Native American School Research Paper

At the founding of Carlisle Indian School, Native Americans were just beginning to be treated like actual people, but it was still a slow transition. In the attempts to assimilate the Native American people, the Carlisle Indian School essentially scooped up Native American children from their homes and brought them into a Military regimented boarding school, which would be difficult even for white American youth. Culturally, these Indian children were forced to leave all that they had been taught in their native lands behind, and had to start anew with the European-American lifestyle. This transition did not go smoothly especially because changing was against most of these young native’s will. Punishment for breaking any of these strict rules was confinement in prison-like cells.

In just a decade, the school seemed to improve how it treated these children and young adults by understanding them better. First off, children were more familiar with the idea of school, and didn’t think the white people were going to just capture and kill them. With athletic success, there

There were stereotypes going around that Indians were lazy, drunks, and savages. The Carlisle football not only had success on the football field, but were model citizens as well. In their many travels, these students dressed nice and were well behaved. With heavy media coverage, this improved the equality of Indians all over the nation.

It was also believed that Indians were inferior physically and intellectually. There were studies being done that Native American anatomy showed that they were smaller, weaker, and less flexible than whites. The Carlisle Indian football team showed so much athleticism, skill, and strategy that it debunked these studies. Especially with the star, Jim Thorpe, dominating every aspect of the sport, these athletes showed that Indians are equal to the white