1911 Commencement Concert Program

Overview of the program

This program, intended for a concert that occurred at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS) on the evening of March 29th, 1911, is a small, twelve-page paper booklet that provides information on the concert itself, the repertoire performed at the concert, and the members of the band who performed, along with the instruments each student played. In blue-gray and gold accents, the cover introduces the United States Carlisle Indian Band, conducted by Claude Maxwell Stauffer and under the supervision of the superintendent, M. Friedman. The cover also features a photograph of the band mid-performance, the students dressed in formal black clothes and sitting in an arc around the conductor, as is the style of a typical Western band. Placed in contrast with the photograph of the Westernized student body are two illustrations of Native music and dance. On the left of the program’s cover, an indigenous group dressed in traditional regalia is depicted, presumably dancing. On the right, another two people are drawn, one leaning against a tree and playing the flute while the other approaches from the background.

Within the program are details about the concert. These details provide an easy way of dating the creation of the program, since it must have been made shortly before the concert actually occurred. While it is difficult to determine who specifically created the program, the CIIS included a print shop, and the program may have been created by some of the students working there. In any case, it was designed and printed by someone involved with the school.

1. Concert information (Page 5)

Page 5 can also give some insight into the use, distribution, and intended audience of the object. Due to the object’s nature as a program, the audience would have been the people in attendance at the concert. Since this was a commencement concert, it is very likely that this audience would have included students of the CIIS, specifically the graduating class of 1911. It is also likely that the families of CIIS students attended this concert to celebrate the commencement of the 1911 class. The program would have been handed to attendees of the concert as they arrived in order to introduce the band and the night’s repertoire.

2. Repertoire selection (Pages 6 and 7)

The choice of repertoire for the 1911 Concert Commencement Program of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School provides some main takeaways. Pages 6 and 7 include the program for the evening’s concert, which is split into two parts. In part one, the chosen repertoires lean more towards traditional concert structures and classical music forms (marches, an overture, a descriptive fantasy, and a pastoral piece) and evoke a classical or operatic atmosphere and formal feel.

On the other hand, part two is more diverse as it includes more contemporary, modern pieces (from popular music and film) and features a wider range of themes, including humor (“Humoresque” and “Bits of Hits”) and exoticism (“On the Bosporus”), which may aim to make the audience being more engaged.

Although the front cover of the program includes the band name “The United States Carlisle Indian Band,” illustrations of Native people and them playing flutes, the whole concert program does not feature any piece of music from the Indigenous culture, but instead, Western classical and popular music, including works by John Philip Sousa, Daniel Auber, Alessandro Liberati, Jens Bodewalt Lampe, Georges Bachmann, Jack Norworth, Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti, Jerome Hosmer Remick, Joseph Howard, Joseph Linke, and Arthur Willard Pryor, respectively, all of whom were white composers. 

This selection shows an effort of the school in focusing on promoting American cultural norms and values and making Western musical traditions a means of cultural assimilation. Since the students of the band were performing strictly white music, the concert would likely have garnered a white audience. This would have given the school more publicity and an opportunity to convince the public that they had been successful in their goal of killing the Indian and saving the man, as Pratt phrased it.

The concert starts with the march, “Fairest of the Fair” by John Philip Sousa, which symbolizes patriotism and the American spirit, and ends with a grand fantasia, “Song of the Nation” by Jens Bodewalt Lampe. This arrangement creates a mood of unity and cultural celebration from the beginning to the end, which can foster a sense of belonging to and pride in American identity among the audience and especially student performers.

However, if we put aside that, the selection may provide some insight into the musical trends and musical tastes at the time (early 20^th century), from which we can understand more of the factors that shape American music culture. We can also see a diversity of musical forms, including a mix of marches, overtures, symphonic pieces, vocal selections, etc. This variety may indicate an attempt to expose the students to multiple genres and styles for both entertainment purposes and broadening musical knowledge.

3. The membership (Pages 8 and 9)

Two pages are dedicated to listing each member of the band, along with what instrument(s) they play. The band at this time consisted of 54 students, all of whom played anything from the harp to brass instruments such as the cornet, sousaphone, trombones, to woodwind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and saxophone, to percussion instruments such as the snare and bass drum. The students are all listed with the white name they were given upon arriving at the school.

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Significance of the Program

This object ties together several important aspects of the school, as well as a few different mediums. It is the program for a concert, so it involves music, but is specifically the commencement concert and involves the graduation of several students, the final step of the overall goal of the school – to turn Native children into imitations of white people and rid them of their Indianness. As an object, the program includes the names of the members of the band, a photograph of the band, and illustrations. These provide several lenses through which to view the school and the school’s perspective on itself. This combination of several mediums and perspectives, as well as the connection between music and graduation ceremony, led us to choose the 1911 Commencement Concert Program as our object of study.

