The 4th Cavalry was stationed at Fort Clark. They had private instructions to deal with the “Indian problem” once and for all. Even though it was illegal for US troops to cross the border, the 4th dared to conduct multiple raids into Mexico. The first one was on May 17, 1873, when 400 men, guided by Seminole scouts, traveled over 140 miles in just 40 hours. Several villages in El Remolino were destroyed and 40 prisoners captured. We have a firsthand account from Captain Carter, one of the officers in charge of the raid. I took the liberty of making Carter a character in The Lost Ones. He represents the voice of the US Army in the book.
In The Lost Ones, Casita and Jack are taken prisoner on a similar raid in 1877. That raid wasn’t documented, so I borrowed the details from the more famous raid in 1873. The rest of the prisoners were taken to a reservation, but Casita and Jack stayed behind at Fort Clark. It was at this point that their family lost track of the children.
Casita and her cousin Juanita never knew what happened to each other. But Juanita did survive, and Richard told me her story. When the soldiers raided the camp, Juanita hid with her little brother in a hole under some brush. The band had several hideouts like this prepared in case of danger. Maybe Miguel cried or Juanita moved, but for some reason one of the soldiers stabbed at their hiding place with his saber. The sharp blade killed little Miguel and pierced Juanita in the shoulder. She was brave enough not to cry out, and the soldier moved on.
Later, Juanita and another survivor, her brother Calixtro, walked 300 miles to San Juan, Texas. There they were reunited with their father, Casita’s uncle, Juan Carlos. He had feared his whole family was dead, so he was grateful to find any survivors. He decided that it was too dangerous for any of them to be Lipan Apache. The family fled deeper into Mexico or to California, giving up their Apache names, culture, and history.
Juanita kept her Apache blood a secret even from her own family. She only told one of her daughters the story, who in turn told her daughter. Richard told me how Juanita’s granddaughter “broke the news” to the family in the 1960s that they were Lipan Apache. After the initial shock, most of the family embraced their heritage, although some chose not to. Hundreds of people attend the annual family reunion and Richard likes to remind all of them that they would not exist if Juanita had not been so brave.
FORT CLARK
Fort Clark, the home of the 4th Cavalry, was an important military outpost in southeastern Texas. Casita and Jack were taken in by a military man and his wife, Lt. Charles and Mollie Smith. In real life, the Smiths traveled from base to base—Charles had a position with the military marching band—but for The Lost Ones I kept them stationed at Fort Clark.
We know very little about the Smiths, so I took the liberty of making Mollie a Quaker and a nurse. As a nurse, Mollie can meet Casita in the hospital. As a Quaker, she is interested in social justice and is a pacifist. Up to the Civil War, the Quakers were vocal abolitionists. After slavery was abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the Quakers found a new cause: a humane solution to the Indian problem. Mollie takes in two Indian children, despite the disapproval of her military husband, to prove the Quaker theory that the Indians can be won over with kindness. Naturally she clashes with the military establishment, which is dedicated to eliminating Indians, either by sending them to reservations or by killing them.
Casita and Jack lived with the Smiths for almost three years. The Smith family has preserved a picture of the two children. On the back, Charles wrote: “Casita and Jack Smith—they always address Mollie as dear Mamma.” This implies that they thought of themselves as a family. In The Lost Ones, I have Charles getting this photograph taken in San Antonio just before they board the train to Carlisle.
In 1880, the Commanding Officer of Fort Clark was asked to send students to the new Indian school in Carlisle, PA. Since Casita and Jack were still officially “prisoners of war,” it was within his discretion to send them. We can only guess that it was a difficult separation for all of them. The Smiths would never see Casita and Jack again.
Caleb was not a real person, but the anger he feels toward the Apache was typical. Seminole Jim is based on a true person. The Seminole scouts were valued members of the Fort Clark community, although they lived just outside the fort. They were excellent trackers and strong fighters. They worked for the US Army because they had been promised land and citizenship. However, the US government failed to keep this promise.
CARLISLE INDIAN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL
Founded in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, Carlisle was the first off-reservation Indian boarding school paid for by the US government. It was built on the site of a former Army barracks in Carlisle, PA. Pratt believed that Native Americans could be “civilized” and become useful citizens. His informal motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Pratt believed that if the Indians learned English and a trade, they could be useful members of American society. Upon arrival at Carlisle, students’ hair was cut and their names were changed. Students were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own religion. The school was run like a military regiment with much marching and strict discipline, including corporal punishment. Students had regular classwork in the morning and they learned a trade in the afternoon. Pratt also had an outing program for students to leave the school during the summers and work at local farms or homes. The boys did agricultural work and the girls served as domestic servants.
