American Indian boarding schools in Wisconsin

The school was chronically underfunded, overcrowded, and inadequately staffed.[2][5] Overpopulation, poor sanitary conditions, unclean water, inconsistent heating, and imperfect sewage and ventilation systems caused diseases to be common among students.[5] The Hayward Indian School Hospital could treat eleven patients at once and had access to limited care options.[5] It was the only hospital within 10 miles and was responsible for more than a thousand residents on the reservation. It had a high mortality rate among its patients because of the limited care options and size.[5]

At the Hayward Indian Boarding School, students were forced to assimilate to a more Christian lifestyle.[2] Unwillingly, Native Americans were compelled to leave behind the ideas of their own beliefs and to learn the ideas of Christianity. One of the first steps to start the assimilation process was students were forced to cut their hair and change their names. Students lived a military lifestyle, wearing school uniforms as well as following a strict bell schedule. Every day students would march and drill.[2] The people who ran the school thought this would lead to faster assimilation. The purpose of the school was not just to teach students a skilled trade but was also a way to teach students Christian morals and beliefs. Students who attended the Hayward Indian School had to adapt to civilized culture. Graduation rates were low due to poor academics. Most students had never seen or used many common American utensils such as silverware. Along with learning American culture, students were allowed to participate in extracurricular activities such as basketball, baseball, and football.[2] However, in the 1920s these activities were discontinued, due to lack of funding.[2]

Sent to Oneida in 1892 by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to oversee the construction of the buildings, Charles F. Pierce was the first superintendent of the Oneida Government Boarding school[8] and held the position from 1893 to 1899. During this time, his wife was also involved in the making of the school as the school's teacher-administrator. His wife supervised five teachers at the school: Lucy P. Hart, Alice Cornelius, Mary E. Bonifant, Mary M. Shirk, and Moses E. King. Additionally, other job positions included matron, seamstress, laundress, cook, farmer, engineer, nurse, and night watchman.[10]

Following Pierce, Joseph C. Hart became the Indian Agent for the Oneida in 1898 and was appointed superintendent 1900.[10] Throughout his tenure as superintendent, controversies and suspicions led to numerous investigations into his leadership.[10]

Hart kept detailed reports of daily life at the Oneida Boarding School which described the school and student body. Students attended the school for 10 months of the year. Under Hart's watch, boys were taught agricultural skills such as gardening, maintaining livestock, and using tools; while girls were taught domestic tasks like cooking, cleaning, and other household chores.[10]

As an extension of the boarding school system, Native American students were encouraged to work in the household of white families during the summer. This arrangement was called the “Outing System” and originated at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This practice was meant to promote further assimilation into Euro-American culture and prevent Native Americans from participating in their culture while they were not in school.[8]

The work they completed for white families was often related to farming, and students would do tasks such as tending to crops and livestock. In addition to the Americanization of the Oneida children, the Outing System was meant to discipline students and breaking the rules implemented by many families led to severe punishments, such as whipping. This strict lifestyle change forced the students to quickly adapt to their new environments, thus preventing them from being exposed to their culture.[8]

Some students also lived in white families’ homes while they attended school. On many occasions, during the winter season, Oneida children would have the option to attend public school. They would be allowed to stay with a white family for room and board. In exchange for this, the children would work for the family before and after school.[8]

In the early 1800s, the Menominee culture became deeply intertwined with the Catholic Church. As a result, many members converted to Catholicism. After some time, the reservation was largely Catholic. In the early 1840s, a Catholic priest, Father Bonduel, was assigned to the reservation to support religious tribal goals. Father Bonduel decided to leave the reservation after settling a direct exchange of land, benefiting the Menominee. Shortly after this negotiation and Father Bonduel's departure, the Franciscan Order took over the schooling system on the reservation.[13]

Once the Franciscan Order took over, there was significant push and pull between the Indian Office and the Franciscan Order. Through the dispute, the Indian Office within the Bureau of Indian Education discouraged further conversions to Catholicism. In particular, the disagreement was due to the priests’ dominance in the culture of the reservation, so the Indian Office wanted to make sure that there was no support for a “foreign Pope.”[13] Due to this dispute, the Franciscan Order aimed to maintain control over the reservation, and the boarding school ended up being erected on the Menominee reservation in 1883—Saint Joseph's Indian Industrial School. Despite the great effort by the Franciscan Order, the school ended up following typical trends in that the Indian Office stopped allowing religious figures to teach in the schools while beginning to follow the strict education plan created by Richard Pratt.[13]

When forced to live on the Menominee reservation around 1852, the Menominee tribal members tried to adapt to a new way of life, but they found the advice from the federal officials ineffective. The Menominee were interested in the US State government education system and were willing to try agriculture and education if the US federal government would end the harsh life forced upon them by being restricted on a small reservation.[14]

By 1870, the US federal government regularly began to provide education funding for tribal reservations, even when no treaty stipulations required it to do so. This funding would either go to government- or mission-operated schools. Over the next decade, the issues that arose between the Menominee Nation and the U.S officials over the implementation of boarding schools had some sort of religious component to them. The priest did not support the boarding schools and as a result threatened to shun them from his church.[14]

After a U.S. federal government inspector visited the reservation in the summer of 1876, they recommended a manual labor boarding school in Keshena, Wisconsin, so the government then decided to found a school that would fulfill what was envisioned. The manual labor schools supplemented academic activity with agricultural and mechanical work. When the school first opened, the priest on the reservation said he would expel any church members who decided to send their children to the government schools because he did not support the idea of boarding schools and having kids adopt to the American lifestyle. As a result of this, only two students attended the boarding school during the years of 1878 to 1880. This then changed when the priest was told that he would not be able to allowed to exercise his practices of being a priest for the Native Americans.[14]

