Insitute to Institute: Dickinson College and Carlisle Indian School
Dickinson College
Dickinson College was chartered on September 9, 1783, and the Dickinson School of Law was founded in 1834. The year that the Carlisle Indian School (CIS) opened in 1879, James Andrew McCauley was the President of Dickinson College. During this time the faculty was small, consisting of about six members. The involvement from the relatively small faculty shows the close relationship between Dickinson and the CIS. For example, Professor Charles Francis Himes and Professor Joshua Lippincott were often at the Indian school lecturing and delivering sermons. Additionally, McCauley would perform sermons and attend the Indian School commencement proceedings. Dickinson's own student body was in fact relatively small; from the years of 1872-1888, 484 students had attended the college under McCauley's presidency. In comparison, the Indian School at its height had far more students.
By the time McCauley retired in 1888, Dickinson was admitting women, starting in 1884. The faculty had grown to ten. George Edward Reed became the President of Dickinson College in 1889 and held this post until 1911. The size of the school grew monumentally under Reed's presidency; 1,649 students attended Dickinson College during this time. As the student body grew, so did the the faculty; from ten in 1889 to twenty-one in 1911. The relationship continued between Dickinson College and the CIS even though Pratt had departed in 1904. Superintendent Friedman took his place and Reed continued to participate in the CIS commencements.
Sources
Sellers, Charles Coleman. Dickinson College: A History. Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
Morgan, James Henry. Dickinson College: The History of One Hundred and Fifty Years, 1783-1933. Carlisle: Dickinson College, 1933.
Carlisle Indian School
On October 6, 1879, Carlisle Barracks became home to the first students of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The school would be a pioneer in Indian education as its founder, Richard Henry Pratt, would seek a radical education of Indian children by secluding them entirely from their own culture and immersing them in “white” culture. From past experiences at Fort Marion(link), Pratt realized that the solution to solve the problem of Indian and U.S. relations was education. Pratt maintained, “to civilize the Indian place him in the midst of civilization; to keep him civilized make him stay”(1). This belief, which would become a motto of the Carlisle Indian School, was put into practice when Pratt secured the use of Carlisle Barracks from the Army in 1879.
The town of Carlisle was also home to Dickinson College, an academic institute that had been chartered almost one hundred years earlier. The relationship between the Carlisle Indian School and Dickinson College existed from the very opening of the school when Dr. James McCauley, President of Dickinson College, lead the first worship service at the Indian School.
In several accounts, Pratt mentions the importance of the Indian School’s relationship with Dickinson College, noting the support of the college faculty as “valuable and unswerving” during his superintendence at Carlisle Indian School(2). Through Pratt’s explanations three main connections between Carlisle Indian School and Dickinson College are revealed. The first is the general connection between the two school’s programs and educators. Dickinson professors served as chaplains to the Indian School and gave special lectures to the Indian students. Most notable are the lectures of Professor Hines on electricity and other scientific experiments that he gave not only to the students but also to their parents like Yellow Tail and Red Cloud. Dickinson College provided an institute to the Indian students who wished continue their education, offering special rates and places at both the preparatory college level9. This assistance directly correlated with the belief that “Indian interests seemed to demand that they be given more, not less, opportunities to mingle with the white population."(10) In addition to academic contact, the two institutes had contact in the public venue as well. The best known instances include the defeat of Dickinson College by the Carlisle Indian School football team and other athletic competitions11. Through these main focus points the importance and effect the two schools had on one another and their relationship to the town of Carlisle is more clearly defined.
Footnotes:
- 1. Jacqueline Fear-Segal, “Nineteenth-Century Indian Education: Universalism Versus Evolutionism,” Journal of American Studies 33 (1999): 330.
General Relationships Between Carlisle Indian School and Dickinson College
Influence from the Professors at Dickinson
Indian School publications and the faculty described Dickinson and its faculty as "Advisers," "Friends," and "Distinguished Neighbors," but historians have left this relationship between these institutions largely untouched. This section specifically focuses on the influence of the Dickinson Faculty on the Carlisle Indian School.
The relationship between Dickinson's Joshua Lippincott and the Carlisle Indian School's Richard Henry Pratt was indicative of the relationship between the two institutions. Professor Lippincott's role as a Dickinson professor and the Indian School chaplain not only reveals the relationship between the two institutions, but also the relationship of the two institutions to the greater Carlisle community.
The YMCA at Dickinson College and the Carlisle Indian School
On the campus of the Carlisle Indian School, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) provided spiritual services and sought to make young Indian students into strong men with an stronger sense of self, morals, and religious virtures. In addition to strengthening its member’s moral and religious fiber, the YMCA helped the Carlisle Indian School meet its social assimilation goals.
