19th C. Footlocker Trunk- Carlisle Indian Industrial School, PA
Institution: Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center
State: Pennsylvania
Object: Storage
Era: 19th Century
This trunk was one of the accommodations for children attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The institution was one of the first federally funded boarding schools designed to assimilate Native American children. While the institution is most known for its Indigenous football legacy, 186 children also died while attending Carlisle.
During westward expansion, states added “free education” clauses to encourage indigenous land accessions. Most of these schools were built on reservation land and taught by Christian missionaries. Despite eventual funding through the Civilization Fund Act (1819), the government felt that students were not fully assimilated enough to “survive American society”.
The “failure” of day schools lead to more aggressive measures, particularly through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the 1870s, Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt proposed a full assimilation curriculum that educated children off of the reservation (similar to Indian Boarding Schools along the east coast), and through vocational training. In addition to being taught farming and food production on campus, Indigenous students were also forced to take part in the “outing system” where they lived and worked as contractors for White farmers.
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David Johnson was one of the students who used this trunk while attending Carlisle (between 1895-1899). Johnson’s student records describe him as a 17 year old “1/2 blood” from Pottawatomi Nation (the tribe relocated to Kansas by 1869). It is unclear if Johnson was a victim of the Compulsory Indian Education Act of 1887 or if his family voluntarily sent him to Pennsylvania. However, records show that Johnson worked for two different farmers in New Jersey as part of his assimilation curriculum. After he was expelled for misconduct, the school followed up with Johnson to measure the “success” of their program. The record states that Johnson “married in 1911, moved to Oklahoma, became a farmer, and still owned his allotment of 80 acres of land”.
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