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'Those Kids Never Got to Go Home'

By Jeff Gammage, from Philly.com
March 13, 2016

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded in 1879, forcibly assimilated American Indian children into
America’s dominant white culture. The school is known for its past abuses and negligence, including the
deaths of hundreds of its students. In March of 2016, members of the Rosebud Sioux, and other American
Indian nations, were working to bring home the remains of these children for proper burial. In May of 2016,
the U.S. Army agreed to pay to remove and re-bury the requested remains of 10 children to the Rosebud
Indian Reservation. As you read, identify the reasons why the Carlisle Indian School was created and the
strategies used by members of the Rosebud Sioux, who want to reclaim the remains of their ancestors.

Nearly 200 children died and are buried at the

former Carlisle Indian School. Now the Rosebud
Sioux want to reclaim their ancestors.

[1] CARLISLE, Pa. — They want the bones of their

children back.

They want the remains of the boys and girls who

were taken from their American Indian families in
the West, spirited a thousand miles to the East,
and, when they died not long after arrival, were “Pupils at Carlisle Indian school, Pennsylvania.” by Frontier Fronts
is in the public domain.
buried here in the fertile Pennsylvania soil.

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The brevity of those lives, and the effort of a South Dakota tribe to reclaim them now, spring from a
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turn-of-the-century episode of forced assimilation and cultural destruction — one that continues to
haunt and torment the Rosebud Sioux.

Today, many people know this small borough as a stop on the turnpike or as the site of Dickinson
College.

[5] But from 1879 to 1918, the town was home to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the flagship of a
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fleet of federally funded, off-reservation boarding schools. It immersed native children in the
dominant white culture, seeking to cleanse their "savage nature" by erasing their names, language,
dress, customs, religions, and family ties.

The Carlisle goal: "Kill the Indian, save the man."

Sometimes, both perished. Nearly 200 children are buried here in the Indian cemetery.

1. Brevity (noun): the quality or fact of lasting only for a short period of time
2. Assimilation (noun): the integration of people or culture into a wider society or culture
3. paid for by the national government
4. Immerse (verb): to plunge into something that surrounds or covers

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 Now the Rosebud Sioux seek to have at least 10 tribe members brought back to the reservation, where
they can be reburied after appropriate native prayers and services.

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"We talk about historical trauma," said Russell Eagle Bear, the tribe's historic-preservation officer. "A
hundred and thirty years later, this still has an impact on our youth. We're trying to make peace with
those spirits and bring them home."

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[10] It's no simple act of graves repatriation. The cemetery lies within the perimeter of the Carlisle
Barracks, an Army installation that once was the grounds of the Indian school. The tribe asked the
Army in January to return its children's remains and the Army said no.

"That's OK," Eagle Bear said. "Senators and congresspeople are getting involved — and other Indian
nations too. The tribe is planning a pilgrimage from South Dakota to Carlisle this summer."

"This modern battle over the past," he said, "is just beginning."

In a way, the Sioux recovery effort began at the White House.

Two dozen Rosebud teenagers traveled to Washington last summer for the Obama administration's
first Tribal Youth Gathering, held in collaboration with UNITY, the United National Indian Tribal Youth.

[15] Afterward, the group drove north to see the site of the Indian school, widely known for its association
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with sports legend Jim Thorpe, and to visit the cemetery.

Sydney Horse Looking, 17, became upset upon being stopped at the Army barracks gate for a
mandatory security check — "I have to prove my identity to visit my ancestors?" — and even more
emotional when she reached the graveyard.

"Those kids never got to go home," she said in an interview. "I would wonder why no one came and got
me: 'Why am I still here?'"

The Rosebud youths placed candy on the graves. They sang prayer songs and called out the names of
the children.

As the group prepared to leave, the cemetery filled with swarms of flashing fireflies.

[20] "It was like their spirits let us know they heard those prayers," said Micah Lunderman, a Rosebud youth
counselor who helped lead the trip. "We know they heard us."

Back home in Rosebud, the youths asked the Tribal Council: "Why aren't we doing something to bring
them home?"

5. Truma is a very difficult or unpleasant experience that causes someone to have mental or emotional problems,
usually for a long time. Historical trauma can happen to an entire generation due to an enotionally disturbing
experience or event.
6. Repatriation (noun): the return of someone to their own country
7. Jim Thorpe (also known as “Bright Path”) was an American Olympic athlete and gold medalist, the first Native
American to win a gold medal for the United States. He was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation and an attendee of
the Carlisle School.

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 No one knew the answer.

In January the Rosebud Tribal Council passed a formal resolution to seek the return of the remains and
wrote to President Obama and other federal authorities.

