You can listen to Episode Two here.

(Again, this is the first real episode but they’re counting my little Intro as Episode One. Go back and listen to it if you want to hear my stumbling account of who I am and why I’m doing this.)

Here are some notes and illustrations for Episode One, which focuses on the accounts of the arrival of the first students at Carlisle. I’m not sure what kind of information is going to be most useful, so let me know if there’s something I mention in the episode that you’d like to see documented here.

As noted, there were 84 Native Americans, all from the Sioux nation, in this first group of students. Charles Tackett, the interpreter, is included in that number although he was not a student. There were 59 male students and 24 female students; 65 people came from the Rosebud agency and 18 from the the Pine Ridge agency. Below is a section of letter Richard Henry Pratt wrote on November 13, 1879 to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs giving his account of the first students brought to the school. This section shows Pratt’s list of the first students.

You can read the whole letter here: http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/documents/report-first-party-children-brought-carlisle-indian-school

I used a lot of quotations from local newspapers but forgot to mention that you can find all but one of these papers on newspapers.com. It’s a subscription service, but the basic level (which is what I have) is only $8 a month, so if you’re interested it’s pretty affordable. (Nope, I don’t get paid to say that.) You can do keyword searching on the newspapers which is not perfect, but hugely time-saving. One of the papers, the American Volunteer, is only available on microfilm, but I find it the least useful so far, so you won’t miss much (and you’ll save your eyes—the print is super small).

Here’s the little section from the Harrisburg Telegraph that I used in this episode (October 6, 1879, p.4):

I also mention Richard Henry Pratt’s memoir, Battlefield & Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. It actually is still in print (I said I didn’t think it was), and you can order it from Amazon, if you like, here’s the link. I also quoted from Luther Standing Bear’s memoir, My People the Sioux, here’s the link for that one. (No Amazon kick-backs for those mentions either.) As far as I know, those are the only first-person accounts of the first days of the school.

Below are two photos taken by J.N. Choate on the first day the students arrived—Monday, October 6. There is no reason to doubt that these are the clothes they traveled in. As far as the boys having “war paint” on—as one newspaper account asserted—it’s hard to see anyone’s face very well, but I don’t think so.

These are the male students with Pratt (far left) and Interpreter Tackett (far right). We’re still working out exactly who is in this image. All 59 male students are in it for sure. There’s an extra person listed in the caption: Moses Broken Leg. We haven’t been able to nail down who he is, but we’re working on it. I’m also not sure how many students are lying there in the center. I definitely see one on the left. Is that another one on the right (which would be symmetrical, and the kind of thing I think they would do)? I’m not sure. If so, he’s not named in the caption, so that makes it more unlikely.

I think the building they are standing in front of was the one used for the girls’ dormitory, but we’ll be talking more about the buildings in a future episode. It’s one of the buildings the students would have stayed in at any rate. As you might expect, this image was widely used and distributed and many copies of it survive. This one is from the Cumberland County Historical Society (PA-CH1-030b).

These are the female students with Sarah Mather (at left) and Interpreter Tackett (at right). (Note there are 25 students here, but only 24 female students listed as arriving. The caption information lists Pollock Spotted Tail—a male student—as being in this picture. Not sure why, but apparently he is.) Again, the building in the background is one of the ones of the grounds that the students would have stayed in. This is Cumberland County Historical Society image PA-CH-012a.

Again, sorry for the non-professionalism of the recording of this episode, but substance matters more than style, I hope. Listening to it again, sounds like I stumbled when giving my own email address, but it’s info@katetheimer.com. Constructive feedback welcomed. Thanks for checking in and I’m really looking forward to doing this. So much information to discuss!