St. Patrick Church and the Indian School

The Historical Context of the Relationship between the Catholic Church and Indians

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 prohibited 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 contract schools, each administered by agents. However, because the Catholic church did not have a strong voice in the FIC, they were assigned a low number of agents. In 1874, Catholics coordinated their efforts in Washington D.C. and formed the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. This organization set up Catholic schools on the reservations in order to ensure that the education given to the Indian children was based in Catholicism. Mother Katherine Drexel, who founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Negroes, gave considerable economic support to these efforts.

Father Ganss

The Beginning

Henry George Pratt came to Carlisle in August 1891 as the new pastor at St. Patrick church.

The Church

140 E. Pomfret Street

Carlisle, PA 17013

(717) 243-4411