Volume 4, No. 3 (Fall 2001) -- Native American Issue

Vol. 4, no. 3 (Fall 2001): | The Challenges and Limitations of Assimilation: Indian Board Schools | A Personal Perspective | Using the Internet | Book Nook | Teacher Talk | Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851 |

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The legacy of non-reservation Native American boarding schools can be traced to the ideas and efforts of one man, Captain Richard Henry Pratt. A cavalry officer who had commanded African American troops against American Indians in the west, Pratt developed his notion of "assimilation through total immersion" while in charge of incarcerated Indians at Ft. Marion Florida. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Pratt did not believe there were innate genetic differences in American Indians. For him, environment explained all of human nature.

Using the specious analogy that slavery had assimilated African Americans, Pratt contended that non-reservation boarding schools could accomplish the same result for native peoples. In 1879, Pratt got his chance to test his experiment when an old army barracks in Pennsylvania was transformed into the Carlisle Indian School (a National Historic Landmark).

With Pratt as both founder and superintendent, Carlisle became the model for federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding schools across the Midwest and Southwest during the late 19th century. By 1902, there existed 25 federally supported, non-reservation boarding schools for American Indians across 15 states and territories with a total enrollment of 6,000 students. In Alaska, two boarding schools at Sitka and Wrangell were also created with the express purpose of providing manual and domestic training for a select group of Alaska Native children, those considered "the brightest boys and girls."

Replicated at other sites, the Carlisle curriculum emphasized vocational training for boys and domestic science for girls. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, Carlisle students learned how to make harnesses, shoe horses, sew clothes, do laundry, and craft furniture and wagons. Given the fact that the federal government funded the boarders’ education at $167 per student per year, it is no surprise then that American Indian children, some as young as six years of age, put in long hours providing items for school use and for the market.

Carlisle in 1881 "reported producing 8,929 tin products, including cups, coffee boilers, pans, pots, and funnels, 183 double harness sets, 161 bridles, 10 halters, 9 spring wagons, and 2 carriages … a total value of $6,333.46." Pratt at one point commented that the Carlisle girls could launder and iron "about 2,500 items each week in a very credible manner."

Carlisle also pioneered the system of "outing," the summer placement of young people in the homes of neighboring farmers or townspeople so that in exchange for their labor, the children would continue to receive lessons on living in white society in addition to earning a small wage. Outing usually represented a form of cheap labor for nearby residents.

"The hiring of Indian youth is not looked upon by the people of this valley from a philanthropic standpoint. It is simply a matter of business," commented superintendent of the Phoenix Indian School, Harwood Hall.

Experiences with outing ran the spectrum of satisfying employment to simple drudgery. Despite complaints, most students’ letters indicated satisfaction with outing, but the following two accounts by Carlisle youth demonstrate the diversity of experiences.

I am up in my cozy room. I love this place, they are so kind. I have a good kind father and mother. . .here.

She always calls us Dunce, careless, lazy, ugly, crooked, and have no senses. I have never heard anybody call me that before.

How were children recruited or lured into boarding school life? Capt. Pratt and Sarah Mathers, a Mt. Holyoke-educated teacher, gathered children among the Sioux and Apache. Major Haworth, in charge of the Chilocco Indian Industrial School in Oklahoma, traveled far and wide in search of pupils among the Cheyenne, Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa and Pawnee. The Major had to persuade parents to give up their children to the care of the federal government and place them on a wagon train in the dead of winter. Later, a few select Chilocco students, in the company of teachers, would themselves venture to distant reservations to expound upon the benefits of their school.

For some students, temptation came not in flowery testimony, but in the form of good, old fashioned candy. As Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota and one of Carlisle’s first students, recalled:

When they saw us peeping in at the window, they motioned for us to come inside. But we hesitated. Then they took out some sticks of candy ... and that was a big temptation. We came inside very slowly, one step at a time, all the time wondering what it meant.

Although federal legislation mandated compulsory schooling for American Indians, children could not be taken off reservations without "the full consent" of their parents. How consent was obtained at times amounted to pure coercion, even violence. At some reservations, quotas were set in terms of numbers of children to be enrolled in boarding schools, with Indian policemen given the detail of deciding which children would be sent from which family. These law enforcement officials might put the agonizing question to a mother "which child to give up, which to hold back?" Thomas Premo, a western Shoshone, recalled, "… As they were being hauled away on a buggy their mothers ran behind them, crying ..." Meanwhile, for orphans, there existed few alternatives other than boarding schools.

Some parents resisted sending their children by running away from the reservation or hiding their sons and daughters. Given the higher mortality rates in boarding schools, they feared for their children’ s health and certainly they realized that if their children traveled to a distant state, years would pass before they would be reunited. If the school was in close proximity, this decision could be less wrenching.

Other parents coped with separation by believing that they were giving their daughters or sons an opportunity to succeed in the white world. Perhaps they believed that the education they would receive at Carlisle, Haskell (a National Historic Landmark in Lawrence, Kansas) or Phoenix was infinitely superior to the one at home; and that the overall quality of life would be better than the daily suffering that stalked reservations.

