St. Patrick Church and the Indian School

History 204 | History of Indian Education | The Public Relationship Between Dickinson and the Indian School | Prosopography of Indian Dickinson College Students | Insitute to Institute: Dickinson College and Carlisle Indian School | Bibliographic Information

An Essential Cooperation: The Relationship between the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and St. Patrick Catholic Church

Written by Amanda West, Dickinson College Class of 2010

In all the histories and accounts of the Carlisle Indian School, the relationships between the school the town of Carlisle are lost to the stories of the famous band and seemingly invincible football team. It is important to remember that the Indian School did not exist by itself. It was a part of a thriving town with a well established college only two miles away. In an attempt to rectify the fact that Carlisle is often forgotten in most accounts of the Indian School, this page examines the relationship between the Indian School and the town’s only Catholic Church, St. Patrick Shrine Church. This relationship is especially important because of the initial difficulties which surrounded it. Although Captain Richard Pratt, the Indian School’s Superintendent and founder, advocated a Christian basis for his teachings at the school, he was not at all supportive of Catholicism, or the Indians who came to him as practicing Catholics. The priest at St. Patrick, Henry George Ganss, fought with Pratt to allow the Catholic students to practice for almost a decade. Finally, at the turn of the century, a friendly, cooperative association between the Indian School and the church began.

It is also important to note that while this page examines the connection between the school and the town, a connection can be found between the school and Dickinson via St. Patrick. Three Dickinson students, Lawrence J. Butler, Harry Walter Gill, and Henry Nicholas Schleier, are listed in the college matriculation book as being Catholic. Since St. Patrick is the only Catholic church in town, it is not unlikely that these boys attended mass there. Since all three were students between 1901 and 1903, it is very likely that they worshiped along side Indian school students.

Captain Pratt, a Protestant, was unwavering in his policy that his Indian pupils should attend church services on a consistent, almost daily basis. Chapel services were held during the day on Sundays and occasionally during the week. Dickinson professors, including J. A. Lippincott, along with local ministers, came to the Indian School on these days to preach to the students. However, Pratt was unwilling to allow the Catholic students who had attended and been baptized Catholic on their reservations to attend Catholic mass in Carlisle.

Pratt’s bitterness towards Catholics stemmed from and caused the very same problem. A strong movement to anglicize Indians began in the early nineteenth century. The United States Government was willing to fund religious missions, despite the Constitution's non-establishment clause (which prohibits the federal government from establishing a national religion) because it saw an opportunity to assimilate the Indians into American culture by way of religious teachings in morality and civic responsibility. Many denominations took part in this campaign; Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians, to name a few. The competition for government funding was fierce, especially in light of the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time. By the mid nineteenth century, most Indians had been placed on reservations west of the Mississippi River. The Federal Indian Office (FIC) set up a network of schools on the reservations, each administered by agencies. However, because the Catholic Church did not have a strong voice in the FIC, they were assigned a low number of agents and thus had very limited contact to the majority of the reservations in the west. Then, in the 1870s, the government established contract schools. These schools were run by missionaries, but were given annual funds, based on the number of students, from the government. In 1874, Catholics coordinated their efforts in Washington D.C. and formed the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. This organization, along with the newly formed contract system, allowed Catholics to expand their influence on the Indians in the west. However, Catholic contract schools were refusing to send their pupils to Carlisle because they knew that Pratt would not allow the students to attend Catholic mass. So Pratt, upset that he was unable to get those Catholic students enrolled in his school, refused to allow Catholics to practice at his school, a decision which only perpetuated the problem. When it became clear that the Catholic students were being forced to practice in Protestant churches, the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions stepped in. The director of the Bureau, Father Joseph Andrew Stephan, called Father Henry George Ganss and asked him to address the Catholic Indian problem in Carlisle.

Ganss came to Carlisle in 1891 as the new priest at St. Patrick Shrine Church. Starting that same year, eighteen Catholic Indians from the Indian school were listed as members of the church. Throughout the decade, Pratt wrote anti-Catholic sentiments in the school’s monthly publication, the Redman. So, Ganss, recognizing that he did not have the resources to fight Pratt alone, solicited other sources for support. On August 29, 1892 Ganss first wrote to Sister Katharine Drexel of Philadelphia and asked for money to fund a school for the Indian Students in Carlisle. Drexel had founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Bensalem, Pennsylvania and had already given considerable economic support to the Catholic efforts on reservations. By September 13, 1892 Ganss, in another letter to Drexel, wrote that Pratt “[had] shown a most commendable spirit of fairness” (Rockwell, 13) indicating that the relationship between the Catholic church and the Protestant Pratt was improving. Ganss often admitted that Pratt was courteous to him, but allowed him very limited contact with the Catholic students. Indeed, in 1893, in another letter to Drexel, Ganss called Pratt a “menace to the faith of…Catholic pupils” (Rockwell, 15) for not better cooperating with him. However, outside forces were at work and soon enough, Pratt and Ganss would be forced to work together.

