Document A: Newspaper (Excerpt) A NEW SCHOOL FOR INDIANS: CARLISLE BARRACKS CONVERTED INTO AN INDIAN SCHOOL The Secretary of War today ordered that Carlisle Barracks, Pa., be turned over to the Interior Department to be used as a school for the education of Indian youth, to be modeled after the Hampton (Va.) Normal Institute, and has detailed Captain R. H. Pratt, of the army, to have charge of it. Captain Pratt has had much experience in the work of Indian education at St. Augustine and at Hampton, and is confident of good results at Carlisle. Secretaries McCrary [Secretary of War] and Schurz [Secretary of the Interior] are both much interested in the subject and very hopeful that the successful effort at Hampton will be followed by success at Carlisle, and lead eventually to such action by Congress as will enable the government to establish many such schools. About one hundred Indian youth of both sexes will be sent to Carlisle this fall. . . . The Secretary of War thinks this is the only way to saving a remnant of the Indian tribes, for so long as the tribal relation is continued they must gradually become extinct. He says the efforts of the government are in the direction of bringing up a class of young men who will be leaders of their people in taking them away from the chase and war as the sole worthy occupation for the hands of men. The rapid extinction of the buffalo and small game and the filling up of the waste places by settlements render this step absolutely necessary to the future interests of the aboriginal population of the country, and it is confidently expected that in time the Indians will be brought from the precarious living of the chase into better ways. . . . Secretary McCrary said he thought it was an interesting fact that Carlisle Barracks, which had been the great school of instruction for so many years for our cavalry employed in fighting the Indians, should have been in this centennial transformed into an asylum for Indian youth, where in future years they may learn the arts of progress. Source: New York Herald, August 22, 1879. Vocabulary remnant: a small surviving group waste places: undeveloped land, often occupied by Native Americans asylum: a place of safety and security