American Indian boarding schools

How different would be the sensation of a philosophic mind to reflect that instead of exterminating a part of the human race by our modes of population that we had persevered through all difficulties and at last had imparted our Knowledge of cultivating and the arts, to the Aboriginals of the Country by which the source of future life and happiness had been preserved and extended. But it has been conceived to be impracticable to civilize the Indians of North America – This opinion is probably more convenient than just.

— Henry Knox to George Washington, 1790s.[6]

In the late eighteenth century, reformers starting with Washington and Knox,[7] in efforts to "civilize" or otherwise assimilate Native Americans (as opposed to relegating them to reservations), adopted the practice of assimilating Native American children in current American culture, which was at the time largely based on rural agriculture, with some small towns and few large cities. The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 promoted this civilization policy by providing funding to societies (mostly religious) who worked on Native American education, often at schools established in or near Native American communities.

Moses Tom sent his children to an Indian boarding school.[8]

I rejoice, brothers, to hear you propose to become cultivators of the earth for the maintenance of your families. Be assured you will support them better and with less labor, by raising stock and bread, and by spinning and weaving clothes, than by hunting. A little land cultivated, and a little labor, will procure more provisions than the most successful hunt; and a woman will clothe more by spinning and weaving, than a man by hunting. Compared with you, we are but as of yesterday in this land. Yet see how much more we have multiplied by industry, and the exercise of that reason which you possess in common with us. Follow then our example, brethren, and we will aid you with great pleasure ...

— President Thomas Jefferson, Brothers of the Choctaw Nation, December 17, 1803[9]

One fact that many may not be aware of is the fact that Native Americans had a good education system before being forced to attend boarding schools. They even had one of the first women's colleges.[10]

In 1634, Fr. Andrew White of the Jesuits established a mission in what is now the state of Maryland, and the purpose of the mission, stated through an interpreter to the chief of a Native American tribe there, was "to extend civilization and instruction to his ignorant race, and show them the way to heaven."[11] The mission's annual records report that by 1640, they had founded a community they named St. Mary's, and Native Americans were sending their children there to be educated,[12] including the daughter of the Pascatoe chief Tayac. This was either a school for girls, or an early co-ed school. The same records report that in 1677, "a school for humanities was opened by our Society in the centre of Maryland, directed by two of the Fathers; and the native youth, applying themselves assiduously to study, made good progress. Maryland and the recently established school sent two boys to St. Omer who yielded in abilities to few Europeans, when competing for the honour of being first in their class. So that not gold, nor silver, nor the other products of the earth alone, but men also are gathered from thence to bring those regions, which foreigners have unjustly called ferocious, to a higher state of virtue and cultivation."[13]

Harvard College had an "Indian College" on its campus in the mid-1600s, supported by the Society for Propagation of the Gospel. Its few Native American students came from New England, at a time when higher education was very limited for all classes and colleges were more similar to today's high schools. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, "from the Wampanoag...did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period".[14] In early years, other Indian schools were created by local communities, as with the Indian school in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1769, which gradually developed into Dartmouth College. Other schools were created in the East, where Indian reservations were less common than they became in the late nineteenth century in western states.

West of the Mississippi, schools near indigenous settlements and on reservations were first founded by religious missionaries, who believed they could extend education and Christianity to Native Americans. Some of their efforts were part of the progressive movement after the Civil War. As Native Americans were forced onto reservations following the Indian Wars, missionaries founded additional schools with boarding facilities, as children were enrolled very far from their communities and were not permitted to travel home or receive parental visitation.

Chiricahua Apaches Four Months After Arriving at Carlisle. Undated photograph taken at Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded by the Civil War Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt in 1879 at a former military installation, became a model for others established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The Carlisle Indian Industrial School forced assimilation to Christian culture and lose their Native American traditions, as demonstrated by their motto, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Pratt said in a speech in 1892, "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead."[15] Comanche Chief Tosahwi is reported to have had an exchange with Philip Sheridan where Sheridan purportedly stated "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead", which was sometimes rephrased as "the only good Indian is a dead Indian."[16] In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown attributed the quote to Sheridan, stating that "Lieutenant Charles Nordstrom, who was present, remembered the words and passed them on, until in time they were honed into an American aphorism: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.[17] While Sheridan later denied making either statement,[16] biographer Roy Morris Jr. states that, nevertheless, popular history credits Sheridan with saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." This variation "has been used by friends and enemies ever since to characterize and castigate his Indian-fighting career."[18]

Pratt professed "assimilation through total immersion."[15] He conducted a "social experiment" on Apache prisoners of war at a fort in Florida.[19] He cut their long hair, put them in uniforms, forced them to learn English, and subjected them to strict military protocols.[19] He had arranged for the education of some of the young Native American men at the Hampton Institute, now a historically black college, after he had supervised them as prisoners at a fort in Florida. Hampton Institute was established in the 1870s and in its original form, created a formal education program for Native Americans in 1875 at the end of the American Indian Wars. The United States Army sent seventy-two warriors from the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo Nations, to imprisonment and exile in St. Augustine, Florida. Essentially they were considered hostages to persuade their peoples in the West to keep peace. From this funding Hampton was able to grow into a university, though over time the student population shifted to African-American students.

