at Hampton Institute, which opened in 1878 with
General Pratt's seventeen prisoners of war, flourished for more than
thirty years, and provided for the education of more than one hundred
Indian pupils each year in "the hand, the heart, and the head." General
Armstrong, one of America's heroes of peace, was an enthusiastic
champion of the red man's cause, and as an object-lesson to the public,
as well as in training native teachers and leaders, his great school has
contributed much to the new era. It was decided by Congress a year or
two ago to withdraw the Government appropriation of $20,000 annually
from the Hampton school, but notwithstanding this, more than thirty
Indian pupils remain to work their way through, with some assistance
from free scholarships.
Hampton claims to have been the first school to begin keeping systematic
records of its returned Indian students, and by means of these records
the school is able to show satisfactory and encouraging results of its
work for Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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