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History of the American West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Library
Critical Thinking

Where gold was firs [sic] discovered in Colo., near Idaho Spgs. / photo. by L.C. McClure, Denver, [between 1890 and 1910].

[Detail] Where gold was firs [sic] discovered [between 1890 and 1910].

Historical Research Capabilities

Cover illustration of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper showing A Native American (Oglala Sioux) woman holds a parasol and is surrounded by men, women, and children.

Educating the Indians

After most Native Americans had been forced onto reservations, the U.S. government began to adopt a predominantly reformist attitude towards its charges. The U.S. Congress adopted the idea that the right reforms could make Native Americans behave more like European American citizens, and established Indian schools for this purpose. One of the first schools was the Carlisle Indian School, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879. Its founder, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, made the goal of his school to "kill the Indian and save the man."

The Carlisle "experiment" prompted the establishment of other federal schools patterned after Carlisle. Religious communities also established schools outside the federal system. The basic purpose of these Indian boarding schools was the assimilation of young men and women by replacing Native American values with manners, dress, and speech that would be more acceptable to European Americans.

Studio portrait of group of Chiricahua Apache children.

Chiricahua Apaches four months after arriving at Carlisle

Photograph of group of Chiricahua Apache children in native dress.

Chiricahua Apaches as they arrived at Carlisle

Search on Carlisle for several images, including a photograph of Chiricahua Apache children arriving at the Carlisle School from their reservation in Florida on November 4, 1886. The same eleven youths are pictured in a studio portrait taken four months later. Other images include a photograph of Carlisle's graduating class of 1894 and the cover illustration of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, which depicts a Native-American girl from Carlisle returning to her reservation.

  • Using the summary information provided with the two photographs of Apache children at Carlisle, can you identify students by name in the before-and-after photographs?
  • What can you determine from these photographs about the goals and objectives of Indian schools?
  • How successful do you think they were in assimilating Native Americans?
  • What can you infer from the expressions on the faces of individual students in the photographs?
  • How do you think the general public in the 1880s might have interpreted the message of the cover illustration of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper? How might the illustration be interpreted today?

Learn more about the practices of Indian Schools in the American Memory collection, American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. It includes a special presentation on the topic as well as numerous photographs and other items.

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