Richard Henry Pratt (American Antiquarian Society)

It is not an undertaking so great as to strain the resources of our government to take the thirty thousand or thereabout Indian children of school age and scatter them among the schools of the United States, thus freeing them from the tribal relations and influences, and, having provided for their education, let them shift for themselves as laborers, craftsmen or in other walks of life according to their tastes and opportunities. The experiment of the Indian school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, under the charge of Captain Pratt, whose humanity and sense of justice and honor are unquestionable, but not more so than his
practical wisdom and the success which has rewarded his efforts within the scope of his authority and opportunity, — is conclusive evidence that this policy is practicable. Anyone who has seen a group of Apache children as they arrived at Carlisle, with all the characteristics of the savage, not only in their dress and manner, but visibly stamped upon their features in hard lines of craft, ferocity, suspicion
and sullen obduracy, and has also seen a year later the same children neatly dressed, with their frank intelligent faces, not noticeably unlike in expression those of wholesome and happy boys and girls of our own race, must be convinced that education under suitable conditions is the true solution of the Indian.