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Introduction
Introduction
“Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” A phrase reproduced throughout history, in writing, speech, and the thoughts of the white man. It holds an incredible weight of grief for the Indigenous community and continues to carry weight today. The phrase was first coined by Captain R.H. Pratt when he said in a speech in 1892: “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” (Pratt 1892). Pratt was the founder of Carlisle Indian School and worked to implement this sentiment into the curriculum that the students experienced while there. However, this policy was not unique to the Carlisle Indian School. Schools across the country were using this same sentiment as a way of erasing the Native culture from the Native children. The impact of this speech has had devastating effects on the Indigenous community, as well as creating a culture of expected assimilation for Indigenous people and children.
The United States government and those in power used violent techniques to isolate Indigenous peoples from their families, tribes, and cultures to make them easier to control. They cut their hair, changed their names, and forced them to speak English, further removing them from their heritage and assimilating them into American culture. They attempted to “kill the Indian” in these Indigenous children in order to “save the man.”
Genocide of Native Peoples
Genocide of Native Peoples
For hundreds of years, colonists have waged a war against the native population. Diseases were spread, villages were raided, and bounties were put into place to take control of the land and control the Native populations.
The Phips Bounty was issued in 1755 by Spencer Phips, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts Bay Providence. The Proclamation declared the Penobscot people, who lived in what is now Maine, to be “enemies, rebels, and traitors to his Majesty King George the Second: And I do hereby require his Majesty’s Subjects of this province to embrace all Opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians” (Phips 1755). This proclamation placed a bounty on all Penobscot peoples, men, women, and children, providing a reward for all those who captured or murdered Indigenous people. Men were worth forty pounds, women were 25 pounds, and children under the age of twelve were 20 pounds. It also asked that the scalps of the Indigenous people be brought as proof.
This bounty is just one example of hundreds of different forms of violence that the United States Government enacted on Indigenous peoples. The United States furthered this violence with the implementation of boarding schools, forcing Indigenous children away from their tribes and cultures, committing cultural genocide against the Indigenous people of America.
Indigenous Boarding Schools
Indigenous Boarding Schools
In the nineteenth century, the United States Government started funding “boarding schools” for Indigenous children, which aimed to “eliminate traditional American Indian ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture.” ("Struggling with Cultural Repression” 2020) Native children were removed from their tribes and families and brought hundreds of miles away from home. They were forced to cut their hair, speak English, and learn how to be “good” American citizens. The United States Government “adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska Native children to accomplish the systematic destruction of Native cultures and communities. The stated purpose of this policy was to ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man.’” ("Kill The Indian, Save the Man" 2020) Isolation from their culture was key to America's goals to erase the Indigenous people from “American” soil.
Native American boarding schools have been around for a very long time. “The first school opened in 1801, and hundreds were eventually established or supported by federal agencies such as the Interior Department and the Defense Department. Congress enacted laws to coerce Native American parents to send their children to the schools, including authorizing Interior Department officials to withhold treaty-guaranteed food rations to families who resisted” (Levitt 2023). Parents were given little to no choice. If they did not send their children to boarding schools, the rest of their families would starve, or they would be sent to prison.
Indigenous children at Boarding Schools
Indigenous children at Boarding Schools
Citizenship and Assimilation
Citizenship and Assimilation
Boarding school curriculum was not the only use of the phrase “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” It was popular with the general public, especially when discussing Indigenous peoples rights, and whether or not they could be considered citizens of the United States.
An article published April 1905 from the Santa Fe New Mexican paper cited Captain Pratt when discussing the legalization of selling alcohol to Indigenous people. They discussed how providing Native Americans with civilian rights would allow them to better assimilate into American culture, saying: “If this theory should be carried out to its logical conclusion, it would be the best thing that could happen for the Indians, since it would force them into relations that would in a short time subject them to civilizing influences. Indian children attending the public schools with white children and thrown into daily contact with whites would soon learn the English language and acquire a knowledge of the customs of civilized society which, to use one of General Pratt’s expressions would ‘kill the Indian in them and save the man” (Frost, 1905). It was understood that in order for Indigenous people to be considered American citizens, they needed to succumb to the “American way of life.” Speaking English and attending American schools, among other things. There was no other way for them to be accepted or respected.