At the prison, he tried to inculcate Native Americans with Anglo-American culture, while giving them some leeway to govern themselves. As at the Hampton Institute, he included in the Carlisle curriculum vocational training for boys and domestic science for girls, including chores around the school and producing goods for market. They also produced a newspaper,[20] had a well-regarded chorus and orchestra, and developed sports programs. The vocational training reflected the administration's understanding of skills needed at most reservations, which were located in rural areas, and reflected a society still based on agriculture. In the summer students often lived with local farm families and townspeople, reinforcing their assimilation, and providing labor at low cost to the families.

Carlisle and its curriculum became the model for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; by 1902 there were 25 federally funded non-reservation schools in 15 states and territories, with a total enrollment of over 6,000 students. Federal legislation required Native American children to be educated according to Anglo-American settler-colonial standards. Parents had to authorize their children's attendance at boarding schools, and if they refused officials could use coercion to gain a quota of students from any given reservation.[21]

As the model of boarding schools was adopted more widely by the US government, many Native American children were separated from their families and tribes when they were sent or sometimes taken to boarding schools far from their home reservations. These schools ranged from those similar to the federal Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which became a model for BIA-run schools, to the many schools sponsored by religious denominations.

In this period, when students arrived at boarding schools their lives altered dramatically. They were given short haircuts (a source of shame for boys of many tribes), uniforms, and English names; sometimes these were based on their own, other times they were assigned at random. They were not allowed to speak their own languages, even between each other, and they were forced to attend church services and convert to Christianity. Discipline was stiff in many schools, and it often included chores, solitary confinement and corporal punishment including beatings with sticks, rulers and belts.[19]

The following is a quote from Anna Moore regarding the Phoenix Indian School:

If we were not finished [scrubbing the dining room floors] when the 8 a.m. whistle sounded, the dining room matron would go around strapping us while we were still on our hands and knees.[22]

In 1891,[23] the government issued a “compulsory attendance” law that enabled federal officers to forcibly take Native American children from their home and reservation. The American government believed they were rescuing these children from a world of poverty and depression and teaching them "life skills". Tabatha Tooney Booth, from the University of Oklahoma wrote in her paper, Cheaper Than Bullets,

“Many parents had no choice but to send their kids, when Congress authorized the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to withhold rations, clothing, and annuities of those families that refused to send students. Some agents even used reservation police to virtually kidnap youngsters, but experienced difficulties when the Native police officers would resign out of disgust, or when parents taught their kids a special “hide and seek” game. Sometimes resistant fathers found themselves locked up for refusal. In 1895, nineteen men of the Hopi Nation were imprisoned to Alcatraz because they refused to send their children to boarding school.[24]

However, in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act gave Native American parents the legal right to deny their child's placement in the school. Damning evidence against the morality of Non-Reservation boarding schools contributed to the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Congress approved of this act in 1978 after first-hand accounts of life in Native American boarding schools. National Indian Child Welfare Association explains,

At the time, not only was ICWA vitally needed, but it was crafted to address some of the most longstanding and egregious removal practices specifically targeting Native children. Among its added protections for Native children, ICWA requires caseworkers to make several considerations when handling an ICWA case, including:

1. Providing active efforts to the family;
2. Identifying a placement that fits under the ICWA preference provisions;
3. Notifying the child’s tribe and the child’s parents of the child custody proceeding; and
4. Working actively to involve the child’s tribe and the child’s parents in the proceedings.[25]

In 1926, the Department of the Interior (DOI) commissioned the Brookings Institution to conduct a survey of the overall conditions of the American Indians and to assess federal programs and policies. The Meriam Report, officially titled The Problem of Indian Administration, was submitted February 21, 1928, to the Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. Related to education of Native American children, it recommended that the government:

• Abolish The Uniform Course of Study, which taught only European-American cultural values;
• Educate younger children at community schools near home, and have older children attend non-reservation schools for higher grade work;
• Have the Indian Service (now Bureau of Indian Affairs) provide American Indians the education and skills they need to adapt both in their own communities and United States society.

