Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the context of "Cultural assimilation of Native Americans"

Carlisle Barracks is a United States Army facility located in Pennsylvania, with a Carlisle post office address and with a portion in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The site of the U.S. Army War College, it is the nation's second-oldest active military base. The first structures were built in 1757, during the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France in the colonies.

From 1879 to 1918, the property was transferred to the Department of Interior to operate the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This was the first off-reservation boarding school established to educate and assimilate Native American children into European-American culture. In 1891 Congress passed legislation to expand this program. After the United States entered World War I, the school was closed and the property was transferred back to the War Department.

American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a main primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated American Indian culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid Church denominations to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools. Similarly to schools that taught speakers of immigrant languages, the curriculum was rooted in linguistic imperialism, the English-only movement, and forced assimilation enforced by corporal punishment. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools.

Children were typically immersed in the Anglo-American culture of the upper class. Schools forced removal of indigenous cultural signifiers: cutting the children's hair, having them wear American-style uniforms, forbidding them from speaking their mother tongues, and replacing their tribal names with English language names (saints' names under some religious orders) for use at the schools, as part of assimilation and to Christianize them. The schools were usually harsh, especially for younger children who had been forcibly separated from their families and forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures. Children sometimes died in the school system due to infectious disease. Investigations of the later 20th century revealed cases of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.