In order to remain in the reserve, the priest no longer persecuted and excommunicated parents from his church which lead to 102 students signing up for school, with an average attendance of 76 students. The tribe then approved of spending six thousand dollars to construct a new building, which in time would begin a new era in Menominee schooling which would last well into the twentieth century. As a result, an increased number of Menominee children attended boarding schools, but most did so on the reservation in Keshena rather than at an off-reservation school.[14]

The "Browning Ruling," in effect from 1896 to 1902, severely impacted Saint Joseph's. It determined that the Office of Indian Affairs had the final say in where Native American students could attend school.[13] At the same time, as a mission school, Saint Joseph's was experiencing significant financial trouble due to a clause added in 1897 to the federal Indian appropriations bill that forbade government funding from going towards non-secular schools. These two developments combined to put Saint Joseph's in a tight financial situation as they were forced to take in more Native American students than they could afford.[13]

As part of the Browning Ruling, the federal government allowed Saint Joseph's to take an unconventional funding approach. In 1897, the government permitted the school to tap into the Menominee logging fund which was a trust held by the government that contained money owed to the Menominee people. However, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs insisted that the school send around a yearly petition that stated that they wanted this money to be disbursed to the school, rather than the original per-capita plan.[13]

Many Menominee tribal members refused to sign the petition for numerous reasons. One of the most common ones was that they relied on those funds to survive the winter. Another one of the objections was that the initial wording of the petition suggested that those who signed the petition would receive a reduced disbursement.[13] To address this, the wording was changed such that all members of the Menominee tribe would experience a reduced disbursement. School administrators would also attempt to get the needed signatures by refusing to bury or threatening to excommunicate those who did not sign. Issues surrounding the petition would last until the end of Saint Joseph's in 1952.[13]

Over the years, Saint Joseph's would become a landmark that the Menominee's favored, with Father Engelhard writing in 1933 that they had unanimous support in the community. Due to this, it became easier for the church to acquire the necessary number of signatures for the petition.[13] In 1933, the Menominee tribe petitioned the federal government and the new presidential administration for Saint Joseph's to be merged with the government boarding school, finding it easier to work with Saint Joseph's than the Indian Agency. Because of this merger, the school gained more funding, thus alleviating its financial struggles. Following the merger, a Menominee Catholic, Ralph Fredenberg, was appointed as an Indian agent in 1934 by Commissioner for the Office of Indian Affairs, John Collier. Fredenberg advocated for Menominee economic self-sufficiency, as well as the preservation of their cultural uniqueness. However, tensions grew between Fredenberg and Saint Joseph's as Fredenberg advocated a transition from literary education to vocational education, as well as a transition from compulsory attendance to attendance based on demonstrated usefulness. In 1937, the school was inspected, and it was found that they had not done enough to comply with the shifts recommended by Fredenberg. It was also recommended that the number of students be decreased. The school failed to comply with inspection recommendations, and in 1941 action was taken, and Father Engelhard was replaced by Father Benno Tushaus. However, due to the beginning of World War Two, and logistical problems surrounding the war, major changes were postponed. Despite these complications, the changes were still being pressed on the school.[13]

In 1945, Father Benno Tushaus attempted to address one of the issues raised by the inspection by requesting a school bus to pick up students who lived far from the school. The Office of Indian Affairs took this opportunity to transfer these students to a public school closer by. Father Benno objected to this effort, and, combined with “irreconcilable differences between him and the tribal government”, Father Benno left the school in 1951. Father Belker assumed the role of administrator in January 1952 and promptly shut down the school. He cited a shortage of teachers as the official reasoning, but later admitted that it was due to the fact that the Menominee no longer needed boarding schools. When the focus of boarding schools was the assimilation of Native Americans into American culture, the schools served a clear purpose. However, when the goal became economic self-sufficiency in the 1930s, Belker felt that the boarding school had become obsolete.[13]

Guidelines for how the school was to be run were largely based on Euro-American culture and aimed at "Americanizing" the students' identities.[16] These guidelines were followed by having students attend church regularly, changing their names, and learning Christian values. The Tomah Indian Industrial School also incorporated manual labor as part of industrial learning. This was done by placing more advanced students on nearby farms to perform manual labor while at the same time allowing students to better their English.[17] Subjects that were offered in the school included religious practices, social life, music, athletics, and military training, and the level of education went through 8th grade excluding kindergarten. Schoolwork was set along the limits required by the Commission of Indian Affairs.

Tomah Indian School main building

In 1896, everyday life in the Tomah Indian Industrial School followed a strict routine. The boys generally took care of manual labor such as farming operations, managing stock, and carpentry.[18] The girls, on the other hand, received lessons on household duties, including but not limited to sewing, cooking, and laundry. The sewing room was the most frequently space attended by the girls.[19] By the end of the school year, each girl in the sewing class would be able to take a piece of cloth and make a dress for any child without any help. The girls were taught long and short stitch embroidery as well. Divine services (church) was attended by all the students in the city of Tomah on Sunday afternoons. The superintendent conducted Sabbath school at 2 p.m which was attended by all students and faculty members.

Over 2,000 students were admitted during the existence of the Tomah Indian Industrial School. The school was known for diminishing the Native American children's cultural background and making them more Americanized. The school had goals that were reflective of the educational goals of white administrators and policy makers of the time. Examples of how these goals were achieved included religious conversions, celebrations of US federal holidays, attending regular church services, learning patriotic and folk music, giving different names to the children, and learning English. The school was well-liked by the US Department of The Interior, and many Native Americans of that era who lived near the school wished their children to attend in order to provide them with a formal American-style education. Tomah Indian Industrial School was seen as a model for how other schools at the time could develop.[16]