Yesterday, I returned to the cemetery at the infamous Native boarding school at Carlisle. I had offered prayers there before, but I wanted to better document what I saw there. And, of course, a multitude of prayers are needed there. I cannot imagine the sorrow of those thousands of children, separated from their families and communities, in an unfamiliar setting, with no freedom to roam the land, in despair, often sick and with no one to sit next to them and love them. Many probably died of either disease running rampant through the school or from physical abuse, which was rampant in many of the boarding schools.
Here is an official photo of the children attending this school. Look at their faces. It’s truly heartbreaking.
First, let me warn you that if you go to the cemetery, it is on army property. In fact, it’s on the property of the Army War College. The GPS will lead you to an entrance, but there will be a bar across it. I pulled up to the bar, hoping it would open. A man exiting honked the horn at me, gesturing to me to stop. I gestured that I wanted to go to the cemetery. When I pulled away, he kindly followed me to tell me what I needed to know. (That was really kind of him.) The only way to enter is if you go to the “Visitors Center” on the opposite side of the road, pass by a guard, and go to get vetted. I was warned it could take up to 30 minutes. It only took two for me. Perhaps that’s because I had already been there, without incident, six years earlier.
The cemetery had been moved at some point from farther back on the property to right next to the road and the entrance. Anyone wanting privacy to mourn or weep or pray will not have any. Over 180 graves are there. Thirty of those graves are associated with white children whose parents were in the army. I’m not quite sure why they were buried there.
The last time I was there, I remember seeing headstones marked with the names of states very far from Pennsylvania. I wanted to check to see if I remembered correctly. What I found is that there were indeed several kids from Alaska. Some headstones said “Alaskan;” one said “Eskimo.” There was a Pima child (probably Arizona) and quite a few Cheyenne (most likely Montana or Wyoming). There were also scores of Apache kids. I learned from my visit to the fort/prison in St. Augustine, Florida, that about 400 Apache were imprisoned there after their sad surrender, and the children were apparently later transferred to Carlisle. Over the course of 39 years, 7800 children from 139 tribes had been forced to attend this “school” so that they could be “properly assimilated.”
The government made extra sure to “get” the children of chiefs, because they were the children who were more likely to hold the traditional knowledge. My guess is that the army also wanted to break the spirits of the chiefs.
To send children thousands of miles away from their families, without the families’ permission, is reprehensible. (And now, horrifyingly, history is repeating itself. Our government is doing the same thing. Abducting non-white children and sending them, away from their families, to prisons and “detention centers.” The names of the kids are different, but the color of their skin is similar.)
The headstones in Carlisle that really broke my heart were the ones with the words “Unknown.” It brings tears to my eyes to even type the words.
I felt the presence of the spirits of those kids with me as I drove home. I think they were so desperate for some love….
Bless each child, and bless the families who mourned their loss so keenly. Bless the indigenous people who still suffer from the trauma of these times.
P.S. Some of the graves were vacant. This is where children were disinterred so that they could be returned, at long last, to their people. The following is a video showing a beautiful ceremony of the Lakota as they reverently reinterred these children. https://www.facebook.com/reel/334171455024373