"It's pretty unusual," said David Beck, a Native American studies professor at the University of
Montana. "If the Rosebud Sioux are successful, other tribes will quickly take notice."

[25] The cemetery isn't half the size of a football field, 186 graves in a rectangular lawn, surrounded by a
chest-high iron fence.

On the ground by the bleached white markers, visitors have left children's toys, gifts of cloth horses,
dolls, and tiny plastic dinosaurs.

The most noticeable grave — first row, first stone — belongs to Lucy Pretty Eagle, one of at least 10
Rosebud children to die at the school.

Two others, Maud, the daughter of Chief Swift Bear, and Ernest, son of Chief White Thunder, arrived
together the day the school opened on Oct. 6, 1879 — and died on the same day 14 months later.

One marker is inscribed "Friend HH Bear," a shortening of Friend Hollow Horn Bear, who died in 1886.

[30] That child, said Duane Hollow Horn Bear, was his grandfather's older sister. Her faraway death and
burial still tears at his family.

"I feel pain," Hollow Horn Bear said by phone from South Dakota. "Bring our people home."

He teaches Lakota studies at Sinte Gleska University on the reservation. But no one needs textbooks to
know what happened at Carlisle, he said. Just look at the photos.

"None of the kids are smiling," Hollow Horn Bear said. "They had nothing to smile about."

The boys, some as young as 4, wore Army-style uniforms, the girls long dresses. Children who spoke
their native language could be beaten.

[35] Many were kept from their families even in summer, sent to local households to provide ongoing
immersion and, for the white hosts, cheap labor.

"Discipline was constant," Norman Matteoni wrote in Prairie Man, his study of Sitting Bull.
"Punishment, abuse, and illness were frequent."

So was death. In the cemetery lie children from more than three dozen Indian nations, their lives
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documented by Cumberland County historian Barbara Landis and Australian anthropologist
Genevieve Bell, experts on the school.

The headstones show no birth dates or ages. Some misspell names. Thirteen are marked "Unknown."

8. Anthropologist (noun): a person who studies human races, origins, societies, and cultures

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 The children died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, flu. Some could not survive the pain of separation
from their families, their health impaired by the school's strict military routine.

[40] In the first decade, 96 children died, according to Jacqueline Fear-Segal, an authority on American
history. Preston McBride, an Indian studies scholar, estimates that more than 500 students died at
Carlisle or soon after they left, sent home by the school when it became clear they were too ill to
survive.

Overcrowding, labor, physical abuse, and malnourishment weakened students' immune systems and
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left them prey to epidemics that swept the school, McBride found.

The dead were buried near the athletic fields. That cemetery moved in 1927 to an isolated patch by the
rear gate. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, security changes turned the back gate into the main
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entrance, giving the graves prominence.

"For me, going through [the cemetery] is extremely draining," Landis said. "Because I have children and
I have grandchildren. My children never went to a school where there's a cemetery."

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In his grave at Arlington National Cemetery, Richard Henry Pratt surely must be spinning. He always
knew what was best for Indians.

[45] A self-righteous former 10th Cavalry commander and frontier Indian fighter, he had the idea to solve
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"the Indian problem" by forcing natives to acculturate.

He won approval to use the old barracks as a campus, then traveled to Dakota Territory, first to
Rosebud, where he persuaded Chief Spotted Tail to send several dozen children, and on to Pine Ridge.

Pratt argued to tribal leaders that if Indians had been better able to speak and read English, they would
not have been so abused in treaty negotiations. At a time when Indians were being forced onto
reservations, he promised the children would be safe, fed, and taught to make their way in the white
man's world.

The two tribes sent 82 children, who embarked on a long and often alarming journey by horse,
steamboat, and train. At stations along the way, white people gathered to gape at the youths. The
locomotive stopped in Sioux City, Iowa, moved east to Chicago, eventually reached Harrisburg, then
turned southwest to Carlisle, a town of about 7,000.

Many were relatives of chiefs or powerful leaders. Coming only three years after Custer’s troops were
wiped out at the Little Big Horn, it placed chiefs' children securely in white hands.

[50] "They were hostages," Eagle Bear said.

But the school wasn't created to commit evil. Pratt and his Quaker and Christian-missionary allies
thought they were doing a good thing, a noble thing, helping to save a vanishing race.

9. Epidemic (noun): an occurrence in which a disease spreads very quickly and affects a large number of people
10. Prominence (noun): the state of being important, well-known, or noticeable
11. The founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
12. Acculturate (verb): to adapt into another culture or society, taking on new customs and lifestyles

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 "We invite the Germans to come into our country and communities and share our customs, our
civilization," Pratt lectured in 1892. "Why not try it on the Indians?"

Some Indians agreed with him. The world was changing fast, and Indian leaders saw that white men,
once rare, now covered the land like ants.