New boarding school students found themselves adapting to changes at every turn. Like contemporary boot camp, young people were initiated into military discipline. Cropped hair and school uniforms became the first order of business with daily drill practice and scheduled routines. In the early years, children received English names based either on loose translations of their traditional names or on U.S. or British historical figures or even from a list randomly written on a blackboard. Life was regimented from sun up to after sundown with strict discipline and swift punishment. As a typical example, Anna Moore, a student at the Phoenix Indian School, recalled scrubbing the dining room floors.

If we were not finished 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.

The emphasis on vocational education remained a constant in the boarding schools along with the afternoon chore of producing items for school use and for sale. In 1924, the young women at the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma produced more than 7,500 linen and clothing items.

Certainly loneliness and homesickness were not the only illness stalking boarding school students. Tuberculosis, trachoma, measles, small pox, whooping cough, influenza, and pneumonia roamed the halls of poorly funded schools, where diseased and healthy children intermingled.

Harshly critical of school conditions, the 1928 Meriam Report noted that meager food budgets (11 cents per child per day), overcrowded facilities, inadequate health care, and overwork of children contributed to the spread of diseases. Indeed, American Indians had a higher death rate, six and one half times that of other racial/ethnic groups. Between 1885 and 1913, over 100 children were buried at Haskell Institute in Kansas, representing only a fraction of the deaths that occurred there as the bodies of youngsters were often shipped home.

Behind the statistics, of course, lay the families touched by tragedy. In 1906, the Superintendent of the Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota sent the following letter:

It is with a feeling of sorrow that I write you telling of the death of your daughter Lizzie. She was not sick but a short time and we did not think her so near her end ... Had we known that she was not going to live but so short a time, we would have made a great effort to have gotten you here before she died.

The Meriam Report sparked the beginning of reform. Curricular innovations included the creation of bilingual teaching materials, the preservation of native cultures (including religion), and the end of military trappings. Vocational education, however, was seriously outdated. By the 1930s training students to be blacksmiths and harness makers seemed oddly antiquated, if not downright irresponsible.

Enrollment in these institutions dropped due to the entry of native students into the public school system, but access to public schools had its difficulties. In 1921, California law was amended to include the stipulation that American Indian children could only attend local schools if an Indian facility could not be found within a 3-mile distance from their homes. California native Alice Piper challenged this proviso, and in Piper v. Big Pine (1924), the California Supreme Court ruled in Piper’s favor, allowing her entry to the local public school. However, the court did not disavow the concept of "separate but equal," and it was not until 1935 that the legislature deleted this discriminatory stipulation. Before the Great Depression, approximately 8,000 students remained in federal non-reservation boarding schools compared to over 34,000 American Indian pupils educated at their local public schools.

Memories of boarding school life vary from an individual’s experience as a star athlete to a desperate runaway. Alumni frequently recall with merriment social events, teachers, close friends as well as the times they got away with some mischief. Young people often met their future spouses on campus. According to historian Steve Crum, the Stewart Indian School in Nevada fostered intermarriage between Shoshone and Paiute students.

Circumscribed in their daily routines, students looked forward to amusements outside the school. Going into town to shop or to the movies was a special treat although in Phoenix, American Indian students had to sit in the segregated areas reserved for people of color. Sports teams promoted school pride and Haskell Institute produced the legendary athlete Jim Thorpe.

Beloved educators, such as Ellen Deloria (Lakota) and Ruth Bronson (Cherokee), made life more bearable. "Ruth and Ellen listened to us. They were interested in what we thought . . . They taught us that we could accomplish anything we set our minds to . . ." recalled Esther Horne.

Fostering a sense of connection and building alliances across tribal affiliations, the boarding school environment, if unintentionally, cultivated a Pan-Indian unity and underscored the need for different peoples to work together in the future. Though laden with contradictions, with hardships and hopes, boarding schools created community. A graduate of Haskell Institute and an educator for more then 30 years in Indian schools, Esther Horne articulated how Haskell shaped her life:

Most of us who are alumni of Indian boarding schools feel a great pride and sense of belonging to a unique and special group of people … who have become part of our extended families. Even though boarding schools took children away from their homes … we created our own community at the school. We were proud of our accomplishments and proud that we had retained so much of our Indianness … the students and teachers at Haskell will forever be an integral part of who I am as an American Indian.

Image 1: Lilly Quoetone Nahwooksy and Cynthia Mithlo, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, Indian Boarding School, Circa late 1800's. Photo from an exhibit book from Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma.

Image 2: Fort Sill Oklahoma Indian Boarding school students and teachers in front of the girls' dormitory in 1918. Photo from an exhibit book from Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma.

Image 3: Photo above: At the Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, Indian Boarding School, the older boys worked on the farm, at the sawmill and in the carpenter and blacksmith shops where they were trained in carpentry, painting and harness making. Circa late 1800s. Photo from an exhibit book from Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma.

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