Linda Witmer's chronicle of the Carlisle Indian School makes one feel that he was really there and knew some of the students personally. The story begins with the journey of seventy-two shackled Indian prisoners to St. Augustine, Florida in 1875 under Richard Henry Pratt, the transfer of most of them three years later to Hampton, Virginia, and the establishment of the Indian Industrial School at Carlisle in 1879.
In January of 1883, an eleven-year-old boy from the Laguna pueblo in New Mexico Territory wrote a letter from the Carlisle Indian School to someone back home. Here is the letter:
During its existence (1879-1918) and since, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School has been a subject of interest to students and scholars of history, sociology, ethnology, and education.
For twenty years, from 1890 to 1910, Father Henry Ganss served as pastor of Saint Patrick's Catholic Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During that time he produced historical and musical works achieving international appreciation. He has merited entries in two prominent works of reference-The Dictionary of American Biography and The New Catholic Encyclopedia-rare for one whose activities one would assume deserved only parochial notice.