Colonel Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in 1901
Carlisle became the model for 26 Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools in 15 states and territories. From 1879 until 1918, almost 12,000 Native American children from 140 tribes attended Carlisle; however, according to one source, only 8% of the students graduated. Many students simply returned home after a time; others ran away. Hundreds became ill and died. There is a student cemetery at Carlisle today housing 175 graves, but many children’s bodies were sent home to their families.
This photograph of Apache students from Fort Marion, Florida, was taken as they arrived at the school in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
These Carlisle students were photographed after they arrived at the school in the late 1800s, early 1900s.
A clothes-mending class in 1901.
The school’s infirmary in 1901.
The metalworking workshop in 1904.
The printing shop in the early 1900s.
Today most historians, especially among the Native American community, feel the Carlisle Indian Industrial School represents a shameful attempt to brainwash Indian children. Often the children had no choice about coming to Carlisle, and once there they suffered terribly from being forced to renounce their culture and language.
On the other hand, many students loved the school. They were grateful for the opportunity to be educated and even sent their own children there. Many students corresponded with Pratt for many years and spoke highly of their time at Carlisle.
The school had a deliberate policy to separate students who were from the same tribe. However, in the records, Jack and Casita are listed as “Lipan.” Other students are identified as “Apache.” I used this sloppy recordkeeping to find a way to keep Casita and Lenna/Nelly in the same room.
One of the ways that Pratt publicized his school’s accomplishments was through a newspaper, produced by the faculty and students at Carlisle. The newspaper had several names, but was called Eadle Keahtah Toh when Casita was there. Pratt and Miss Burgess saw the newspaper as a tool for propaganda. Every article conveys the message that the Indian students are better off at Carlisle. The article that appears in the second edition of the paper is one of the few references we find at Carlisle to Casita. Here is an excerpt from the article:
On examination we found three large scars on Casita, one on her head, one on the back, and one on the front of her shoulder. When questioned as to how the scars came to be there, she said it was when her mother tried to kill her with a rock. This seemed almost incr
edible so we said, “What your own mother?” “Yes, ma’am,” she replied. “But why did she do that?” we asked and the answer was “so as to keep the white men from getting me in the fight.” Then we understood, for we had heard before, of mothers doing such deeds of horror when they found the result of the battle would be against them. After some further talk with her, we asked if she would rather have gone back to her mother than to have come here, but she said “No, my mother is dead.”
Lenna and Eyota are invented characters. In The Lost Ones, Lenna is grateful to be at Carlisle. Conditions on her reservation were so poor that she finds Carlisle to be a safe haven. This positive attitude was typical of many children who came to Carlisle. Their parents sent them to Pennsylvania not only to receive an education, but also so they would be fed and clothed. Eyota represents the opposite point of view. She is the daughter of a Sioux chief. She resents the US Army for sending her to Carlisle as a hostage for her father’s good behavior. Her story was partly inspired by Maud Swift Bear, one of the first children to die at Carlisle. Like Eyota, she arrived at the school with a respiratory disease. Her father was an important Sioux chief. Lieutenant Pratt stressed in his letter to her father that Maud had arrived with bad lungs and there was nothing the school could have done.
Jack was adopted by Miss Mather. She brought him to St. Augustine, Florida. He got tuberculosis while he was there, returned to Carlisle in 1888, and died when he was around 18 years old.
We have no way of knowing if Casita ever performed her Changing Woman dance, but I like to think that she did. Certainly she did not excel as a student at Carlisle: her reports indicate that she was an average student. After a few years, she was sent out to work for a local family as a servant. She would do this for a few years, then return to Carlisle before finding a new position. Officially, she remained a student at Carlisle until her death in 1906, around the age of 39. During her final illness, she was cared for by a Quaker community. She is buried in a Quaker cemetery about 140 miles from Carlisle and almost 2,000 miles from El Remolino. She left behind a two-year-old son named Richard, although there is no record of a marriage or who the father was.
Since Casita was still officially a student at Carlisle, Richard was taken in by the school. He was the youngest student they ever had. He was adopted by a well-to-do family in town, but continued to have strong ties to Carlisle until it closed in 1917. He was reportedly friends with the famous athlete Jim Thorpe, who played football at Carlisle. Although he married, Richard never had children. He was the third and last Lipan Apache at the Carlisle School.
In The Lost Ones, Casita never knows what happened to her father. We do know from Juanita’s descendants that he never stopped looking for his children, although he died a few years after the raid.
Juanita’s descendants never forgot the missing children. They never thought to look for them at Carlisle, 1,800 miles away from where they were last seen. And even if they had, the children had undergone several name changes. It took a visiting British scholar to piece together the story. In 2000, Dr. Jacqueline Fear-Segal came to Carlisle to study Native American history. She came across Casita’s name in the records about Carlisle maintained by the Cumberland Valley Historical Society. She contacted Daniel Romero of the Lipan Band of Texas to ask for more information. Daniel, the leader of the band, was surprised and delighted to finally discover the fate of the lost children. In 2009, on the anniversary of the attack on El Remolino, Daniel and Richard, accompanied by other Lipans, came to Carlisle to offer blessings at the gravesites of Jack and Casita, welcoming the children back to the tribe. They are no longer lost.
