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WHERE DID INDIAN MASCOTS COME FROM?
The conception that the Indigenous peoples of the America's existed to serve European interests was formulated long before whites appeared on the continent. By the late 19th century, when white Americans saw the policy of outright extermination finally was becoming a reality another familiar and well worked practice in the European art of genocide was formalized. This was the means of assimilation which would insure the decimation of families from within as well as from without.
In the mid 19th century a movement to reshape Indians in the image of European Americans through a process of incarcerating them isolating and indoctrinating them at public facilities financed by government. This movement was predicated on public declarations that Native Americans could be made human by separating children from their family, culture and heritage at an early age, pressed into training camps and "reeducated" through hard labor and discipline. Central to this philosophy was the belief that Native Americans were not really human beings but could adopt enough outward mannerisms of European Americans that they could function in roles delineated for them by whites.
Well known for his supervision of Indian prisons in Florida, Captain Richard Henry Pratt was selected to head the most famous of boarding schools at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He continued the principles he learned while overseeing inmates at his school for children. His motto was, "Kill the Indian, save the man." The cemetery at the school will attest to the results of his methods for some inmates. In the model established by Captain Pratt boarding schools erupted all over the continent. They became a lucrative economic adventure for churches who received free Indian labor, government subsidies and cheap help from young men and women filled with missionary zeal to live and work the boarding schools.
Primary to the operating principals of these institutions was to fashion Native children after a model conceived by whites who viewed them as flawed but curious creations. No matter the endeavor new roles were forced upon Indigenous captives fashioned in all manner of vision springing from European Americans who fundamentally believed Native People to be their inferiors. Native children were trained to serve whites, white interests, white society and entertain whites. At worst they were slaves at best they were mascots but they always were subordinated to whites.
These children were forced to work to produce salable goods for hours and hours in a day. They were worked in pseudo academic exercises to create a feel good and economic enterprise for White America. They were crowed into institutions and sexually molested by the staff. Children were universally named and trained as mascot INDIANS in these schools. They were rewarded for playing football and baseball and were pitted against white schools.
This time in the USA was a period in which colored minorities were considered less than human. The boarding schools were an attempt to prove that American Indians, conditioned with in a controlled and regulated environment could give responses and behave as white people. This social experiment has created infinitely more problems than solutions.
By the 1910's newly formed White schools began picking up the mascot identity from these schools. Many white schools had animal mascots and the concept of the Indian as mascot fit simply and directly into this practice. Indian boarding schools were populated with what white people considered a wild animal race.
January 2004
Matthew Richter
editor, American Comments Magazinereferences:
Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction, University of Kansas Press 1995
Hoxie, Frederick E., A Final Promise, The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920, Cambridge University Press 1984