The history of St. Patrick centennial celebration book says that Pratt’s military career did not prepare him for negotiations with Ganss. It was not until Ganss alerted the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions to the discrimination that was taking place at the Carlisle Indian School that Pratt took action to correct his mistakes. The events leading to Pratt’s sudden change of heart are unclear; the closing of the Contract schools in 1899 probably helped mitigate Pratt’s dislike of Catholics. Additionally, Ganss was far ahead of his time in his willingness to cooperate with Protestants. Pratt and Ganss undoubtedly saw the mutual advantages to collaborating; “the Catholic students would get protection if not special privileges at Carlisle, and the Catholic missionaries in the field…would be more helpful in finding students to fill Pratt’s school” (Prucha, 165). The political implications of partnership were evident also, as Carlisle became the model for cooperation between government schools and churches. The “Carlisle Plan” was finally reached, and Pratt not only granted permission for the students to go to St. Patrick, he also allowed missionaries to come to the school itself and give religious instruction. In 1898, Ganss wrote to Drexel again, expressing his high hopes for the future of Catholic Indians in Carlisle. Drexel then donated $8000 to St. Patrick so that they could build a school for the Catholic Indians and negroes in Carlisle. The school was completed in 1901 and was dedicated St. Katharine’s Hall.

Wih the completion of St. Katharine’s Hall in 1901, the formal religious education of up to 300 Indians at a time, began. Various groups of nuns came and went from St. Patrick, first the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1901, and then in 1906, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, of whom Mother Katharine Drexel was a member. Drexel held weekly religion classes for the Indian pupils: “large boys” on Mondays from 6-7, “small boys” on Tuesdays, and girls on Wednesdays. The students also went to St. Katharine’s Hall at 9:30 on Sunday mornings for instruction, stayed for 10:30 mass, and then returned back to the school where they received additional instruction at 2:30pm.

Pratt left the Indian School in 1904, but his successors continued a friendly and cooperative relationship with Ganss until his departure in 1910. In a letter to the then superintendent, Mr. Friedman, Ganss expresses his sincere thanks for the “uniform aid, unbroken courtesy, and kindness and helpfulness” that he received from the Indian School officials. He also mentions that while his relationship with Pratt started out with “slight friction”, he found Pratt to be “most friendly and ever ready to aid” him in all his efforts to teach the Catholic Indians. Friedman’s reply letter was just as polite; he cites his “deep regret” in learning that Ganss has been relocated, and extends his thanks, on behalf of the government, for the work he did with the Catholic students at the school.

Ganss worked tirelessly to make connections with Indian School students through all possible avenues. In one of his efforts to connect to the Carlisle Indian School students, he turned to his passion for music. Ganss was a musical genius; he received his doctorate in music. He composed several masses and often toured the country giving organ recitals in order to earn money for the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. Ganss, in his efforts to reach out to the Catholic Indians at the school, often asked the students to sing at various church events. A 100 voice Indian chorus sang at the 1894 dedication of the newly built St. Patrick Shrine Church. Every year at Christmas time, 275 pupils sang at mass. Additionally, the students of the Indian School donated a stained glass window of St. Paul to the church, and there is a painting of Blessed Kateri Tekawitha, an Indian maiden who converted to Catholicism, placed in the sanctuary to honor the memory of the Indian children who attended the church.

Besides the fact that there were Catholic students at the Indian school who were not practicing Catholicism, the issue of the outing system most prompted Ganss to begin contact with Pratt. As a part of the vocational instruction at the school, Pratt organized an outing system in 1880; he sent the Indians to live with families in nearby towns and states and work for them, usually on a farm, but in various other vocations. The families repaid the students with lodging and food, as well as a small remuneration. Between 500 and 1,000 students participated in the outing system annually. Ganss learned that Catholic students were being placed with Protestant families and were thus unable to practice Catholicism during the two or three months that they were “out”. Part of the Carlisle Plan was that Pratt would make and effort to place Catholic pupils with Catholic families, and when this was not possible, he required the families who housed Catholic pupils to allow those students to worship in a Catholic church. Still, by 1918, the year that the Indian School closed, the outing system was flawed in regard to Catholic tolerance. An April 27th, 1918 article from a Carlisle newspaper begs Catholic families to host Indian students. The article pleads with Catholic families and tells of the “grave anxiety felt for the Catholic young men and women” who with the help of Catholic families, may be “steered clear of the dangers to which they are exposed” under the practice of sending Catholic students to Protestant homes.

The Carlisle Indian School and St. Patrick Shrine Church have a long, storied relationship, without which the full account of the school is incomplete. Whereas only eighteen Indians were listed as members at St. Patrick in 1891, by 1908, about one third of the students at the Carlisle Indian School were Catholic. Between the years of 1891 and 1918, over 100 Indians are listed as being baptized in the church. Jim Thorpe was married at St. Patrick in 1913. Two Catholic Indian students even stayed with the church after they completed their studies at the school: Monsignor Louis J. Yeager in 1922 and Sister Mary Germaine Barron in 1910. Clearly, once established, the relationship between the school and the church was a strong one. Though initially Pratt and Ganss did not get along, through diplomatic encounters and a series of political moves, they parted ways as friends and colleagues who were working toward the same goal: to assimilate Indians into the white American mold.

Photos

In this section, there are pictures of people and places that are important to the story of the relationship between the Carlisle Indian School and St. Patrick Church. There are also photos relevant to the larger section, including photos of the Carlisle Indian School athletic teams.

Footnotes

1 Henry George Ganss, Carlisle, to Superintendent M. Friedman, Carlisle, 18 April 1910. St. Patrick Church Drop File, Harrisburg Roman Catholic Diocese Archives, Harrisburg, PA.

2 Superintendent M. Friedman, Carlisle, to Henry George Ganss, Calisle, 20 April 1910. St. Patrick Church Drop File, Harrisburg Roman Catholic Diocese Archives, Harrisburg, PA.

Sources