Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904

Book Info


enlarge picture	*Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904*
	Author:	Richard Henry Henry Pratt
	ISBN:	0806136030
	Format:	Handover
	Publish Date:	June, 2005




Book Review


*Vine Deloria, Jr.* Battlefield and Classroom is first-hand history written by the person who made history. *Book Description* General Richard Henry Pratt, best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, profoundly shaped Indian education and federal Indian policy at the turn of the twentieth century. Pratt's long and active military career included eight years of service as an army field officer on the western frontier. During that time he participated in some of the signal conflicts with Indians of the southern plains, including the Washita campaign of 1868-1869 and the Red River War of 1874-1875. He then served as jailor for many of the Indians who surrendered. His experiences led him to dedicate himself to Indian education, and from 1879 to 1904, still on active military duty, he directed the Carlisle school, believing that the only way to save Indians from extinction was to remove Indian youth to nonreservation settings and there inculcate in them what he considered civilized ways. Pratt's memoirs, edited by Robert M. Utley and with a new foreword by David Wallace Adams, offer insight into and understanding of what are now highly controversial turn-of-the-century Indian education policies. *About the Author* Richard Henry Pratt (1840-1924) was a long-time army officer and the founder of the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Robert M. Utley is an independent historian whose books include Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier and The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. David Wallace Adams is Professor of Education at Cleveland State University and author of Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904 FROM THE PUBLISHER General Richard Henry Pratt, best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, profoundly shaped Indian education and federal Indian policy at the turn of the twentieth century. Pratt's long and active military career included eight years of service as an army field officer on the western frontier. During that time he participated in some of the signal conflicts with Indians of the southern plains, including the Washita campaign of 1868-1869 and the Red River War of 1874-1875. He then served as jailor for many of the Indians who surrendered. His experiences led him to dedicate himself to Indian education, and from 1879 to 1904, still on active military duty, he directed the Carlisle school, believing that the only way to save Indians from extinction was to remove Indian youth to nonreservation settings and there inculcate in them what he considered civilized ways. Pratt's memoirs, edited by Robert M. Utley and with a new foreword by David Wallace Adams, offer insight into and understanding of what are now highly controversial turn-of-the-century Indian education policies.