A Carlisle repatriation: "They were children born of love"

On Oct. 6, 1879, the first group of 84 students arrived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. They had traveled over 1200 miles from Rosebud and Pine Ridge, South Dakota, first by wagon, then steamboat, to their first frightful experience with a train, the Iron Road. In Sioux City, Iowa, spectators turned out to see and mock the children of the people who had defeated General Custer only 3 years earlier. In Chicago, they saw people as plentiful as ants. As the days rolled by, they sang brave songs fearing their death at the edge of the world. At approximately midnight under a full moon they arrived in Carlisle, walking the final 2 miles to the entrance to the Carlisle Barracks, and started the 39-year-history of the first federally run boarding school. They were the first to be given new names, to have their clothes replaced by military-style uniforms, to have their hair cut off, and be forbidden to speak their native languages. They came expecting an education and walked into an experiment in cultural annihilation. Six of those original students are among the 10 (1 Native Alaskan from the Aleut Nation and 9 Rosebud Sioux) being repatriated to their homelands. "They need to come home to our homeland...They are children that were born of love, " said Ben Rhodd, contract archeologist for the Rosebud Sioux.