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Indian Boarding Schools:
Tools of Forced Assimilation, 1870 to 1934

Teacher's Guide

Introduction for the Teacher: This 1-2 day lesson meets various California standards for 11th  and 12th grade classes (see Standards listed at the end of this guide).

Note:  When students walk into class, the theme should be written on the board in a prominent place and the overhead with the 5-Minute Journal Write should be on the overhead projector.  Ask students to sit down and write for five minutes.

Theme:  Indian boarding schools were designed by Euro-American policy makers who sought to assimilate Indians into mainstream white society and to purge them of everything that was Indian.

5-Minute Journal Write: Describe a person who comes from a civilized society.  Describe a person who comes from an uncivilized society.   How are they different?


When students are done writing, open the classroom up for discussion:

1. What does it mean to be civilized?  How are civilized persons different from uncivilized persons?

2. Who decides who is civilized and who is not?

3. From what you know about the Indians living in North America before the Europeans arrived, were they civilized?  By whose standards?

4.  Show a "before and after"  photo of Tom Torino, a Navajo youth who entered Carlisle Boarding School.  (To access the photo, be sure to scroll down after the initial quote at the web site.)  Ask the students if you think Tom is more civilized in the "after" photo.  Why or why not?

Note:  When this discussion is finished, begin the lesson content and explain that the question of civilizing Indians was one that 19th Century Euro-American policy makers struggled with for decades.  One of their answers was Indian boarding schools - the subject of this lesson.
Lecture Content

Indian Boarding Schools:
Tools of Forced Assimilation, 1870 to 1934

As a savage, we cannot tolerate him any more than as a half-civilized parasite, wanderer or vagabond.  The only alternative left is to fit him by education for civilized life.  The Indian, though a simple child of nature with mental facilities dwarfed and shriveled, while groping his way for generations in the darkness of barbarism, already sees the importance of education...
Board of Indian Commissioners, 1880
(As quoted in Prucha, 1978:194.)
Beginning in the 1870s, many Indian reform organizations sincerely believed that the "time had come for the sword to give way to the spelling book."  (Trennert, 1988:3.)  Flush with the success of many military victories over Indian Peoples, such reformers were committed to creating a new system of Indian education - the Indian boarding school - which would bring "the gift of civilization" to "savages" who resolutely clung to their cultural and religious traditions.

The Indian boarding school was another in a long line of attempts by Euro-Americans to "civilize" and indoctrinate American Indian children.  This paper will explore this historical dedication to Americanizing Indian people through the use of education by

Indian Education in the American Colonies

Varied experiments in Indian education were widespread throughout colonial America.   The diversity of the individual colonies, as well as the different settlement patterns and governments of colonial regions, mirrored efforts to educate non-Indian children in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Thus, in New England where a strong tradition of formal education developed, the greatest number of Indian schools operated; conversely, in the deep south where the fewest number of schools operated and illiteracy rates were highest, there were few attempts to organize Indian schools.  (Szasz, 1988:5.)

In all of the colonies, Euro-American plans for formal Indian schooling centered around two beliefs:

These two beliefs formed the foundations for many Indian education experiments.  Some of the best-known include Harvard College, opened in 1636 partly for "the education of English and Indian youth...in knowledge and godliness;"  William and Mary College founded in 1693 in part so "that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians;" and Dartmouth opened in 1769 to offer "all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and Christianizing children of pagans."    Clearly, the colonists sought to use education to destroy the "Indianness" of the Native Peoples.  That they largely failed is evident upon examining the colonial enrollment records at all three institutions.  Indeed, few Indians attended and even fewer graduated; only one Indian received a degree from Harvard, while an average of 8-10 Indian students were enrolled at William and Mary each year.  (Nabokov, 1991:213-215; Szasz, 1988:68.)

In short, Euro-Americans were unable to create viable educational institutions for Indians in the colonies.  Despite the few accomplishments of some institutions and a few Indian individuals,  most educational endeavors were short-lived and served very few students.  The reasons for such failure are, in retrospect, quite obvious.

Although these colonial schools failed to attract the vast majority of Indian children, their supporters had successfully created the foundation upon which the future of Indian education would rest.  Thereafter, all Indian schooling efforts would be characterized by the desire to persuade Indian parents that their children needed to attend Euro-American schools where they could be Christianized and "civilized".
Discussion:

1. What are "ethnocentric attitudes?"  Beliefs and attitudes that are strictly focused on one's own ethnicity.  In this context, attitudes that solely focused on Euro-American white cultural, religious, political, and economic beliefs were valued over the attitudes of the indigenous peoples.

2. What do you think the Euro-American schools might teach Indians in their attempts to "civilize" them?

Indian Education in the Era of Manifest Destiny, 1800 - 1870

Within thirty years after the Constitution was signed, two separate systems of Indian education had developed: tribal education organized and operated by various Indian nations; and federally-subsidized education organized and operated primarily by Euro-American Christian organizations.

Tribal Education

In the early 1800s, several nations established sophisticated school systems for their children.  The Cherokee and Choctaw created an education network which included over 200 classrooms.  Among the Cherokee, tribal literacy and journalism flourished as newspapers were published in both Cherokee and English languages.  Their motive was clear, according to a Cherokee elderís advice to younger tribal members,

Remember that the whites are near us.  With them we have constant intercourse, and you must be sensible, that unless you can speak their language, read and write as they do, they will be able to cheat you and trample on your rights.  (As quoted in Nabokov, 1991:215.)
Such tribal educational systems were founded upon the belief that, if Indian children learned more about the white manís customs and language, they would have a better chance of maintaining tribal sovereignty and rights.  However, this belief ran counter to the Euro-American traditions already set in motion during colonization - that the primary goals for educating Indians was to Christianize and "civilize" them.
Discussion:

1. Why do you think Euro-American policy makers felt the need to intervene in the education of Indian children?  Because the Indians were teaching their children traditional cultural, religious, economic, and political customs indigenous to their various nations.  Euro-Americans wanted to destroy this system so that they could Americanize Indian children.

Federally-Subsidized Education

The United States government made its first direct financial commitment to Indian children in the name of education in 1819 when Congress created a "Civilization Fund" to subsidize religious schools so that Indian children would "grow up in the habits of morality and industry."  (Nabokov, 1997:215.)   Over the next several decades, small annual appropriations were made and provisions were inserted into treaties that established education as a prominent feature of federal Indian policy.

By 1838, about 3,000 Indian students were enrolled in over 80 government boarding schools in the eastern United States.  (Nabakov, 1991:215.)  While most were operated by Christian groups, some were influenced by the new teaching methodology of Colonel Richard M. Johnson, a veteran of many Indian wars. In 1837,  Johnson established a "Choctaw Academy" in Indian Territory in which students wore military-like uniforms, were governed by military discipline, and were taught practical manual laboring skills.  Hampton Normal School in Virginia followed suit by educating black and Indian students.  The students who attended these schools primarily did so of their own volition, or because a zealous educator had persuaded their parents to believe that education under white tutelage was advantageous.

Education, however, largely took a back seat to the other federal Indian policies that were formulated during the era of Manifest Destiny.  It was not until after reservations were created for the Plains Indians - and after reservation life failed to adequately assimilate Indians into the Euro-American social, economic, and political traditions - that the federal government again turned to education as a way to handle the "Indian problem."

Federal Policies and Indian Boarding Schools, 1870 - 1934

By the late 1870s, the nationís attention had largely shifted from the problem of fighting the Indians to the question of what would be done with them after direct warfare ceased.  The federal government gradually moved toward the creation of a coordinated, national system of Indian education.  Encouraged by the 1867-68 recommendations of the Indian Peace Commission and new congressional appropriations for religious schools involved in Indian education,  reformers began to champion the cause of a comprehensive federal education program in which children would be separated from their families, culture, and religious activities; and retrained in a teaching environment firmly orchestrated by Christian Euro-Americans.

Within a decade, two types of non-reservation Indian boarding schools were created to deal with the vast majority of Indian children living within the continental borders of the United States:

The initial goals of the federal government were clearly articulated by the founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Colonel Richard H. Pratt:
I believe that the system of removing them from their tribes and placing them under continuous training in the midst of civilization is far better than any other method... I am sure that if we could bring to bear such training as this upon all our Indian children for only three years, that savagery among the Indians in this country would be at an end... The end to be gained...is the complete civilization of the Indian and his absorption into our national life, [for] the Indian to lose his identity as such, to give up his tribal relations and to be made to feel that he is an American citizen....The sooner all tribal relations are broken up, the sooner the Indian loses all his Indian ways, even his language, the better it will be for him and for the government and the greater will be the economy to both. (Pratt, 1964:260, 265.)
In short, these federally-financed boarding schools would remove Indians from the reservation where their cultural, lingual, and spiritual traditions were reinforced; "civilize" Indians by teaching them English and Christianity; and most importantly, forcibly assimilate them into American society by showing them how to become productive laborers within a capitalistic economic system.
Discussion:

1. How did the economic system governing most Indian Nations differ from the capitalistic economic system of the United States?  In most Indian Nations, there was no emphasis on profit and private ownership.  Instead, almost everything was communally owned and distributed.

2. Why do you think Euro-American policy makers wanted to change the traditional economic and laboring values of the American Indians?

In 1880, Congress appropriated $150,000 for Indian education; within seven years, the federal governmentís commitment had soared to $1 million.  By the 1890s, an elaborate federal administrative structure had been created to supervise Indian education.  At the top was the Indian Office (known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1849) within the Department of the Interior and administered by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.  Field supervisors inspected schools and reported problems, a Superintendent of Indian Schools was responsible to the Commissioner, and inspectors provided supplemental advice and guidance and reported directly to the Secretary of the Interior.

While school attendance was initially voluntary, the federal government soon took steps that required attendance. Beginning in 1880, the Secretary of Interior issued "Civilization Regulations" making it an Indian offense with imprisonment and starvation penalties for a "so-called" medicine man to interfer with Indian children being taken away to boarding schools.  These regulations remained in force until their withdrawal in 1936.  By 1891, Indian attendance at school became mandatory when Congress authorized the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to make and enforce rules and regulations that would guarantee attendance at either a reservation or non-reservation school.  In 1893, Congress authorized the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to withhold annuities and rations from parents who refused to send their children to school.  Some children were forcible hauled off to school by Indian police or Army soldiers.  According to one federal Indian Agent from the Mescalero Apache agency:

Everything in the way of persuasion and arguments having failed, it became necessary to visit the camps unexpectedly with a detachment of police, and seize such children as were proper and take them away to school, willing or unwilling.  Some hurried their children off to the mountains or hid them away in camp, and the police had to chase and capture them like so many wild rabbits.  This unusual proceeding created quite an outcry.  The men were sullen and muttering, the women loud in their lamentations, and the children almost out of their wits with fright. (As quoted in Adams, 1995:23.)
Under the tutelage of Thomas J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1889 to 1893, Indian education was believed to be "...a cheap method of converting aliens, enemies, savages into citizens, friends, and honorable intelligent men and women."  (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:22.)  To that end, forced assimilation and conversion to Christianity were the two guiding tenants of this first generation of boarding schools, exemplified by the experience at Carlisle Indian Industrial School discussed below.

Within the first several years after Carlisle opened in 1879, the school was hailed by most American reformers as an outstanding success.  Consequently, the Indian Office opened similar non-reservation boarding schools in Genoa, Nebraska; Chilocco, Indian Territory; Lawrence, Kansas; and New Mexico.  By the mid-1890s, the federal government looked to create more  boarding schools in the Western United States.  Under the leadership of a new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, William A. Jones (1897-1904), these schools were shaped by a different philosophy than that of Carlisle.  Commissioner Jones and his colleagues doubted that Indians could fully assimilate into white society or that they could compete with whites in commercial and mechanical skills.  Instead, they believed Indians were better suited for a life of manual labor.  Thus, in western non-reservation boarding schools:

Upon graduation, Indian children in western non-reservation boarding schools were encouraged to either return home to the reservation where they were to lead their people into a more civilized life, or to find menial employment in white society.  This emphasis on training Indians to become general laborers was intensified under the leadership of Frances E. Leupp, Commissioner of Indian Affairs  beginning in 1905.  Indeed, Leupp remarked shortly after assuming his position:
Now, if anyone can show me what advantage will come to this large body of manual workers from being able to read off the names of the mountains of Asia, or extract the cube root of 123456789, I shall be deeply grateful.  (As quoted  in Trennert, 1988:95.)
Discussion:

1. Why do you think the Commissioner of Indian Affairs emphasized a vocational rather than an intellectual education for American Indian children in boarding schools?

2. Do you think that training American Indians to prepare for labor and other vocational jobs will help them assimilate into white society?  Why or why not?


A small shift in federal policy occurred in 1913 with the appointment of a new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Cato Sells.  Sells announced that Indian schools would thereafter be devoted to standardizing school curriculum in order to "provide a safe and substantial passage from school life to success in real life."  (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:156.)  Under this standardized system, the first six years of Indian schooling would incorporate "essential academic work" in reservation schools; grades seven through ten would include vocational experience to be taught in non-reservation schools.

The effort to standardize reflected a growing federal concern that Indian education had failed to meet assimilationist goals.  Their beliefs were validated after an investigation released by the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1917 which found, in part, that:

For some years we have been painfully impressed with the large proportion of boys and girls who, after returning to their reservations from Indian schools, fail to put into practice what they were taught at the schools.  In too many cases these so-called "returned students" not only do not show any progress, but actually go backward. (U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1917:12.)
The report led to a greater demand from reformers - a demand that had been growing for almost two decades - to modify or end non-reservation Indian education.  In addition to dwindling federal appropriations for these schools, Carlisle was closed in September 1918.  For the next ten years, proponents of the boarding schools fought a downhill battle as more and more evidence indicated that the schools had done little to assimilate the Indians.  In the 1920s, two federal forces were at work, both of which served to dramatically revise Indian education: In 1926, Collier and Wisconsin Congressman James A. Frear took an auto tour of the western Indian schools, both reservation and non-reservation.  After the tour, they issued a stinging critique that Indian schools kidnapped children, operated in overcrowded and unhealthy facilities, and destroyed the heritage of Indian children.

In 1926, during the height of the controversy, Department of Interior Secretary Hubert Work launched an investigation of the Indian Office.  Completed in February 1928, the result of that investigation, the Meriam Report,  presented the nation with a comprehensive evaluation of  the American Indian population and federal Indian policies.  The section on education began as follows:

The most fundamental need in Indian education is a change in point of view.  Whatever may have been the official government attitude, education for the Indian in the past has proceeded largely on the theory that it is necessary to remove the Indian child as far as possible from his home environment; whereas the modern point of view in education and social work lays stress on upbringing in the natural setting of home and family life.  (Meriam, 1928:84.)

The section continued with major criticisms of the boarding schools, leaving no doubt that boarding school education and its philosophy of forced assimilation had been nothing short of a total disaster.  The report recommended that non-reservation schools be reserved only for older children of high school age, that military drill and regimentation be abandoned, that certain schools specialize in vocational education best suited to the abilities of that region, and that the system be more student-oriented.  Non-reservation schools were expected to become "vocational high schools devoid of the regimentation and cultural immersion that had once been their trademark."  (Trennert, 1988:186.)

The Indian Commissioner from 1929-1934, Charles J. Rhoads, directed all boarding schools to phase out their first through third grade schooling programs, to improve the quality of instruction in their vocational classes, and to restore the balance between vocational and academic education.  While his efforts did much to begin some of the reforms suggested in the Meriam Report, it was not until Franklin Rooseveltís appointment of John Collier as Commissioner of Indian Affairs that significant changes occurred in the federal boarding schools.

While Collier did not close the boarding schools, he did revise them by de-emphasizing their importance to Indian education, requiring individual schools to provide students with more personalized attention and to secure qualified teachers, and introducing more academics into the entire federal system.  Additionally, he encouraged schools to pay more attention to the heritage of their Indian students.  Collier issued a directive in 1934 that the schools and all of the BIA would disregard the "Civilization Regulations" because the violated the Indiansí First Amendment rights, and the Interior Secretary formally withdrew the rules in 1936.     Thus, forced assimilation in the old sense of the practice was discarded.  A revised approach to assimilation was undertaken from 1934 foreword whereby all Indians were still expected to fit into white America, but they were also expected to learn to how to maintain a balance between their newly-Americanized attributes and their unique cultural traditions.

To better understand both the federal policies that fueled widespread support for the fundamental belief in forced assimilation around which the first boarding schools were created, we will examine two of the most well-known that operated during this early period:  Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania - the first national non-reservation Indian boarding school; and the Phoenix Indian Industrial School in Phoenix, Arizona - a regional non-reservation boarding school.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

In 1879, a former Indian fighter, Colonel Richard Pratt helped push a bill through Congress that transferred the old cavalry barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from the Department of War to the Department of the Interior.  Later that year, the barracks housed an experimental school based upon Prattís belief that Indians were capable of shedding "savagery" and becoming productive citizens if they received opportunities equal to those of white Americans.  Pratt immediately set out to make such opportunities available.  Indeed, during its first year of operation, Prattís school enrolled over 200 Indian students from about a dozen tribes. By the time it closed its doors 39 years later in 1918, over 12,000 Indian children had attended Carlisle.

A significant number of Prattís first Carlisle students were recruited, upon order from the Secretary of Interior, directly from the Sioux nations - specifically from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations.   Evidently, the Secretary made it clear to Pratt that the Sioux children would be held "hostages for the good behavior of their people."  (Pratt, 1964:220.)  At first Pratt had very little luck with Spotted Tail, leader of the Rosebud reservation, who responded that "The white people are all thieves and liars.  We do not want our children to learn such things."  (Pratt, 1964:222.)   Pratt persuaded him to change his mind by arguing:

Cannot you see it is far, far better for you to have your children educated and trained as our children are so that they can speak the English language, write letters, and do the things which bring to the white man such prosperity, and each of them be able to stand for their rights as the white man stands for his?  Cannot you see that they will be of great value to you if after a few years they come back from school with the ability to read and write letters for you, interpret for you, and help look after your business affairs in Washington?  I am your friend, Spotted Tail...You may want something done in Washington and I might be able to help you.  You want to write me about it, but you must get this interpreter or the missionary to write your letter.  When I get the letter I shall know it was written by someone else and will not feel sure that it tells me exactly what you meant it to tell me...Then this or some other interpreter has to tell you what I say.  You cannot be entirely sure he tells you exactly what I say.  Cannot you see, Spotted Tail, what a disadvantage you and your people are under?...The Secretary of the Interior told me to come to you first, that he wanted you and Red Cloud to have the first chance to send children to this new school...As your friend, Spotted Tail, I urge you to send your children with me to this Carlisle school and I will do everything I can to advance them in intelligence and industry in order that they may come back and help you.  (Pratt, 1964:223-34.)
Discussion:

1. Colonel Pratt was a military man and a former Indian fighter.  How and why do you think these characteristics made him qualified to create the first Indian boarding school?

2. In your opinion, was Pratt's argument persuasive?  Why or why not?  Why do you think Spotted Tail was persuaded to change his mind?

But Pratt was not being honest with Spotted Tail.  The Rosebud reservation had not been targeted as an honor, but because it had been especially troublesome for the federal government.  As the Secretary had told Pratt, if the Sioux continued to be a "problem," their children enrolled at Carlisle would be held hostage by the federal government.  Further, if we examine what children encountered at Carlisle, it becomes clear that Pratt had no intention of helping Indians "stand for their rights" or helping them learn how to "look after your business affairs."  Rather, it was believed that once they became civilized at Carlisle, Indian children would lose interest in Indian "rights" and "business affairs" and instead happily assimilate into American society.  Again, Prattís words are instructive about the real intentions of Carlisle, as shown in this response to a letter in the local school paper asking for Indian stories:
The author of the letter evidently has the idea of Indians that Buffalo Bill and other showmen keep alive, by hiring the reservation wild man to dress in his most hideous costume of feathers, paint, moccasins, blanket, leggins, and scalp-lock, and to display his savagery, by hair lifting war-whoops made those who pay to see him, think he is a blood-thirsty creature ready to devour people alive.  It is this nature in our red brother that is better dead than alive, and when we agree with the oft-repeated sentiment that the only good Indian is a dead one, we mean this characteristic of the Indian.  Carlisleís mission is to kill THIS Indian, as we build up the better man.  We give the rising Indian something nobler and higher to think about and do, and he comes out a young man with the ambitions and aspirations of his more favored white brother.  We do not like to keep alive the stories of his past, hence deal more with his present and his future.  (Carlisle Indian Industrial School History, p. 8).
The truth of this statement was apparent in the restrictions and corporal punishment the children experienced at Carlisle.  Students were forbidden Upon arrival at Carlisle, the new students were subjected to having their long hair clipped to the skull; forcibly scrubbed and subjected to delousing agents;  forced to give up their traditional loose-fitting clothing and moccasins which were subsequently burned; and forced to give up their religious objects.

Such was the experience of Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota Indian who first attended Carlisle in 1879:

Never, no matter what our philosophy or spiritual quality, could we be civilized while wearing the moccasin and blanket.  The task before us was not only that of accept new ideas and adopting new manners, but actual physical changes and discomfort has to be borne uncomplainingly until the body adjusted itself to new tastes and habits. Our accustomed dress was taken and replaced with clothing that felt cumbersome and awkward.  Against trousers and handkerchiefs we had a distinct feeling - they were unsanitary and the trousers kept us from breathing well. High collars, stiff-bosomed shirts, and suspenders fully three inches in width were uncomfortable, while leather boots caused actual suffering.  We longed to go barefoot, but were told that the dew on the grass would give us colds....Then, red flannel undergarments were given us for winter wear, and for me at least, discomfort grew into actual torture.  I used to endure it as long as possible, then run upstairs and quickly take off the flannel garments and hide them.  When inspection time came, I ran and put them on again, for I knew that if I were found disobeying the orders of the school I should be punished...Almost immediately our names were changed to those in common use in the English language...I was told to take a pointer and select a name for myself from the list written on the blackboard.  I did, and since one was just as good as another, as I could not distinguish any difference in them, I placed the pointer on the name Luther.  (Standing Bear, 1933:233.)
The children lived in dormitories and attended classes daily.  School was structured with academic subjects for half the day - usually reading, writing and arithmetic - and industrial trades the other half - blacksmithing, carpentry, and tinsmithing for the boys, and cooking, sewing, laundry, and other domestic arts for the girls.  Pratt envisioned that with at least three years of schooling, his students would have the equivalent of an eighth grade education and then would be prepared to either work in the white manís world, or to go on for further education in white public schools.

School life was patterned after military life.  The boys wore uniforms and girls wore foreign dresses. They were organized via ranks into companies with officers who took charge of regular drill practice. The children marched to and from their classes and to the dining hall for each meal.  Military-style discipline was strictly enforced and a hierarchical style of military justice was established.  Students determined the consequences for offenses, the most serious being confinement to the guardhouse for several weeks.  The most common offenses were running away and using forbidden native languages or practices.

Prattís Outing System of free labor became one of the most celebrated practices of the non-reservation boarding schools.  Indian children who attended Carlisle spent their summer hired out to non-Indian families where they would live with white people as their servants. This was also a source of low or no-cost labor for local farmers, businessmen, and craftsmen.  Through this system, as well as through their training at Carlisle, Pratt hoped that his students would adopt the Anglo work ethic, desire to live more like their white neighbors, and ultimately, find a job in the larger Euro-American society.

This forced assimilationist goal of destroying oneís "Indianness" so they could blend into white society was revised  within twenty years after Carlisle opened its door.  It was upon a modified form of forced assimilation that the foundation of the western non-reservation boarding schools was built - and the Phoenix Indian Industrial School was a shining example of such modifications.

Discussion:

1. What kinds of internal crises do you think many of the Indian children experienced under these circumstances?

2. Some people have claimed that the goals and consequences of Indian boarding schools amounted to cultural genocide.  What is cultural genocide?  What do you think?

Phoenix Indian Industrial Boarding School

In September 1891, the Phoenix Indian Industrial School opened with 31 boys from the Pima reservation and 10 from the Maricopa.   By 1899, it was the second largest Indian boarding school in the nation.  From the beginning, this school shared many of the same goals as Carlisle:  removing Indian children from their traditional environment, annihilating their cultural and spiritual traditions, and civilizing them by indoctrination with white, middle-class American values.  One of its most popular slogans was "Be a Phoenix student, not a reservation bum."  To reinforce this attitude, Superintendent Wellington Rich wrote in 1893:

In order to civilize, to make good citizens of Indian youth, it is absolutely necessary that they be inspired with a strong desire for better homes, better food, better clothing, etc., than they enjoy in their natural state, and that they be qualified to obtain these things by their own exertions.  Hence each one should be taught an industry or trained for a calling which he can utilize, by means of which he can earn a good living and accumulate property after leaving school.   (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:34-35.)
But he believed that Indian youth could not be expected "to compete successfully with white youth of the community in any of the mechanic arts, mercantile pursuits, or professions." (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:35.)  Thus, while philosophically similar to Carlisle, the Phoenix Indian School was also distinctly different for several reasons. Thus, Phoenix was shaped by its leadersí beliefs that Indian children were destined to become menial laborers and, as such, their education should focus on vocational training.  Boys took classes in farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, tailoring, shoemaking, and harness making.  When they left Phoenix, it was expected that they would return home, start a farm, and live on it as white people lived in their surroundings.  The girls learned to cook, sew, set a table, and clean and manage a house.  Additionally, they made, washed, and ironed their own clothes; dusted, swept, and scrubbed the buildings; and prepared and served all the food.  They were expected to become efficient housekeepers when they returned to the reservations and got married.   Indeed, Superintendent Hall proclaimed that such work would transform them from "...slouchy, dissatisfied girls," into "neat, ladylike, agreeable young ladies, who are proud of exhibiting their achievements, and who...have made great strides toward civilization and the higher aim in life."  (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:47.)

Military organization was standard.  As Hall and his predecessors felt, "Too much praise cannot be given to the merits of military organization, drill and routine in connection with the discipline of the school; every good end is obtained thereby.  It teaches patriotism, obedience, courage, courtesy, promptness, and constancy."  (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:48.)

Punishments for using Native languages or breaking a rule were most often in the form of paddling, ridicule, or work assignments, and sometimes confinement to the school jail. Punishment was most severe for running away.  Various headmasters were consistent in their belief that if escapees were not apprehended and publicly punished, student discipline would break down.  Thus, school authorities deliberately created an atmosphere of fear when runaways returned and subjected them to great humiliation in front of their peers.  Girls might be forced to cut the grass with scissors while wearing a sign saying "I ran away,"  or prohibited from attending various social or sports events.  Boys were usually jailed and those who ran away repeatedly had their hair cut off and were forced to wear dresses.

All student activities were closely supervised and student freedom was severely restricted.   Because most students were teenagers - who often would be married if they still lived with their families - contact between the sexes was strictly limited.  The staff at Phoenix, like their counterparts at all Indian schools, generally assumed Indians were "immoral" by nature and were, as Indian Commissioner Cato Sells told Phoenix Superintendent Brown, "only a short way removed from the wild freedom of the forest and of the plains."   (As quoted in Trennert, 1988:133.)

Such characteristics that emphasized forced assimilation generally pervaded the lives of students who attended Phoenix during its first 44 years of operation and before the arrival of John Collier at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  And how did such an experience effect the students at Phoenix?    Most of the Indian children learned to speak English and became skilled enough at some mechanical tasks or domestic chores.  In their uniforms and calico dresses, they looked like they had taken the white manís road and that the Indian "problem" had been solved.  But from the opening of Phoenix in 1891 through 1934, the failures - at least in terms of how success and failure were defined by the federal government - were apparent:

Forced assimilation, then, had failed.  Indeed, by the early 1930s, the school had reached the end of an era. Thereafter, a standard high school curriculum was offered in addition to the traditional vocational program; Indian weavers and potters taught traditional basketmaking and pottery skills; compulsory attendance at religious services was eliminated; military regimentation gradually was phased out; and more social activities were introduced into the school setting.  As Robert Trennertís history of Phoenix Indian Industrial School concludes, "Assimilationist education, in the sense envisioned by Thomas Morgan and the superintendents who ruled at Phoenix from 1891 to 1931, was gone forever."  (Trennert, 1988:205.)

Even though the era of forced assimilation had come to an end, several generations of Indian children who attended Phoenix and other government boarding schools were left to deal with the consequences of their education.  Their experiences provide a greater understanding of the initial boarding school era under study.

Discussion:

1. Why do you think forced assimilation through boarding schools failed?

2. What other types of educational experiences do you think policy makers should have considered for American Indian children?


The Consequences of Indian Boarding School

At least two types of first-hand accounts have been used to document the student experiences of attending Indian boarding schools:  those published in boarding school newspapers and yearbooks and heavily edited by school personnel, which tended to be favorable to the experience; and those written after the boarding school experience by former students, which tended to be quite critical of the experience.  Other indicators that students disliked the boarding schools were the large numbers of runaways reported at most institutions.

Most scholars tend to give greater credence to those students who wrote after their experiences in boarding schools.  In these writings, we see the tremendous difficulties all the students faced when they were taken from their parents, often under military escort, and transported to a school where everything was foreign.  As Helen Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi Indian, recalled:

It was after dark when we reached the Keams Canyon boarding school and were unloaded and taken into the big dormitory, lighted with electricity. I had never seen so much light at night...Evenings we would gather in a corner and cry softly so the matron would not hear and scold or spank us...I can still hear the plaintive little voices saying, "I want to go home.  I want my mother."  We didnít understand a word of English and didnít know what to say or do...We were a group of homesick, lonesome, little girls...  (Sekaquaptewa, 1969:92-93, 96.)
These experiences continued during the first several days in boarding schools.  One of the most poignant of these experiences is written by Zitkala Sa, a Dakota Sioux who spent three years at a boarding school:
The first day...was a bitter cold one... Late in  the morning, my friend Judewin gave me a terrible warning.  Judewin knew a few words of English; and she had overheard the paleface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair.  Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy.  Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!...I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids.  Then I lost my spirit.  Since the day I was taken from my mother I  had suffered extreme indignities.  People had stared at me.  I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet.  And now my long hair was singled like a cowardís!  In my anguish, I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me.  Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.  (Zitkala-Sa.)
Zitkala Saís experiences at boarding school, which contrasted greatly with her earlier life as described in "Impressions of an Indian Childhood," left her feeling that she was "neither a wild Indian, nor a tame one."

Sun Elk, from the pueblo of Taos, recorded this experience at Carlisle:

They told us that Indian ways were bad.  They said we must get civilized.  I remember that word too.  It means "be like the white man."  I am willing to be like the white man, but I did not believe Indian ways were wrong.  But they kept teaching us for seven years.  And the books told how bad the Indians had been to the white men - burning their towns and killing their women and children.  But I had seen white men do that to Indians.  We all wore white manís clothes and ate white manís food and went to white manís churches and spoke white manís talk.  And so after a while we also began to say Indians were bad.  We laughed at our own people and their blankets and cooking pots and sacred societies and dances.  (As quoted in Nabokov, 1991:222.)