AN AFTERWORD
THE HISTORY OF THE NDÉ CAN BE DOCUMENTED AS FAR BACK AS the 1500s. Every year for centuries the Ndé (Lipan Apache) met as a Nation on the third Saturday of August, timed to coincide with the annual pre-winter hunt. This gathering was when marriages, births, and new leaders were celebrated. This tradition continues today with the descendants of the first Lipan. An annual reunion still brings hundreds of our family together. At one such gathering in 1980, I was given the honor of being my family’s historian. Until then, our family’s history had been an oral history; I was the first to write it down.
One of the darkest days in our history was May 18, 1873, when the US 4th Cavalry, without orders, crossed the Rio Grande and attacked the Lipan Apache villages, massacring many Ndé. This raid was followed by many more. Casita and Jack were taken prisoner in such a raid. Their cousins Juanita and Calixtro escaped the soldiers.
Juanita Castro, who is my ancestor, moved to the borderland frontier city of Laredo and married Jesus Cavazos, a Spanish Land Grant property owner. She lived a long life and had thirteen children and many grandchildren and greatgrand-children. If she had not been so brave on the day of that raid, none of these people would ever have been born. Calixtro also had children and had the distinction of becoming a third-generation Texas Ranger.
Although Juanita and Calixtro hid their heritage, they never forgot Casita and Jack, passing on their story in secret to their children and grandchildren.
At the annual reunions, a special plate was prepared. We called this a “grandfather’s plate” to honor those we had lost. We would pray for them and then tip the food into the fire. Our people could not move forward until our lost ones were sent home.
We were very happy to know what had become of Jack and Casita. Casita has the distinction of being the longest serving “Woman Prisoner of War” and longest enrolled student of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. In 2009, on the anniversary of the raid, we went to Pennsylvania to say prayers for our lost children and to ask the creator to open the door and let them in.
For over one hundred and fifty years, the story told about our people ignored what truly happened to them as the US military progressed westward. Our indigenous way of life became a struggle for survival. Casita’s story captures the struggles of so many Ndé both before and after her death. Now that her story has been told, the Ndé believe that her captivity was not in vain; her life had meaning. Her story not only condemns the Carlisle School’s system of values, but also challenges our morals as a nation. But most importantly, in her heart, Casita managed to journey home to the Ndé.
Daniel Castro Romero, Jr.
RESOURCES
Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Ball, Eve, with Nora Henn and Lynda A. Sánchez. Indeh: An Apache Odyssey. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.
Carter, Robert. On the Border with MacKenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches. Austin, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2011.
Churchill, Ward. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2004.
Fear-Segal, Jacqueline. White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Golston, Sydele. Changing Woman of the Apache: Women’s Lives in Past and Present. New York: Franklin Watts, 1996.
Haenn, William. Fort Clark and Brackettville: Land of Heroes. Images of America Series. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002.
Haley, James. Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.
Minor, Nancy McGown. Turning Adversity to Advantage: A History of the Lipan Apaches of Texas and Northern Mexico, 1700–1900. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009.
Pirtle, Caleb. The Lonely Sentinel: Fort Clark, on Texas’s Western Frontier. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1985.
Pratt, Richard Henry. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867–1904. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964.
Robinson, Sherry. Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival As Told to Eve Ball. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Stockel, Henrietta. Women of the A
pache Nation: Voices of Truth. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1991.
Trafzer, Clifford, ed. Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Witmer, Linda. The Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 1879–1918. Carlisle, PA: Cumberland County Historical Society, 1993.
FURTHER READING*
Most of my sources were academic books meant for adults. However, some books and websites that are more appropriate for young people are listed below:
Carvell, Marlene. Sweetgrass Basket. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 2005.
A historical novel in prose poetry, this is the story of two young sisters at Carlisle. One of the few accounts of girls at the school.
Community Studies Center at Dickinson College. The Lost Ones: Long Journey Home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I4jF22bXeA.
This excerpt of a documentary by the Community Studies Center at Dickinson College tells the story of Casita and Jack, as well as the Carlisle School. You can see Daniel Romero and his uncle Richard Gonzalez discussing how they brought Casita and Jack home.
Cooper, Michael. Indian School: Teaching the White Man’s Way. New York: Clarion Books, 1999.
This is a nonfiction book that explores the Indian schools, especially Carlisle. There are lots of pictures.
Friends of the Fort Clark Historic District. 2016. http://www.ffchd.org.
This is the website of the Friends of Fort Clark Historic District. It is full of interesting information about the fort, including maps and pictures of life at the fort in the 1870s.
The Lost Ones Page 17
