Existing comment:
"[M]y friend ... Judewin knew a few words of English, and she had overheard the paleface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair. 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' I answered."
-- Zitkala-Sa (Dakota), The School Days of an Indian Girl (1900)
1879 First Native American boarding school:
The Carlisle Industrial Training School opens in Pennsylvania. Seeking to "Americanize" Native American children, the school removes them from their homes, cuts their hair, and dresses them like white people. They are forbidden to speak their language or practice their cultural traditions.
"Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit."
-- Richard Henry Pratt, Carlisle School founder, 1892
Original caption, 1888:
"Unrestricted immigration and its results. A possible curiosity of the twentieth century, The Last Yankee."
1880s-1930s Immigration fears:
Massive immigration from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe stirs anxiety among many white Americans, who see these newcomers as undesirable.
"[T]he population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from Southeastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature... more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality... [and] the ratio of insanity in the population will rapidly increase."
-- Charles Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911) |