The Importance of Recognising This History
The Importance of Recognising This History
By 1926, nearly 83% of school aged Indigenous children were attending boarding schools, and the multi-generation impact still affects Indigenous communities to this day. Indigenous boarding schools are directly responsible for a loss of connection to family, languages, and resources, as well as being incredibly traumatic for those who experienced it first hand. ("US Indian Boarding School History.") The effects of Indigenous boarding schools still haunt families to this day. Many of the children who were ripped from their homes and families are parents themselves, fighting to regain the connection to their culture that was forcibly away from them.
“Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools,” an article from the New York Times, quotes many different Indigenous people who experienced life in boarding schools. They discuss how their time at the boarding schools still affects them and how they view and experience their culture to this day. One member of the Southern Ute tribe, who was 6 years old when he was sent to a boarding school in southwestern Colorado said: “When people do things to you when you’re growing up, it affects you spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally,” He then went on to discuss the residual effects of the trauma. “We couldn’t speak our language, we couldn’t sing our prayer songs,” he said. “To this day, maybe that’s why I can’t sing” (Callimachi 2021) Because of his experience in a boarding school, he no longer feels comfortable participating in his culture and had to retrain himself to do so. He was alienated from his culture due to the trauma that he faced in the boarding school, which effectively “killed the Indian in him” for a long time.
The experiences that Indigenous children faced in these boarding schools has had a lasting effect on the Native community. Coupled with the fact that Indigenous Communities are facing extreme poverty and lack of resources due to colonization and genocide, it has been incredibly difficult for Indigenous people to build their community up again. However, there is hope for the reclaiming of their culture. That same man who experienced the boarding schools first hand continued fighting for his connection to his culture. He found himself again when he attended the annual Sundance with the Ute people. He stopped drinking, and found himself finally ready to share his culture with his children (Callimachi 2021).
While there is still an incredible amount of healing left to do by the Indigenous community, and the effects of Indigenous genocide are prevalent in their culture to this day, Indigenous communities are making an effort to heal, and reclaim what had once been taken away from them. The American government could not kill the Indian.
Citations:
Citations:
Callimachi, Rukmini. "Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools." The New
York Times. Last modified July 19, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/us/us-canada-indigenous-boarding-residential-schools.html.
Frost, Max. "Selling Liquor to Pueblo Indians." Santa Fe New Mexican. Last modified April 17, 1905. Library of
Irujo, Xabier. "Genocide, kill the Indian and save the man." Nevada Today. Last modified October 8, 2021.
https://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2021/genocide-kill-indian-save-man.\
""Kill The Indian, Save the Man:" An Introduction to the History of Boarding Schools." National Native American
Boarding School Healing Coalition. Last modified August, 2020. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/kill-the-indian-save-the-man-an-introduction-to-the-history-of-boarding-schools/
"Kill the Indian and Save the Man." Digital History. Last modified ,2021.
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3505.
Kliewer, Addison, Miranda Mahmud, and Brooklyn Wayland. ""Kill the Indian, save the man": Remembering the
stories of Indian boarding schools." College of Journalism and Mass Communications: University of Oklahoma. https://www.ou.edu/gaylord/exiled-to-indian-country/content/remembering-the-stories-of-indian-boarding-schools#:~:text=%E2%80%9CA%20great%20general%20has%20said,the%20race%20should%20be%20dead.
Levitt, Zach, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Simon Romero, and Tim Wallace. "‘WAR AGAINST THE CHILDREN’." The New York
Times. Last modified August 30, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/us/native-american-boarding-schools.html
Phips, Spencer. "A Proclamation ." Massachusetts Historical Society. Last modified November 3, 1755.
https://www.masshist.org/database/6441.
Pratt, Richard H. "The Advantage of Mingling Indians with Whites." 1892.
"Struggling with Cultural Repression." National Museum of the American Indian. Last modified, 2020. Smithsonian.
"US Indian Boarding School History." National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/.
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