The Inconvenient Indian

The Inconvenient Indian

by

Thomas King

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Richard Pratt was an army captain whose Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which first opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, served as a model for the boarding schools that would open across the country over the 19th and 20th centuries and become compulsory for Native children. Pratt believed that education could be used to could teach Indian children to “assimilate” into Western society, an idea distilled in his infamous quotation, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Pratt believed that Indians’ “savage” ways weren’t the result of “race or some defect in the blood,” but of “environmental determinism.” It was this belief that motivated Pratt to push for displacing Native children from their tribal communities, educating them at boarding schools where they would be isolated from their traditions and fully immersed in Western culture. At schools like Carlisle, Native children had to wear Western clothing and speak English. They were punished for speaking their native languages, and abuse, disease, and malnourishment were extremely common amongst the students.

Richard Pratt Quotes in The Inconvenient Indian

The The Inconvenient Indian quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Pratt or refer to Richard Pratt . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and Mythology   Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5. We Are Sorry Quotes

Pratt’s plan was a simple one. North America would have to kill the Indian in order to save the man. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” was the exact quotation, and while it sounds harsh, it was an improvement on Philadelphia lawyer Henry Pancoast’s 1882 suggestion that “We must either butcher them [Indians] or civilize them, and what we do we must do quickly.”

Related Characters: Thomas King (speaker), Richard Pratt (speaker)
Page Number: 107-108
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Inconvenient Indian PDF

Richard Pratt Quotes in The Inconvenient Indian

The The Inconvenient Indian quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Pratt or refer to Richard Pratt . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and Mythology   Theme Icon
).
Chapter 5. We Are Sorry Quotes

Pratt’s plan was a simple one. North America would have to kill the Indian in order to save the man. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man” was the exact quotation, and while it sounds harsh, it was an improvement on Philadelphia lawyer Henry Pancoast’s 1882 suggestion that “We must either butcher them [Indians] or civilize them, and what we do we must do quickly.”

Related Characters: Thomas King (speaker), Richard Pratt (speaker)
Page Number: 107-108
Explanation and Analysis: