Indian Boarding Schools: A Forgotten Legacy

Much of the wider US population only hears about Native concerns when the news covers a conflict about a statue of Columbus, a racist mascot, or an oil pipeline. These things do genuinely matter, but I think most people have never heard of one of the root traumas that is at the heart of the desperation to defend what is Native: Indian boarding schools.

Don't feel bad if you've never heard of the Indian Boarding Schools. I didn't know about them myself until I was asked to put together an exhibit on them for my college library during Native Heritage Month - despite my own grandmother and great-grandparents having attended some of the most infamous of the boarding schools.

These were not like what you might be picturing when I say boarding schools: with manicured lawns, high academics, and social climbing. This was more akin to industrial school/boot camp/prison for young Native children.

The primary objective of these schools was to assimilate the children into mainstream white, Christian, western centered culture. From the beginning that was not seen as something to be done with respect for their Native cultures. Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt, who would found the Carlisle Indian School that both of my great-grandparents attended, famously said "kill the indian, save the man" to describe the ethos of the schools. In a speech in 1892 Pratt said,  "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."

In 1891 an Indian appropriation act was passed that made attendance at the boarding schools compulsory. Significantly, this allowed children to be forcibly taken from their families and tribes. If parents did not send their children, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs was authorized to withhold rations, clothing, and annuities (something in violation of treaty agreements.) Many families and tribes tried to resist. They attempted the hide the children. Some Native police officers resigned rather than carry out orders to take the children. In 1895, 19 Hopi men were imprisoned in Alcatraz for refusing to send their children to the Indian schools.

It wasn't until 1978, with the Indian Child Welfare Act, that parents were given the legal right to refuse to place their children in Indian schools. That's 87 years when there was no legal ability to refuse to be separated from their children.

Life at Indian Boarding Schools

Many of the schools were intentionally located far away from the children's tribe, family, and homelands. Speaking Native languages was forbidden, including out of the classroom. Punishments for speaking Native languages, even if the child didn't know a word of English, could be swift and severe. Upon arrival at the schools, the children would be given new names, English names. Their hair would be cut (in many tribes cutting your hair is cutting off your connection to your past and ancestors). Practice of the school's sponsoring denomination's religion was often required to some degree.

My family were sent to the Carlisle Indian School, the Ponca Indian School, and the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University). My great-grandparents were given the names Theodore and Zilla by the time they arrived at school. I have no idea what their tribal names were. They didn't record those names. Carlisle has been digitizing all of their student records, and I highly recommend giving the project some of your time. They kept every scrap of correspondence, reviews, intake forms, and reports. As a descendant it's both a fascinating treasure trove and incredibly unsettling to have my family so exposed and documented.

Zilla was an orphan - likely her parents died either before or during the Ponca Trail of Tears. Over a quarter of the Ponca tribe died in the first year after forced relocation due to food shortages and malaria. She was alone by the time they arrived in Oklahoma from Ponca homelands in Nebraska. Her reports at school are consistently good. She clearly wanted to be liked by those in charge. She worked hard at her studies and followed the rules. She was smart and actually achieved a high school education by the time she left the school in 1917 - a feat for anyone at that time, but even more so for an orphaned Native girl. In reading her file I felt like I could see the desperation of an orphan realizing that her survival depends on the approval of others. She could not afford resisting.

Theodore was consistently a pain to the school administration. He resisted as much as possible. He eventually went on leave to visit his sister in New York state and never returned. Punishments are not recorded in the files I have found, but there are records of visits to family being refused by letter. The administration felt that he was too resistant to his work and breaks were liable to make that continue. Breaking bonds among family and tribal members was not just a consequence but a goal of the schools.

Both of my ancestors arrived at Carlisle in their teens as a finish to their time in Indian boarding schools, but they started much younger. Children as young as 4 and 5 years old were taken from their families and sent away to boarding school. Many never came home. Malnutrition, overwork, overcrowding, and rampant infectious disease killed many children. Rates of tuberculous in 1915 Indian boarding schools were 4-5 times higher than the non-native rate. Rates of diseases like measles, mumps, and smallpox were double or triple the national rates. Conditions were often unsanitary and the farm work that was part of their education hard and dangerous.
Every boarding school has it's own cemetery due to the high mortality rate.

Catholic run Indian boarding schools

How did the Catholic run schools fare? Unfortunately, many of the worse stories of abuse happened in the religious run schools. For many Native people, the association with clerical garb and fear started here.

In 1872 the Board of Indian Commissioners allotted 73 Indian agencies to various Christian religious denominations. Seven of those agencies were under the Catholic Church in some way. In 1872 that was 17,856 Native people under Catholic run Indian agencies. Catholics never operated the majority of boarding schools. Most students attending boarding school would have experienced a school run by a mainline Protestant denomination or the federal government. But we should resist the temptation to blame shift that most of the offenses were not committed by Catholics. For one, there are no hard numbers on the abuses that occurred in these schools in order to know for certain if that is even a true claim. For another, one case of abuse is too many. These were children who deserved to be safe.

Many Catholic run schools and missions were sponsored in large part by St. Katherine Drexel. Her interaction with funding and furthering Catholic schools for Native students deserves it's own space, but includes much overlap with American anti-Catholicism, misogyny among clergy, and resentment of outside influence on local decisions.
Crucially, many Catholic run schools were located on reservations. This meant that Catholic tradition had to interact with the local Native culture and traditions in a way that was avoided or banned in many of the off-reservation schools. This meshing of Catholicism and Native traditions in the boarding schools has multiple consequences. It meant that trauma and struggles of the school environment would become connected with Catholicism forever more for those students - a phenomenon that is observed in people who attended non-boarding Catholic schools as well.

Most of the historical sources I have found focus on the struggles of the individuals and orders running the schools, and there's a echoing lack of stories from the perspective of the students in the academic literature. This is something to be aware of whenever doing work to understand experience. I've included resources for first hand stories from students of these schools at the end of this post. I strongly encourage everyone to listen to them, with the awareness that these are hard and raw things.

There is a parallel story here for the Catholic Church. The Church was/is very involved in the Canadian school system, and the boarding schools experienced by First Nations people. There are many factors that make the experience of Native peoples living in the United States and Canada very different. For the sake of clarity, I have focused on those schools operating in the United States, but I encourage you to learn more about First Nations as well.

Indian boarding schools today

Yes, there are still boarding schools for Native kids around the United States today. Many have been given over to tribal or local control. Some are still run by the Catholic Church. There is an American Indian Catholic Schools Network that maintains a list of current US Catholic Indian Mission Schools.

The legacy of boarding school is varied and wide. Some students, like my grandmother, were proud of graduating from boarding school. Others carried physical, emotional, and mental scars for the rest of their lives. Many would not/do not speak about their school experiences. Others are just beginning to give voice to those memories.

Boarding school did contribute to the formation of some kind of pan-Native identity. This was an experience that both pulled apart tribes and brought them together in a shared goal or fight. The tradition of Indian Princess pageants, which began at boarding school as another tool for assimilation, has been reclaimed by many tribes as a way to pass down their particular traditions and values.

The schools did change the religious landscape among Native peoples. As of 2000, it was estimated that 780,000 people of Native ancestry in the US were Catholics. The involvement and exposure to Catholic tradition remains important to many Native people, and the intersections of the two identities continues to be a work in progress. This a living, breathing, experience - a far cry from the static museum approach too many use when discussing Native people.

Want to learn more?

The Heard Museum opened an exhibit in 2000 entitled Away from Home: Indian Boarding School Stories. Their website includes a good overview of the boarding school experience and includes first hand accounts. Most of their education curriculum is focused on high school aged students, but there are good book lists for all grade levels (starting in 1st grade) and the educator reading list is helpful for curious adults.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition - based in Minneapolis, MN, this group has a number of resources for education, advocacy, and healing resources. Their repatriation project is of particular interest for Carlisle school descendants and survivors after the army ruled to fund the return of the dead to their tribes and families in 2016.

Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors by Denise K. Lajimodiere

Education for Extinction by David Wallace Adams

Black and Indian Mission Office history - gives a good overview of Catholic Indian missions. This is not from the Native perspective, but is useful to get a wider picture.



What questions still remain for you? The boarding school experience was very different for various peoples and locations. Have you looked into the experience of your local tribes? What was in your area?