arrived one night at midnight at the railroad station. They were met by hundreds of local residents who escorted them to the "Old Barracks". The Carlisle Indian School formally opened on November 1, 1879, with an enrollment of 147 students. The youngest was six and the eldest twenty-five, but the majority were teenagers. Two-thirds were children of leaders of the Plains Indian tribes, with whom the US had recently been at war. The first class was made up of eighty-four Lakota, fifty-two Cheyenne, Kiowa and Pawnee; and eleven Apache. The class included a group of students, former prisoners from Fort Marion, who wanted to continue their education with Pratt at Carlisle. Pratt believed Native Americans were the equal of whites, and founded Carlisle to immerse their children in white culture and teach them English, new skills and customs, in order to help them survive. After the end of Great Sioux War in 1877, the Lakota people were impoverished, harassed and confined to reservations ... many believed that Native Americans were a vanishing race whose only hope for survival was rapid cultural transformation. Thus the U.S. government urgently sought a 'progressive' educational model to rapidly assimilate Indians into white culture. Whether this could be achieved and how rapidly it could be done was unknown. Pratt believed he could make use of the Carlisle facility. He thought its proximity to officials in Washington, D.C. would help him educate officials about the Indian capacity for learning. Culture at Carlisle As part of Pratt's curriculum in cultural and language immersion, the School's students were expected to learn English. School officials also required students to take new English names, either by choice or assignment. This was confusing, as the names from which they had to choose had no meaning for them. Luther Standing Bear (Sicangu-Oglala) was one of the first students when Carlisle began operations in 1879. He was asked to choose a name from a list on the wall. He randomly pointed at the symbols on a wall, and was renamed as Luther. The school assigned his father's name, Standing Bear, as his surname. The children were forced to change their manner of dress and to give up their traditional tribal ways. The boys' long hair, a strong tradition in their cultures, was cut short in Euro-American style. Students were required to wear school uniforms of American-style clothing, and girls were provided with uniform