An interesting article from 2012 unexpectedly came over my virtual transom today. It was about an Osage Indian selling his grandfather’s Carlisle Indian School uniform to the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). No, it wasn’t a football uniform. It was his student uniform which was similar to those worn by the cavalry. That may seem strange to those not familiar with the school but it really isn’t. The school’s founder and superintendent for 25 years, Richard Henry Pratt, was a cavalry officer as was his successor. Pratt’s adult life had almost all been spent in the army, either fighting in the Civil War or in the Indian wars later. The military life was what he knew so he dressed the students in military uniforms, assigned them military ranks, arranged them in units, and drilled them in marching.
What was a little surprising was that the man was Osage. Since few of them were football players, I didn’t know much about them. According to his grandson, George Conner was an orphan who arrived at Carlisle in 1885 and stayed until 1890. He returned for a second enrollment at Carlisle, during which he assisted with the physical education program. He finished his schooling in 1899 at age 29 and returned to Oklahoma (Indian Territory at that time). There he put his training in harness making and saddle repair to work when he opened his own shop in Pawhuska, the Osage capitol.
George married Lillian House, who was a matron at St. Louis School (often referred to as Osage girls School), a Catholic institution funded by Mother Mary Katherine Drexel. After George’s stepfather was murdered, the couple considered Pawhuska too dangerous a place to raise a family and moved to Grainola. He took up farming and remained there the rest of his life.
He became involved in the resistance to the Dawes Act and worked with fellow Osages for two decades in an attempt to prevent the division of the reservation into allotments. He also served as the Osage National Council Secretary for a number of years.
In responding to a 1912 letter from Carlisle requesting information about his life after leaving the school, George said in part:
“I feel as that my learning while at Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the foundation of my success in life so far. Does it pay to educate the Indians? Certainly it does. Today there are white people that don’t live far from me that can’t write their own names. Does it pay to educate white children?”
/https://osagenews.org/osage-donated-grandfathers-1886-carlisle-uniform-to-nmai/
Joe Conner’s wife commented that the photo at the top is definitely not George Conner. Below is a photo that surely is him. However, he was too far from the camera for his face to be seen clearly.