Zitkala-sa’s experiences depicted in her personal narrative “The School Days of an Indian Girl” subvert Pratt’s binary of Indian savagery and civilized whiteness. This narrative shares a first -hand account of the effects of the Carlisle School. These traumatizing and life-changing experiences are true testaments to the fact that this school was made to deny children of their culture and drain them of any individuality.
Zitkala-sa immediately describes a simple morning she shares with her mother as they walk along the river. Just by describing the free-spirited nature of her hair in the wind and the feeling of her soft moccasins on her feet, an image is painted of simplicity and freedom. Pratt describes Indians as savages and this first story contradicts the idea that they are uncivilized people.
What truly shows her open-mindedness and even her child-like innocence, is her willingness to go to the school when a representative addresses her family. After some deliberation, her mother asks if she wants to leave, to which Zitkala-sa responds, “Oh, mother, it is not that I wish to leave you, but I want to see the wonderful Eastern land.”
When Zitkala-sa finally gets there, she is forced to cut her hair. Hair to her and her family symbolizes more than just hair. “Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards,” she expressed. The “gnawing” of the scissors cutting her hair brings on the feeling of that uncomfortable reform she must now go through.
Pratt makes it seem as though he is doing the Indians a favor, almost as though it is an act by God for him to “help” the “uncivilized”. The uncivilized thing about this entire story is the way the palefaces treat Zitkala-sa, the other Indian children, and their families before them. Zitkala-sa also brings up the story her mother told her about her late sister who got sick and couldn’t survive essentially being herded out of their homes by the palefaces. Her mother says “Well, it happened on the day we moved camp that your sister and uncle were both very sick. Many others were ailing, but there seemed to be no help. We traveled many days and nights; not in the grand, happy way that we moved camp when I was a little girl, but we were driven, my child, driven like a herd of buffalo.” By attempting to humanize and civilize the Indians, Pratt and his administration of people are hypocrites.
By telling her own story and various experiences through this narrative, Zitkala-sa is able to flip the script on the conversation of Indian savagery and civilized whiteness. Without her narrative, a piece of history is excluded and a perspective lost.
Christina's WSC 119 Blog 
This is great! I think this quote from Pratt’s “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” could be very useful to use in your Institutional Mission analysis:
“Individuals are not to be encouraged to get out and see and learn and join the nation. They are not to measure their strength with the other inhabitants of the land, and find out what they do not know, and thus be led to aspire to gain in education, experience, and skill,—those things that they must know in order to become equal to the rest of us.”
Being that you spoke of Pratt and the ways in which he sees the Indian people, you should definitely address the fact that he feels these people need to attend school in order to become one of them rather than surrounding themselves with the culture and becoming accustomed to the white mans way of life naturally.
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While Pratt is obviously super racist, it might be interesting for you to look at the first couple of paragraphs for the IMA. At the beginning of his piece, he accepts that the colonization of Indian land led to poor/savage treatment of the Indians. He believes that providing schooling will “make up for” those times and change the course of the Indians’ lives.
“‘Put yourself in his place’ is as good a guide to a proper conception of the Indian and his cause as it is to help us to right conclusions in our relations with other men.”
By saying “put yourself in his place,” Pratt is saying that the Indians don’t know what they’re missing out on, for lack of a better term, and his mission is to bring white culture to non-whites. It’s ~ignorance~ but it’s his vision.
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Hi Christina! This quote from Pratt’s speech about the Carlisle schools “civilizing” methods might be good for you to add later to you Institutional Mission:
“It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.”
-Laramie 🙂
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