Carlisle's enrollment grew to 1,000 a year. The band performed at presidential inaugurations, and in
the early 1900s the football team became a national powerhouse, led by Thorpe and coached by Pop
Warner.

[55] Today Carlisle's legacy, scholars say, is at best conflicted, creating opportunities for some students, but
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causing confusion and even deaths among others, its role as a prototype helping to spread misery.

Indian children often were seized from their families. Some reservation parents were told to give up
their young ones — or their food rations.

What some researchers now call "boarding school survivors" shared harrowing tales of brutality and
sexual abuse.

That suffering contributes to social ills that now plague Indian communities, said Denise Lajimodiere, a
board member of the Colorado-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition,
which seeks redress.

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"It was an attempt at genocide," said Lajimodiere, an assistant education professor at North Dakota
State University in Fargo. "I want the whole United States to know what happened to us. I want the
whole world to know what happened to us."

[60] The push for repatriation is gaining strength.

The Northern Arapaho, a Wyoming tribe, want the remains of three children returned from Carlisle.
The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association went further, calling for remains at all boarding school
sites to be returned upon request.

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds and U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, the state's lone House member, say they
are gathering information on the matter, and Sen. John Thune generally supports the tribe.

Signs emerged this month that the Army's position might shift.

"Our desire is to work with the Rosebud Sioux, Northern Arapaho, and any other interested tribes to
bring this issue to resolution," Army spokesperson Dave Foster said.

[65] The Army wants to meet with the two tribes in government-to-government consultation, to address the
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legal requirements involved in disinterment, he said.

Some in Rosebud are optimistic.

13. Prototype (noun): a first or early model of something from which other forms are developed or copied
14. Genocide (noun): the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a certain ethnic group or nation
15. Disinterment (noun): digging up (something that has been buried)

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"We have a lot of momentum," said Lunderman, the youth counselor. "We believe there's going to be a
good outcome. ... It's really going to bring a lot of closure to our families."

“'Those Kids Never Got to Go Home'” from http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Those_kids_never_got_to_go_home.html by Jeff Gammage.

Copyright © 2016 by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.

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 Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. Which of the following best describes the central idea of the article?
A. The army does not want to rebury children at the Carlisle Indian School for the
Rosebud Sioux tribe because then other tribes will want the same treatment.
B. The Rosebud Sioux tribe wants to bring children buried at the Carlisle Indian
School home for reburial to honor their dead and heal their community.
C. The Rosebud Sioux tribe wants to bring children buried at the Carlisle Indian
School home for reburial because the army is not maintaining their graves.
D. The Carlisle Indian School was a cruel and unfair boarding school that owes the
Rosebud Sioux and other tribes for its mistreatment of their children.

2. Which statement best describes how the Rosebud Sioux teenagers were affected by their
visit to the Carlisle School cemetery?
A. They were deeply upset that the graves were so far from home, prompting them
to begin the campaign to bring the remains home.
B. They were deeply angered to see the children’s graves, many of which were
marked “unknown,” neglected and unkempt by the United States Army.
C. They were deeply saddened until they were visited by a cloud of fireflies that
spiritually healed them, resolving the entire conflict for them.
D. They were deeply affected and this prompted them to visit the White House,
where they made their case for reburial to the Obama administration.

3. Which of the following best summarizes Richard Henry Pratts’ point of view regarding
assimilation?
A. Pratt believed assimilation was necessary in order to hold the children of
important chiefs hostage and keep those chiefs in line with unfair treaties.
B. Pratt believed assimilation in theory was a noble and fair effort to protect
American Indians from extermination, but in practice it could be cruel and
unfair.
C. Pratt believed assimilation was the best way to promote Quakerism to a wider
American population, while simultaneously saving Indians from extermination.
D. Pratt believed assimilation was the positive effort to share American customs
and civilization in order to ensure American Indian children could thrive in the
future.

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4. Explain what the phrase “Kill the Indian, save the man” in paragraph 6 most likely means.
Describe the effects of this phrase's particular word choice and use evidence from the text
in your answer.

5. Which of the following best describes the author’s purpose in writing this article?
A. to bring attention to the Rosebud Sioux’s cause
B. to condemn the practices of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
C. to assess the federal government’s stance on heritage burial rites
D. to contribute to a national conversation by offering his own opinion on the
school’s history

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 Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. Broadly-speaking, what factors led to the construction of the Carlisle Indian Industrial
School?

2. Do you think the members of the Rosebud Sioux nation are justified in their request? How
do those who deny their requests likely justify said denial?

3. In the context of this article, how do people face death? Consider how location and burial
rites factor into this question, especially for Native American peoples. Cite evidence from
this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.