Despite the Meriam Report, attendance in Indian boarding schools generally grew throughout the first half of the 20th century and doubled in the 1960s.[22] Enrollment reached its highest point in the 1970s. In 1973, 60,000 American Indian children are estimated to have been enrolled in an Indian boarding school.[22][26] The rise of pan-Indian activism, tribal nations' continuing complaints about the schools, and studies in the late 1960s and mid-1970s (such as the Kennedy Report and the National Study of American Indian Education) led to passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. This emphasized decentralization of students from boarding schools to community schools. As a result, many large Indian boarding schools closed in the 1980s and early 1990s. By 2007, 9,500 American Indian children were living in Indian boarding school dormitories.[15] This figure includes those in 45 on-reservation boarding schools, seven off-reservation boarding schools, and 14 peripheral dormitories.[15] From 1879 to the present day, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans as children attended Indian boarding schools.[27]

Today, a few off-reservation boarding schools still operate, but funding for them is in decline.

Throughout non-reservation boarding schools, students became easily susceptible to diseases, like trachoma, tuberculosis, and measles,[28] and death. The overcrowding of the schools and the unfamiliar environment contributed to the rapid spread of disease within the schools. "An often-underpaid staff provided irregular medical care. And not least, apathetic boarding school officials frequently failed to heed their own directions calling for the segregation of children in poor health from the rest of the student body".[29] Tuberculosis was especially deadly among students. Many children died while in custody at Indian Schools. Often students were prevented from communicating with their families, and parents were not notified when their children fell ill. Many times, children would pass away and the families never knew they were sick. "Many of the Indian deaths during the great influenza pandemic of 1918–19, which hit the Native American population hard, took place in boarding schools." [30] The 1928 Meriam Report noted that infectious disease was often widespread at the schools due to malnutrition, overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and students weakened by overwork. The report said that death rates for Native American students were six and a half times higher than for other ethnic groups.[22] Another report regarding the Phoenix Indian school stated, "In December of 1899, measles broke out at the Phoenix Indian School, reaching epidemic proportions by January. In its wake, 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of pneumonia, and 9 deaths were recorded in a 10-day period."[31]"

The U.S. federal government decided there was a need for assimilation of diverse people of color; specifically, assimilation of the Native Americans. From 1810 until 1917 the U.S. federal government subsidized the creation of and education within mission and boarding schools.[32]^:16 "By 1885, 106 [Indian Schools] had been established, many of them on abandoned military installations" using military personnel and Indian prisoners Native American boarding schools in the United States were seen as the means for the government to achieve assimilation of Native Americans into mainstream American culture. Assimilation efforts included forcibly removing Native Americans from their families, converting them to Christianity, preventing them from learning or practicing indigenous culture and customs, and living in a strict military fashion.

When students arrived at boarding schools, the routine was typically the same. First, the students were stripped of their tribal clothing and their hair was cut. Second, "[t]o instill the necessary discipline, the entire school routine was organized in martial fashion, and every facet of student life followed a strict timetable".[33] Since many military personnel ran the boarding schools, military principles mechanized the daily routines. One student recalled,

A small bell was tapped, and each of the pupils drew a chair from under the table. Supposing this act meant that they were to be seated, I pulled out mine and at once slipped into it from one side. But when I turned my head, I saw that I was the only one seated, and all the rest at our table remained standing. Just as I began to rise, looking shyly around to see how chairs were to be used, a second bell was sounded. All were seated at last, and I had to crawl back into my chair again. I heard a man's voice at one end of the hall, and I looked around to see him. But all the others hung their heads over their plates. As I glanced at the long chain of tables, I cause the eyes of a paleface woman upon me. Immediately I dropped my eyes, wondering why I was so keenly watched by the strange woman. The man ceased his mutterings, and then a third bell was tapped. Everyone picked up his knife and fork and began eating. I began crying instead, for by this time I was afraid to venture anything more.[34]

Besides mealtime routines, administrators 'educated' Indians on how to farm using European-based methods. Some boarding schools worked to become small agrarian societies where the school became its own self-sufficient community.[35]

From the moment students arrived at school, they could not "be Indian" in any way".[32]^:19 To aid in their assimilation to U.S. Anglo culture, boarding school administrations "forbade, whether in school or on reservation, tribal singing and dancing, along with the wearing of ceremonial and 'savage' clothes, the practice of native religions, the speaking of tribal languages, the acting out of traditional gender roles".[35]^:11 School administrators argued that young women needed to be specifically targeted due to their important place in continuing assimilation education in their future homes. Educational administrators and teachers were instructed that "Indian girls were to be assured that, because their grandmothers did things in a certain way, there was no reason for them to do the same".[33]^:282

Reservation schools had been established to help students learn about the dominant European history of the U.S. However, "removal to reservations in the West in the early part of the century and the enactment of the Dawes or General Allotment Act in 1887 eventually took nearly 50 million acres of land from Indian control". On-reservation schools were either taken over by Anglo leadership or destroyed in the process. Indian-controlled school systems became non-existent while "the Indians [were] made captives of federal or mission education".

