The Carlisle Indian School (1879–1918) was an audacious educational experiment. Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt, the school’s founder and first superintendent, persuaded the federal government that training Native children to accept the white man’s ways and values would be more efficient than fighting deadly battles. The result was that the last Indian war would be waged against Native children in the classroom. More than 8,500 children from virtually every Native nation in the United States were taken from their homes and transported to Pennsylvania. Carlisle provided a blueprint for the federal Indian school system that was established across the United States and also served as a model for many residential schools in Canada. The Carlisle experiment initiated patterns of dislocation and rupture far deeper and more profound and enduring than its founder and supporters ever grasped. Carlisle Indian Industrial School offers varied perspectives on the school by interweaving the voices of students’ descendants, poets, and activists with cutting-edge research by Native and non-Native scholars. These contributions reveal the continuing impact and vitality of historical and collective memory, as well as the complex and enduring legacies of a school that still affects the lives of many Native Americans.

From its beginning, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (1879-1918) was documented in photographs. The photographic record of the school was used to share with the wider world the progress and perceived successes of its process of assimilating Native American children and young adults, transforming them into "civilized" members of mainstream white American society. In their time, the images served their intended purposes: to promote the school, to create a brand, to aid in fundraising, and to capture a narrow perspective on student life. Today's viewers look at these photographs with different eyes, possessing greater knowledge and understanding of what Carlisle really represents to different audiences. The Carlisle Indian School: A Photographic History traces the history of the school through these images, exploring how photography can inform a basic understanding of what Carlisle meant to the culture of its time, and give an indication of the legacy it left for its students and their descendants, and for American culture today. Drawing on the latest scholarship and rich in images, this volume is a visually powerful introduction to the complex history of the first federally-managed off-reservation boarding school for Native Americans in the United States.