What happened to returned Students after they left Carlisle?

After the 1900s many returned Cheyenne students from Carlisle, Chemava, Phoenix and other Indian boarding schools and those attending boarding schools on the Cheyenne and Arapaho old reservation were attempting to enter public schools in western Oklahoma near their homes. For some years after 1900 the public schools and white settlers, homesteaders and officials in charge at different public school districts openly refused to allow Indian children to go to white schools.

In March of 1907 Emma Gard, County Superintendent of Schools for Blaine County, Watonga, Oklahoma, wrote Charles E. Shell, Agent at the Cheyenne and
Arapaho Agency stating that;

She did not like the idea of Indian children attending public schools with whites. She did not consider it wise since T.B. was so prevalent among the Indians. Another reason was that the school did not draw territorial school money for Indian students. Also that the school at Watonga did allow some Indian students to attend and the attendance was irregular.

In April of 1907 W.C. Bickford, Superintendent of Canadian County Schools aired his complaint to the effect of Blaine County that Indian students should pay
tuition since they were wards of the government. (this letter never mentioned that when the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes lost their reservation to the open land run
of homeless settlers in 1892 seeking homesteads on the land owned by the tribes that many acres of the reservation were set aside for public schools for the
education of students and no where does the treaty agreement stipulate that Indian students could not attend public schools established on lands they gave up for
public schools).

In Dec. 1908, R.F.D.3, Calumet, Oklahoma, S.S.T. Lacy, Clerk of Dist. No. 100, wrote Agent Shell at Darlington that as a member of the school board, he felt his
duty to inform Shell that there was complaints that Indian children had lice, felt it was powerless to have the children cleaned up, the school was in danger of being
broken up because of this, and in the interest of peace and harmony that all the Indian children be removed from the school. He hoped the Agent would take
immediate action to this.

In a January 1909 letter again to Shell, Lacy stated that all the Indian students had quit the Calumet school and were going back to the government boarding school.
To be sure Lacy was going to the Cheyenne camp and find out.

In Feb. of 1910, Indian children in School Dist. No 103, Watonga, Oklahoma, were cited again in a letter to Agent Freer, from the Additional Farmer for the
Watonga area that at various times within the past month complaints have come in to me from the school board and the patrons of school Dist. no. 103 that Indian
children were unclean, some still live in tepees and a clean tepee is rare. The most serious complaint was that white school children attending school with Indian
children get lice and kindred vermin. This would not be tolerated by the whites.

For the month of October 1911 at the Fonda (Dewey County) area shows statistics of Cheyenne Indian pupils in public school as name and age to be:
Mary Big Nose, 15
May De Brae, 9
Julia De Brae, 9
Eva Little horse, 12
Annie Long Sioux, 18
Ruth Medicine Chips, 14
Fanny Turtle, 13
Noah Black Horse, 11
John De Brae, 14
John Medicine Chips, 17
George Preston, 11
William White Man, 11
Joseph White Man, 9
John White Rabbit, 17
Warren White Rabbit, 9.

In 1912 E.B. Reay, Supt. of Public Instruction, Dewey County, wrote Agent West, Cantonment Agency, that white people are sometimes unwilling to have Indian
children attend white schools saying they are "lousy" and eat "dead cows" etc.

Finally in Sept. of 1915 a Circular No. 1014, to the Commissioner of the Indian affairs in Washington, from Supt. Dunn at the Red Moon School in Hammon,
Okla., stated;

Sir; Regarding placing of indian children in public schools, I wish to state that they are not cleanly enough and the settlers object to even eating at a
table with an Indian.

Text Copyright (c) 2005 Sipes/Berthrong Cheyenne Coll. Cheyenne Boarding School Files.

An actress muses on the Carlisle Indian School

From the article in the Grand Rapids Press interviewing an actress who played the part of an Indian School teacher at Carlisle:

"And how the impact of arbitrary events affected both," Kole added. "I certainly learned a lot about Native American culture. A lot slips through the cracks of the history books."

In "Into the West," Cook plays a seamstress.

"We own a general store together before that, and we both go on to teach at a place that existed that I didn't know about," Cook said. "It was called the Carlisle Indian School and was founded by Capt. William Pratt, who believed that if you just divorce the American Indian children from their culture and stripped them of their traditions you could make them into regular functioning members of society."

In the six-part miniseries' final episode, Cook's character is played by Joanna Going, and Kole's character is taken over by Craig Sheffer.

I wonder which of the hundreds of Native American Cultures did the actress who played Mrs. Cook learned about? And how can we get a message through to the writers of this episode that the person who founded the Carlisle Indian School was Richard Henry Pratt, not WILLIAM Pratt? I'm concerned about what we're going to see in the Carlisle episode of INTO THE WEST.

Into the Hollywood West

I just watched episode one of Spielberg's Into the West and I was disappointed. I tried to approach this with an open mind and I was entertained by real native actors - how refreshing is that! But I'm confused at the instances of Injun-speak ... that Tonto-esque language ... written into the dialogue. If the producers and developers had the good sense to feature real Lakota language in the show, why not feature an authentic story line instead of the usual iconic schlock? We always have to see a young boy on his vision quest romantically, dramatically coming of age and receiving his new prophetic name - in this case - Loved by the Buffalo (hardly a step up from Dances with Wolves) And then we see the tragic Lakota woman tenderly cared for by the sensitive white guy who can protect her from the nasty wild west ruffians. Please. All those people smelled bad, even the sensitive white guys. Let's be real. I'm really hoping for comments by someone in the know about the native writers and consultants who contributed to this project. Please, please tell me I'm so wrong. You know, none of this would matter except for the fact that Episode 5 (this was episode one, so four weeks from now) features content about the Carlisle Indian School. I'm planning to watch every week to learn the family tree in order to place the Carlisle characters. I am keeping my fingers crossed that TV audiences can meet an authentic character. There are so many resources available to writers today, most notbably, real descendants of students who lived the Carlisle experiment and who can influence a script into an authentic presentation. I predict, judging by the first episode's stereotypical story line, I'll be wrong. Unless, of course, I completely misread (misviewed?) this evenings program. I'd love to be wrong about this.