White Man's Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation

8. Man-on-the-Bandstand: Surveillance, Concealment, and Resistance

8. Man-on-the-Bandstand: Surveillance, Concealment, and Resistance Winning and holding the support of white Americans was always essential to the survival of Carlisle. Just three months after the school was founded, under a succession of different names, a school newspaper began rolling off the Indian school presses in a continuous stream: Eadle Keatah Toh, the Morning Star, the Red Man, the Red Man and Helper, the Arrow, the Carlisle Arrow, and ultimately the Carlisle Arrow and Red Man. Between 1909 and 1917, there was also a monthly periodical that initially called itself the Indian Craftsman but then changed its name to the Red Man in 1910—this merged with the Carlisle Arrow in 1917. These periodicals were the public voice of Carlisle, which sought to inform whites about the goals, activities and achievements of the school. Beginning in 1885, a second, smaller, weekly four-page newspaper also began production at the school. Published every week until 1900, in the guise of a school magazine, the Indian Helper reported events, handed out admonitions and advice, printed letters, and documented the activities of staff and students. Although strictly censored, the pages of the Indian Helper carry a detailed record of everyday life at the school. They provide the fullest available documentation of the minutiae of daily interactions at Carlisle between white educators and the children they sought to transform. When the propagandized version of events relayed by the Indian Helper is closely interrogated within the physical context of the school, it reveals a previously indiscernible narrative, with telling details about how the “civilizing” campaign was conducted and also evidence that deepens our understanding of the children’s responses. Indian Helper The Indian Helper was a more modest publication than Carlisle’s main newspaper, and it made clear in both its title and subtitle, the Indian 207 Helper: for our indian boys and girls, that its targeted audience was the Indian children themselves. Students at the school, children who had gone “out” to work for families in the Pennsylvania area, and a growing body of Carlisle-educated Indians who had returned to their reservation homes were the paper’s main readers. White supporters of the Carlisle Indian School, including many children, were also eagerly courted and added to the list. Readers paid twenty-five cents for an annual subscription , and their numbers peaked at twelve thousand in 1898. Articles and stories carried in the Indian Helper were slanted, sanitized , and clearly subjected to strict editorial control. Information about the paper’s editor is therefore essential to any understanding of how to read it as an historical source. But the identity of its editor was the Indian Helper’s most baffling characteristic. Each week a notice on the second page announced: “The indian helper is printed by Indian boys, but edited by The-man-on-the-band-stand, who is not an Indian.”1 This anonymous, invisible, white, male persona brazenly located himself on the school bandstand, claiming it as both home and editorial site. From here he watched the children and commented on their activities . To understand his purpose and the relationship he tried to cultivate with the children through the pages of the Indian Helper, it is necessary , once again, to look closely at the buildings and grounds of the Carlisle campus and at the bandstand in particular. The Indian Helper was consciously woven into the very fabric of the Carlisle Indian School. Analysis of the interplay that was fostered between this publication and the physical environment of the campus lays bare some of the daily detail of Carlisle’s oppressive program as well as the covert responses of some of the children. It allows us to witness the intense level of scrutiny to which the children were subjected as they went about their daily lives. This mimicked and parodied a system of surveillance pioneered in prisons and was intrinsic to Carlisle’s mission to destroy native cultures. The Man-on-the-bandstand, who combined characteristics of God, Uncle Sam, and grandfather with those of prison officer, spy, and dirty old man, was created as an active component in Carlisle’s program, working to substitute his creed and code for values and beliefs the children had learned at home. When interrogated within the physical context of its production, the pages of the Indian Helper Man-on-the-Bandstand Carlisle Indian Industrial School 208 disclose some of...