In order to study this object, it must have been deemed important enough by someone to warrant saving it. The program might have been saved to honor the students who were members of the United States Carlisle Indian Band in March of 1911 or to preserve the memories of the commencement of the CIIS class of 1911. Since it has been saved, the program is a means of gaining insight into the ways that music was used at the CIIS to reshape Native children into the image of white culture. In his book Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934, John Troutman writes:

“Boarding school educators sought to use musical instruction in the schools as a means to cultivate the students’ tastes for ‘proper’ – Euro-American – arts. The administrators who oversaw the schools viewed the practice of music in much the same way that most reservation superintendents did – in very stark, culturally and politically loaded terms. They believed that music lessons in the schools would combat the insidious influences of performative practices that predominated on reservations” (Troutman 2009, 113).

Troutman’s analysis shines light upon the motives behind the dedication to musical education at boarding schools such as CIIS. These motives begin to explain why CIIS was so willing to put so many of its resources into the musical success of its students. This item helps us understand the existence of musical performances that were not as open to the public and were more for school purposes. We’ve discussed in class the publicity of many CIIS musical performances and how they seem to act as proof of the successful assimilation of Indigenous children into American culture. Our group’s chosen object reveals the integration of music into overall education and more private school events at CIIS. 

But the use of music in boarding schools such as the CIIS was not always as sophisticated as it had become by 1911. One of the first students of the school, Luther Standing Bear, wrote in his 1928 memoir:

“The little woman had a black case with her, which she opened. It held a beautiful horn, and when she blew on it, it sounded beautiful. Then she motioned to us that we were to blow our horns. Some of the boys tried to blow from the large end. Although we tried our best, we could not produce a sound from them. She then tried to talk to us, but we did not understand her” (Standing Bear 1928, 148).

The initial struggle described by Luther Standing Bear that occurred when CIIS students were given their instruments and the willingness of faculty to work through these issues shows dedication to musical education. The improvement of CIIS students from their introductory musical abilities to their successful performances in programs such as the 1911 Commencement Concert demonstrates the success of the CIIS music program.

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Remaining Questions

After studying this object, there are some significant questions that remain, such as the question of how the students used the musical skills they gained from participating in the band, if at all, after graduation. There likely were students who continued playing their instruments, while others may have quit this activity for other musical practices, and others may have quit practicing music altogether.

We discovered that in the second part of the concert, the first repertoire is performed by “Mandolin Club,” which is unfortunately not mentioned in the membership section, which we are curious why. There is a lack of information about the club, as well as mandolin, which is nowhere to be found in the lists of instruments used. We also discovered that Reuben Charles and Kenneth King, although they are noted as a snare drum and trap player and a third cornet player, respectively, perform “Vocal Stunt.” We would love to investigate more about this and about the vocal training education for students in the school.

 

 

Stamped on one of the first pages, which are otherwise blank, is a logo that we were unable to identify. This logo, distinguished by the letters “USIS”, does not appear in the 1912 or 1913 Commencement Concert Programs that are kept in the Dickinson Archives, but does appear in the 1915 program. What exactly this logo and the USIS are is unclear, and in a larger project, we would have time to dedicate to finding where else this logo appears and determining what the USIS is. 

 

 

 

 

 

We referenced scans of other commencement concert programs when looking into the USIS logo and noticed a distinct change in format in the 1915 program. This program removed illustrations of Native people from the cover, as well as the photograph of the band. This would be a separate branch of research to pursue, but we wondered why this format change occurred. Why did the image of Indigenous people disappear? Answering these questions may require looking into historical events leading up to the concert and attitudes surrounding the school. We would also look into changes in personnel involved in the printing center, as the 1915 program is the only program to credit the printing apprentices “Indian Press” in its creation. What was the role of the Indian Press at that time? Why did it not cooperate with the concert commencement before 1915? 

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Citations

Commencement concert program, 29 March 1911. PI-1-7-11, Archives and Special Collections, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA. 

Standing Bear, Luther. 1928. “First Days at Carlisle.” In My People the Sioux, edited by E. A. Brininstool. University of Nebraska Press. 

Troutman, John W. 2009. “The Sounds of ‘Civilization:’ Music and the Assimilation Campaign in Federal Indian Boarding Schools.” In Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934. University of Oklahoma Press.