Boarding school voices: Carlisle Indian students speak By ArnoldKrupat, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 351 pp.

Although many books have been published about the history of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, this book is unique in that it focuses on the voices of Native American students who attended Carlisle from 1879 to 1918. Arnold Krupat describes his book as an “anthology of mostly unpublished writing by former students of the Carlisle Indian School and a study of that writing” (xiii). The unpublished writing consists of students’ “letters, notes, brief newspaper articles, and responses to questionnaires” (xiii–xiv), in which Carlisle students “tell us about themselves and their home communities, the perspectives they offer on a wider American world” (xix). Krupat emphasizes that their writings may be read as literary texts, inviting attention to their style and structure as “expressively powerful uses of language” (xxi). For example, Krupat often interprets the meaning of misspelled words in the students’ letters, but I caution the reader to keep in mind that these are Krupat's interpretations, not the students’, and therefore may not represent what students intended to say. The book is divided into an introduction and four chapters, and each chapter focuses on different groups of students’ writings. It is in the introduction that a defensiveness of the United States’ record of disrupting “the Indian family unit as part of Federal Indian policy to assimilate Indian children” (Newland, 2022, 38) surfaces, as Krupat states “no student was forced to attend Carlisle; parental permission was required before a child could go [emphasis mine]” (xv). Krupat fails to discuss the complex context in which recruitment took place and that the US government often coerced and threatened parents into “permitting” their children to attend Carlisle. Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) writes that Carlisle “played a key role in pressuring the West's most intransigent tribes to cede and sell land by taking their children hostage” (2019). The first class at Carlisle was drawn from the Lakota people because they were “most responsible for Custer's crushing defeat” at the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn) in 1876. At the time, the Lakota people were experiencing severe hardship due to starvation with the intentional extermination of the buffalo herds and broken treaties that resulted in the increasing loss of “surplus” lands to white settlers. Ezra Hayt, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1879, ordered Captain Richard Pratt, the first superintendent at Carlisle, to recruit first from Rosebud and Pine Ridge, “because the children would be hostages for the good behavior of their people” (Estes, 2019). Clearly, the coercion that parents experienced at the hands of the US government in “permitting” their children to attend Carlisle ought to be addressed or mentioned, which Krupat neglects to do. Chapter One includes 56 of 103 letters that students wrote and sent to Pratt, which he requested when a questionnaire was sent to “returned students” of Carlisle in 1890. Returned students included those students who had returned home because they graduated, ran away, were ill, or because their time at Carlisle expired (xxv). Pratt asked students to write about their lives—if they were married, where they were working and for whom, or if they were pursuing a higher education (xxv). Chapter Three is similar in content to Chapter One, but it covers students’ letters written from 1890 to 1918 (151). Krupat's style of presenting students’ letters in both Chapters One and Three makes both chapters difficult and tedious to read. Although Krupat clarifies the reasons he chose to present students’ letters according to different regions in Indian Country, his lack of transition from region to region is abrupt. Had Krupat provided subtitles like “Southwest” or “Great Plains,” and so forth, and began each section with an accompanying brief historical section of events affecting Native Nations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this would have grounded the reader to better understand the context of students’ letters—especially those readers with little or no knowledge of Native Nations, their histories, the locations of their reservations, and so forth. What is fascinating to read, of course, are the letters themselves. When Carlisle originally sent out questionnaires, their intent was to survey students for bureaucratic purposes and to assess if students had “relapsed into barbarism,” (Adams, 1995, 285), not out of any real concern or an offer of tangible support, but that is what students thought. In many of the student letters, the clear cry for help and hope for assistance that students communicated to Carlisle superintendents in finding employment, for example, is palpable and heartbreaking to read. The fact is that many students returned to their reservations or allotments and discovered a lack of economic opportunities, farmable land, and little or no resources—making it impractical to attain self-sufficiency despite receiving a vocational education from Carlisle (Adams, 1995, 280). In Chapter Two Krupat focuses on the life and writing of Mike Burns (Kwevkepaya, or Yavapai), who attended Carlisle from 1880 to 1884 (109). We learn a great deal about the hardships he experienced early in life, his time spent at Carlisle, and his life afterward as a returned student through the essays he published at Carlisle, his letters, and other publications, such as his autobiography, All of My People Were Killed (Burns, 2010). We also learn a little about Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Kwevkepaya, or Yavapai), who was a friend of Mike Burns. Dr. Montezuma did not attend Carlisle, but he worked there as a school physician from 1893 to 1896 (133). I found this chapter the most engaging one to read because Krupat presents substantial historical and contextual information about Mike Burns in a more successful manner than the other chapters. In Chapter Four, the final chapter, Krupat delves into the life of Siceni Nori (Laguna), a graduate of Carlisle, who worked as a clerk at Carlisle from 1884 to 1914. Krupat explores Nori's experience as an employee at Carlisle and also highlights Carlisle students who attained Western standards of “success” as lawyers, dentists, physicians, professional athletes, and accomplished musicians. Next, Krupat provides an account of what led to congressional hearings in 1914 that involved Carlisle Superintendent Moses Friedman, Nori, and the charges brought against the school by students and faculty (289–292). The reader will gain insight into the lives of the Native employees at Carlisle and workplace politics, but Krupat ends this chapter and the book rather abruptly without a summary or conclusion. Overall, the book was tedious to read due to Krupat's writing style. However, he did accomplish the valuable goal of presenting the voices of Native American students who attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through the publication of their compelling letters and other written material.