In 1890, there were two kinds of schools for American Indian children: boarding schools and day schools. These schools were run by the federal government or by Christian missionary groups (often funded, at least in part, by the federal government). School attendance was mandatory, and the army was sometimes called in to force the children to attend school.
Non-Indian Americans generally supported the Indian school as one solution to the “Indian problem.” Historian Clyde Ellis, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, writes:
“Reformers and policymakers believed the school could mold Indian youths into a new race, one in which the values of thrift, discipline, individuality, and Christianity would more, closely reflect those of white society.”
In the boarding schools, Indian children were required to wear European-style clothes (often military-style uniforms), speak only English (speaking a Native language often resulted in physical punishment), attend Christian church services, and sleep in beds. Boys had their long hair cut short.
While education in the boarding schools focused on vocational training, it also sought to provide them with the basics of English reading and writing and to convert them to Christianity. The curriculum usually called for the children to spend a half-day in the classroom and then work for a half-day.
Since the federal government, and perhaps the American people, didn’t want to spend very much money for Indian education, the boarding schools were expected to be relatively self-sufficient. The students, often under the guise of “industrial education”, served as an unpaid labor pool to provide cleaning, cooking, sewing, farming, dairying, and other services. In her Dartmouth College M.A. Thesis Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880-1980, Sonciray Bonnell reports:
“Unpaid labor was justified by the claim that hard work shaped character and gave students pride; wages only encouraged students to expect such wages for all their work.”
Cary Collins, in the introduction to Assimilation’s Agent: My Life as a Superintendent in the Indian Boarding School System, writes:
“Many social reformers believed these schools, buttressed with their superior machinery for remaking Indian people in the dominant American image, held the promise of a viable means of assimilation and an effective formula for solving America’s venerable Indian problem.”
In her University of Montana M.A. Thesis The Ottowa Experience: The Life of Iassac Battice in the Context of his Tribe, Betty Paulsen reports:
“Harsh discipline and corporal punishment, study and Christian training were the ethic of the boarding schools.”
Sonciray Bonnell puts it this way:
“The founders of Indian boarding schools were committed to casting their students into something they were not, nor necessarily wanted to be: Euroamerican Christians.”
In his chapter in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust, Hopi historian Matthew Gilbert writes:
“Although off-reservation boarding schools largely existed to train Indian students in industrial trades, school officials forced Indian pupils to attend Christian gatherings, pray Christian prayers, and adopt, at least for a time, a cultural worldview based on Christianity.”
Briefly described below are some of the events involving Indian education in 1890.
Cheyenne and Arapaho
In Oklahoma, rations were withheld from Cheyenne and Arapaho parents who refused to place their children in school.
Kiowa
In Oklahoma, a Protestant mission school was established among the Kiowas. According to the missionary there is a--
“...need for strictly religious schools, with no political affiliation, where unhindered the Bible could be taught and its truths emphasized.”
The school was sponsored by the Women’s Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
Hopi
In Arizona, conservatives in the Hopi village of Oraibi refused to send their children to school. The Tenth Cavalry was sent in to maintain peace. The military troops invaded the village and “captured” 104 children for the school.
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs arranged for Oraibi leader Loololma (also spelled Lololoma) and other Hopi leaders to visit Washington where they were encouraged to accept allotments, Christian missionaries, and American schools. Loololoma returned to the Hopi supporting these programs. In his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 9: Southwest, Frederick Dockstader reports:
“Lololoma was apparently deeply impressed by what he saw in the capital. Crediting these wonders to the White educational system, he changed his attitude completely and began to use his influence to persuade his people to send their children to school; thus began the disintegration of Oraibi.”
Indian Affairs representatives met with the military at the boarding school at Keam’s Canyon, Arizona to discuss a quota system to force Hopi children to attend the school. The Army was to implement and enforce the program.
In the Hopi village of Oraibi, Loololma supported the government program and was imprisoned in a kiva by those who opposed it. Federal troops came into the village and released Loololma.
Paiute, Shoshone, Washo
In Nevada, the Stewart Institute was opened as an Indian boarding school. The school started with 67 Paiute, Shoshone, and Washo students
While the school opened its doors as the Stewart Institute, named after Senator William Stewart who was responsible for obtaining the federal appropriation to start the school, the name was soon changed to the Carson Indian School and in 1894 it was changed to the Stewart Indian School.
Shoshone and Bannock
In Idaho, the Indian agent for the Fort Hall reservation managed to enroll 100 Shoshone and Bannock children in the agency boarding school. With the use of Indian police and a policy of withholding rations from reluctant parents, nearly half of all of the school-aged children on the reservation were enrolled in the school.
When enrollment at the school dropped, a council was held with the Shoshone and Bannock and they were informed that the school was to be kept filled or the soldiers would come.
Scarlet fever broke out in the boarding school on the Fort Hall Reservation. Soon nearly all of the Shoshone and Bannock children had the disease. Thirty-eight children died from the disease.
Blackfoot
In Montana, the Jesuits opened the Holy Family mission on land given to them by Blackfoot chief White Calf. In his book Mission Among the Blackfeet, Howard Harrod describes the setting:
“Built on the banks of the Two Medicine River in a narrow valley at the edge of a cottonwood grove, the mission buildings were surrounded on the north and west by stark cliffs over which the Blackfeet had driven buffalo in earlier times.”
With regard to the function of the mission, Howard Harrod reports:
“Holy Family Mission was designed to displace and replace the functions performed by the traditional home. The children were taken from their families and lived at the mission most of the year, except for a brief vacation.”
The mission school took over the parents’ role in teaching their children.
Puyallup Reservation
In Washington, a reporter from the Tacoma Daily Ledger visited the boarding school on the Puyallup Reservation. He wrote:
“The reporter was surprised to find a class at the board drawing. He had not supposed that Indians possessed artistic ability.”
He went on to report:
“A large number of drawings of various kinds were shown, all the fruit off the natural genius of the Indians, directed only by such training as the teachers could give them.”
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: American Indian education policies in 1890
Indians 201: The Hopi Indians and Mormon missionaries
Indians 101: The Hopi Reservation in the 19th century
Indians 101: Faith-Based Reservations
Indians 201: The Pueblos and the United States, 1846 to 1876
Indians 101: Heathens on the Nez Perce Reservation
Indians 201: Indians as People Under the Law
Indians 101: Federal Policies in 1890
