The Puerto Ricans at Carlisle Indian School

Sonia M. Rosa
 

ABSTRACT

Various documents concerning a fascinating, but nearly forgotten part of the U.S. and Puerto Rico’s colonial history were recently found that have added to the controversy over Puerto Rican ethnicity.  Sonia Rosa approaches the story of the sixty-plus Puerto Rican children who went to the Carlisle Industrial Indian School in the early 1900s from its broad human perspective—she focuses on the plight of the transplanted children, systematically exploring the individual stories of the students involved, instead of entering into the controversy that has been raised over the “Indians from Puerto Rico” who were sent to the school.  Rosa answers the question of whether or not the Puerto Rican children at the Carlisle Industrial Indian School were Indian or not with the simple observation that, "They were treated as Indians, as inferiors."