Although schools used verbal corrective means to enforce assimilation, often more violent measures were used. Archuleta et al. (2000) noted cases where students had "their mouths washed out with lye soap when they spoke their native languages; they could be locked up in the guardhouse with only bread and water for other rule violations; and they faced corporal punishment and other rigid discipline on a daily basis".[32]^:42 Beyond physical and mental abuse, some school authorities sexually abused students as well. One former student retold,

Intimidation and fear were very much present in our daily lives. For instance, we would cower from the abusive disciplinary practices of some superiors, such as the one who yanked my cousin's ear hard enough to tear it. After a nine-year-old girl was raped in her dormitory bed during the night, we girls would be so scared that we would jump into each other's bed as soon as the lights went out. The sustained terror in our hearts further tested our endurance, as it was better to suffer with a full bladder and be safe than to walk through the dark, seemingly endless hallway to the bathroom. When we were older, we girls anguished each time we entered the classroom of a certain male teacher who stalked and molested girls.[32]^:42[35]

Women taken from their families and placed into boarding schools, such as the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, were moved to accomplish the U.S. federal government's vision of "educating Indian girls in the hope that women trained as good housewives would help their mates assimilate" into U.S. mainstream culture.[36]

Historian Brenda Child asserts that boarding schools cultivated pan-Indian-ism and made possible cross-tribal coalitions that have helped many different tribes collaborate in the 20th century. She argues:

People formerly separated by language, culture, and geography lived and worked together in residential schools. Students formed close bonds and enjoyed a rich cross-cultural change. Graduates of government schools often married former classmates, found employment in the Indian Service, migrated to urban areas, returned to their reservations and entered tribal politics. Countless new alliances, both personal and political, were forged in government boarding schools.[37]

However, this analysis is not widespread amongst boarding school survivors, Native American communities, and particularly within the indigenous resurgence movement.

Jacqueline Emery, introducing an anthology of boarding school writings, suggests that these writings prove that the children showed a cultural and personal resilience "more common among boarding school students than one might think": though the school authorities censored the material, it nonetheless demonstrates multiple methods of resistance to school regimes.[38] Several students educated in boarding schools such as Gertrude Bonnin, Angel De Cora, Francis La Flesche, and Laura Cornelius Kellogg went on to become precursors to modern Indigenous resurgence activists.

After release from Indian boarding schools, students were expected to return to their tribes and induce European assimilation there. Many students who returned to their reservations experienced alienation, language and cultural barriers, and confusion, in addition to the posttraumatic stress disorder and legacy of trauma resulting from abuse received in Indian boarding schools. They struggled to respect elders, but also received resistance from family and friends when trying to initiate Anglo-American changes.[35] Since former students who were visited by faculty were rated as successful by the following criteria: "orderly households, 'citizen's dress', Christian weddings, 'well-kept' babies, land in severalty, children in school, industrious work habits, and leadership roles in promoting the same 'civilized' lifestyles among family and tribe",[35]^:39 many students returned to the boarding schools. General Richard Henry Pratt, who was a main administrator, began to recognize that "[t]o civilize the Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him civilized, let him stay."[39]

• American Indian boarding schools in Wisconsin
• Canadian Indian residential school system
• Education for Extinction
• Fort Shaw Indian School Girls Basketball Team
• Indian Relocation Act of 1956
• Indian Placement Program
• Native Americans in the United States
• Native schools in New Zealand
• Our Spirits Don't Speak English, a documentary about Native American boarding schools
• School segregation in the United States
• Educational Inequality in the United States
• Stolen Generations, children of Australian Aboriginal descent who were removed from their families by the Australian and state government agencies
• Tobeluk v. Lind, a landmark case in Native education where 27 teenaged Alaskan Native plaintiffs brought suit against the State of Alaska claiming that their boarding school experiences were racial discrimination and educational inequity

• Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
• Baird, W. David; Goble, Danney (1994). The Story of Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 217. ISBN 0-8061-2650-7. Retrieved February 1, 2015.
• Child, Brenda J. (2000). Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6405-2.
• Giago, Tim A. (2006). Children Left Behind: Dark Legacy of Indian Mission Boarding Schools. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light. ISBN 978-1574160864. OCLC 168659123.
• Meriam, Lewis et al., The Problem of Indian Administration, Brookings Institution, 1928 (full text online at Alaskool.org)
• Warren, Kim Cary, The Quest for Citizenship: African American and Native American Education in Kansas, 1880-1935, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

• Bear, Charla, "American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many", NPR, May 12, 2008
• A Native American perspective on Indian Boarding Schools, "Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School", Rich-Heape Films, 2008
• An Indian Boarding School Photo Gallery, University of Illinois
• Carolyn J. Marr, "Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest Essay", University of Washington Digital Collection
• Playing for the World Documentary produced by Montana PBS
• Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools Documentary produced by KUED