Lone Wolf, a Blackfoot Indian, recorded this experience at boarding school:

If we thought that the days were bad, the nights were much worse.  This was the time when real loneliness set in, for it was then we knew that we were all alone.  Many ran away from the school because the treatment was so bad but most of them were caught and brought back by the police.  We were told never to talk Indian and if we were caught, we got a strapping with a leather belt.  I remember one evening when we were all lined up in a room and one of the boys said something in Indian to another boy.  The man in charge of us pounced on the boy, caught him by the shirt, and threw him across the room.  Later we found out that his collar-bone was broken.  The boyís father, an old warrior, came to the school.  He told the instructor that among his people, children were never punished by striking them. That was no way to teach children; kind words and good examples were much better.  Then he added, "Had I been there when that fellow hit my son, I would have killed him."  Before the instructor could stop the old warrior he took his boy and left.  (As quoted  in Nabokov, 1991:220.)
Others have recalled the indignities of punishment:
I remember my brother, my younger brother - he would get into fights.  He would never have any hair and his head would always by shaved and I was always wondering why his head was always shaved and he said because he got into a fight!  In all the four years that he was there, he never had any hair, they shaved his head all the time!  Then, a couple of time, he got handcuffed to hot water pipes downstairs in the basement of his dorm and they fed him cheese sandwiches all the time he was handcuffed.
...Darlene Wall, former student at Carlisle
Oral Interview with Jennifer Ferguson, Feb. 1997
But the consequences became even more severe for many Indians when they returned to their reservations.  As Robert Utley notes, the students who left Carlisle found that "they either existed in a shadow world neither Indian nor white, with acceptance denied by both worlds, or they cast off the veneer of Carlisle and again became Indians."  (Utley, 1987:xvi.)  Those who maintained their white-oriented values usually alienated their family and friends.  Tribal elders and parents often pressured the returning children to resume their old ways.  Sun Elk, who attended Carlisle for seven years, faced a similar experience when he returned home.
It was a warm summer evening when I got off the train at Taos station.  The first Indian I met, I asked him to run out to the pueblo and tell my family I was home.  The Indian couldnít speak English, and I had forgotten all my Pueblo language.  But after a while he learned what I meant and started running to tell my father, "Tulto is back..."  We chattered and cried, and I began to remember many Indian words...I went home with my family.  And next morning the governor of the pueblo and the two war chiefs and many of the priest chiefs came into my fatherís house.  They did not talk to me; they did not even look at me.  When they were all assembled they talked to my father.  The chiefs said to my father, "Your son who calls himself Rafael has lived with the white man.  He has been far away from the pueblo.  He had not lived in the kiva nor learned the things that Indian boys should learn.  He has no hair.  He has not blankets.  He cannot even speak our language and he has a strange smell.  He is not one of us."  The chiefs got up and walked out...And I walked out of my fatherís house and out of the pueblo...I walked until I came to the white manís town.  I found work setting type in a printing shop.  Later I went to Durango and other towns in Wyoming and Colorado, printing and making a good living...All this time I was a white man.  I wore white manís clothes and kept my hair cut.  I was not very happy.  I made money and I kept a little of it and after many years I came back to Taos.  My father gave me some land from the pueblo fields...I built a house just outside the pueblo...My father brought me a girl to marry...When we were married, I became an Indian again.  I let my hair grow, I put on blankets, and I cut the seat out of my pants.  (In Nabokov, 1991:223-224.)
Some Indian students have shared ambivalent feelings about their boarding school experiences.  Luther Standing Bear, a Lakota Sioux who attended the first class at Carlisle, was able to adjust to white society for five years before returning to his reservation. However, he also found that many of his people were not so fortunate.
I was now "civilized" enough to go to work in John Wanamakerís fine store in Philadelphia...Outwardly, I lived the life of the white man, yet all the while I kept in direct contact with tribal life.  While I had learned all that I could of the white manís culture, I never forgot that of my people. I kept the language, tribal manners and usages, sang the songs and danced the dances.  I still listened to and respected the advice of the older people of the tribe.  I did not become so "progressive" that I could not speak the language of my father and mother...But I soon began to see a sad sight, so common today, of returned students who could not speak their native tongue, or, worse yet, some who pretended they could no longer converse in the mother tongue. They had become ashamed and this led them into deception and trickery... (Standing Bear, 1933.)
Some boarding school graduates, like Luther Standing Bear, were successful as they were able to combine the best of both Western and traditional education systems in a way that allowed them to adapt to both worlds. Anna Moore Shaw, a Pima who was the first Indian woman to graduate from high school in Arizona, wrote that her generation was "the first to be educated in two cultures, the Pima and white.  Sometimes the values were in conflict, but we were learning to put them together to make a way of life different from anything the early Pimas every dreamed of."  (As quoted in Bataille and Sands, 1984:84.)

Indeed, recent scholarship based upon oral interviews and primary documents from Indian students and their parents indicate that in some non-reservation boarding schools, students made the best of their limited educational choices and used the school to pursue their own educational and personal goals.  (Bonnell, 1997; Rimey, 1999.)

Many other alumni returned to the reservations - and sometimes the boarding schools -  to become teachers; some went on to become articulate champions of Indian rights; others pursued advanced degrees and became scholars (Francis LaFleshe), physicians (Susan LaFlesche and Charles Eastman), and journalists (Zitkala Sa); others became well-known athletes (Jim Thorpe and Louis Sockalexis).

Discussion:

1. Do you think boarding schools were a feasible solution to the "Indian Problem" in America?  Why or why not?

2. Although some Indians who attended boarding schools felt they were a "success," whose success did they actually feel - their success or success as defined by Euro-American policy makers?

3. Why is it important to examine both the reactions of US policymakers who designed and supported the boarding schools and the reactions of American Indians who attended the schools?


Conclusion

As soon as white Europeans landed in North America, many were compelled to educate Indian children.  Many colonists felt it was their duty to civilize and Christianize the savage and heathen Native Peoples.  Thus, civilizing and converting the Indians became the assimilationist goals of most Euro-Americans.  After the Constitution was signed, the goals remained unchanged as the U.S. government began to offer financial support to religious organizations that were eager to proselytize.  For about 100 years, haphazard educational efforts were financed by both public and private agencies who hoped to "save" the Indians from themselves.

