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REMEMBER THEIR FACES! Carlisle Indian School students’ remains to be disinterred, returned to tribes

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Lydia Gardner (Arapaho), Nannie Little Robe (Cheyenne), and Ethel Black Wolf (Arapaho), circa 1890. Nannie died on Friday, February 15, 1895, age 12. Her cause of death was recorded as pneumonia hydrothorax, or fluid around the lungs. Image courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

After well over a century, the remains of nineteen Native children and young adults who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will be disinterred, beginning tomorrow, September 3, and returned to the tribes they came from. One student was from the Seminole tribe; the other eighteen were from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

The students names are Wallace Perryman of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and Belle Cahoe, Wash E. He, Tabitha Carroll, Jane Lumpfoot, Leah Road Traveler, Percy Whitebear, George Harrison, Charles Whiteshield, Matavito Horse, Nannie Little Robe, Dora Morning, Louise Thunder, Giles Hands, Ruben Tanpeds, Henry Morning, William Sammers, Abraham Lincoln, and Elsie Davis from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

This should be national news, yet I’m seeing very sparse recent coverage online. The most recent item I found was in the Carlisle, PA, Sentinel from August 4, 2025.1

I have been reaching out to the Office of Army Cemeteries (OAC) and the tribes involved to learn more about this, so consider this an ongoing story.

Henry Morning (Cheyenne) arrived at Carlisle in 1886. He died on March 28, 1889, age 16, his cause of death unspecified. Photo by John N. Choate, Carlisle, PA. Image courtesy of Cumberland County, PA, Historical Society.

Meanwhile, I searched the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center database for images of the students who died. I found only two whose photos were identified. How heartbreaking is that . . .

According to the National Park Service, at least 168 students dies at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School between its opening in 1879 and its closure in in 1918: “Over ten thousand children attended Carlisle . . . with roughly 1,000 on campus in a given school year. They came from over 142 Indian nations. These nations had many different languages and cultures. Most students were Sioux, Chippewa, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Menominee, and Alaskan Native. Some students graduated in their late teens or early twenties but others left early due to illness or homesickness.”2

The Carlisle Indian School’s approach to educating a student, according to its founder, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, was “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

Anyway, more to come.

Meanwhile, if you have unidentified images of Carlisle students, you can check the images on the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center database at https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/.

Do you have confirmed images of any of the students named above? Do you own images of Carlisle students that you would like to donate to the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center? If so, please contact Jim Gerencser, associate dean for archives and special collections at Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at cisproject@dickinson.edu.

Notes

  1. Naomi Creason, “Army to Disinter 19 Carlisle Indian School Students in September,” Sentinel (Carlisle, PA), August 4, 2025 (updated August 19, 2025), accessed September 1, 2025, https://cumberlink.com/news/local/article_f407ca3a-aa0a-4027-84da-b96297defd69.html. ↩︎
  2. “The Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Assimilation with Education after the Indian Wars (Teaching with Historic Places),” National Park Service, accessed September 1, 2015, https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-carlisle-indian-industrial-school-assimilation-with-education-after-the-indian-wars-teaching-with-historic-places.htm. ↩︎