The history of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School is a microcosm of 500 years of Indian policy. Established through the efforts of career military man Richard Pratt in 1879, the school symbolized the emerging view of assimilation, an important change from earlier attempts at genocide and prior militant attitudes towards the Indians. Long interested in Indian education, Pratt established the school's goal of assimilative education and sought to achieve it by totally immersing Indian students in the white world. He changed the name, appearance, language, clothes, and manners of every student through a three-phase program of work programs, European classroom instruction and shop education, and a live-in program with white American families. The initial supposed success of Carlisle led to the government's founding of 25 more off-reservation boarding schools. White-Indian relations, federal Indian policies, and Pratt's own Indian theories were prevailing elements in the school's history, the latter in particular leading to the demise of Carlisle as Pratt differed openly with President Roosevelt over educational policy. About 1913, the government closed Carlisle claiming bankruptcy. Throughout its existence, however, the school reflected the ethnocentric and paternalistic attitude characteristic of federal Indian policy as a whole. (SB)