With the opening of Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, a more formal method of assimilation was adopted.  For the next 55 years, boarding schools became one of the federal governmentís chief agents of forced assimilation.  During this time, Indian children were forced to attend schools - some of which were boarding schools - where they were forcibly subjected to rigid assimilationist rules, especially the destruction of their traditional clothing and hair styles which were replaced by military uniforms and Victorian-style tight-fitting clothes; the prohibition of Native languages, as well as the exercise of cultural and spiritual traditions; and punishment if such alien new rules were broken.

It was not until shortly after John Collier became Commissioner of Indian Affairs that forcible assimilationist tactics were revised.  From 1935 through the 1960s when most non-reservation boarding schools were closed, assimilation became less coercive, the schools were slightly more accepting of Indian heritage,  military discipline was abandoned, and the curriculum became less focused on menial labor and more balanced between academic and vocational training.  After a 1969 congressional report declared Indian education "a national tragedy," Indian nations  got more say in their schools and began introducing aspects of tribal culture into the classrooms.

Today only eight federal non-reservation boarding schools remain: In Wahpeton, Pierre, and Flandreau, South Dakota.; Talequah and Anadarko, Oklahoma; Salem, Oregon; Riverside, California; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.    These schools have largely evolved into specialized treatment centers for troubled Indian youths.  In addition to the eight non-reservation schools, 52 federal  boarding schools are also in operation; 35 are on the vast Navajo reservation  that includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Nine schools are on other reservations in South Dakota, Arizona, Washington and Mississippi.

In conclusion, from the early 1870s to 1934, the non-reservation Indian boarding school was yet another of many short-sighted and ill-conceived federal Indian policies.  It had been planned and implemented by those whose goals for Indian education were based on the historical Euro-American desires to civilize and Christianize heathen savages, and who had no understanding of just how important traditional cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices were to the American Indian Peoples.  If only they had had the insight of Luther Standing Bear when he wrote:

So we went to school to copy, to imitate; not to exchange languages and ideas, and not to develop the best traits that had come out of uncountable experiences of hundreds of thousands of years living upon this continent...So, while the white people had much to teach us, we had much to teach them, and what a school could have been established upon that idea! (Standing Bear, 1933.)

Bibliography

_____, "Photographs from Indian Boarding Schools.  http://www.hanksville.org/sand/intellect/gof.html

_____, "Native American Education: Documents from the 19th Century."  http://www.duke.edu/~ehs1/education/index.html

_____, "Brainwashing and Boarding Schools: Undoing the Shameful Legacy." http://www.kporterfield.com/aicttw/articles/boardingschool.html

Adams, David Wallace.  Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1895-1928.  Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Bataille, Gretchen M. and Kathleen Mullen Sands.  American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives.  Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Bonnell, Sonciray.  Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880 to 1980.  Masterís Thesis: Dartmouth College, 1997.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School History.    http://home.epix.net/~landix/histry.html.

Meriam, Lewis, et. al  The Problem of Indian Administration.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928.

Nabokov, Peter (ed.), Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present.   New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Pratt, Richard.  Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904.  Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1964.

Prucha, Francis Paul (ed.) Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian," 1880-1920.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.

Rimey, Scott.  The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1933.  University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.

Standing Bear, Luther.  Land of the Spotted Eagle.  Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1933.

Sekaquaptewa, Helen.  Me and Mine: The Life Story of Helene as Told to Louis Udall.  Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1969.

Szasz, Margaret Connell.  Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783.   Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

Trennert, Robert A., Jr.  The Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891-1935.  Norman, OK:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1890.  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1890.

U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1917.  Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1917.

Utley, Robert, "Introduction" in Richard Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904.  Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1964.

Zitkala-Sa, "The School Days of an Indian Girl."  The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century Womenís Writers.  Glynis Carr (ed.)  Posted Winter 1999.  www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/ZS.

California Social Science Standards met in this lesson:

Eleventh Grade

11.3  Students analyze the role religion played in the founding of America, its lasting moral, social, and political impacts, and issues regarding religious liberty.

In this lesson, students learn how the religious liberties of American Indian peoples were dramatically infringed upon by the policies and practices of Indian boarding schools.
11.5   Students analyze the major political, social, economic, technological, and cultural developments of the 1920s.
In this lesson, students learn about the political, social, economic, and cultural ideas of John Collier - ideas that he put into practice during the 1930s when he became Commission of Indian Affairs.
11.6  Students analyze the different explanations for the Great Depression and how the New Deal fundamentally changed the role of the federal government.
In this lesson, students learn about the Indian New Deal and the efforts made by John Collier to undue some of the worst federal policies of the 19th Century.
Twelfth Grade

12.2    Students evaluate and take and defend positions on the scope and limits of rights and obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships among them and how they are secured...

In this lesson, students learn about boarding schools as an example of how the rights of American Indian families were ignored by the US federal government.
12.3   Students evaluate and take and defend positions on what the fundamental values and principles of civil society are (i.e. the autonomous sphere of voluntary personal, social, and economic relations that are not part of government), their interdependence, and the meaning and importance of those values and principles for a free society...
In this lesson, students discuss the absence of fundamental values and principles of civil society applied to American Indian children who were forced to attend boarding schools where they were deprived of their rights to practice all cultural, religious, political and economic traditions.