Indian Boarding Schools

In 1769, Eleazar Wheelock established an Indian college in Hanover, New Hampshire, to convert the Natives to Christianity and civilization. While the founding of Dartmouth College predated the formation and growth of Indian boarding schools, the notion of "civilizing" the Indian was a robust construct that flourished for more than 150 years and became the cornerstone of federal policy on Indian education. The practice of removing Indian children from the "corrupt" influences of the Indian camp and placing them in boarding schools conducted by the federal government and various religious denominations became official policy after the Civil War and continued to varying degrees into the 1950s.

The number of Indian boarding schools grew rapidly after the Civil War in response to a new policy that emerged after President Ulysses S. Grant announced his new "peace policy," which placed the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the direction of various religious denominations who appointed agents, represented Indian interests, and established schools on the reservations. The federal government provided per capita payments and the land required to achieve the educational objectives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and prepare a new generation of Indians for the realities of private land ownership and gradual assimilation into the dominant American culture. The ideas of cultural destruction, forced assimilation, and military regimen were popularized by Richard Henry Pratt, who started the Carlisle Indian School in 1879, and became cornerstones of most Indian boarding schools in the United States. Regardless of affiliation, all Indian boarding schools sought to transform the Indian students by removing them from the reservation setting, teaching them industrial arts, converting them to European forms of Christianity, and inculcating in them a strong work ethic through the "outing system," which placed Indian students in work settings outside of the boarding school.

The curriculum at Indian boarding schools placed heavy emphasis on manual labor, industrial and domestic training, farming, English, and, depending on the sponsor, a large dose of religious indoctrination. The Bureau of Indian Affairs prohibited the use of Native languages, discouraged any manifestation of Indian culture, and limited contact between parents and students. Both government officials and church leaders favored boarding schools over day schools because the process of "civilizing" the students and converting them into sedentary farmers was easier when the influences of tribal life and indigenous culture were absent.

Between 1870 and 1930 the federal government and all of the major religious groups, especially Roman Catholics, established more than 150 on-and off-reservation boarding schools. Critics of the boarding schools and their curriculum argued that "the academic program provided at boarding schools precluded a successful transition to the white labor force and those who wished to return home discovered that the curriculum held no relevance to the reservation." The inadequate educational program and appalling conditions at Indian boarding schools were firmly documented in the Meriam Report (1928), which initiated a process of replacing boarding with day schools close to centers of Indian population.

The shuttering of boarding schools was accelerated when John Collier was appointed commissioner of Indian affairs in 1933. The passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 and Collier's commitment to fostering reforms in Indian policy significantly reduced the Indian boarding school population by the end of World War II. Community day schools, state-supported public schools, and nonresidential parochial schools were the dominant education institutions for Indian children by the mid-1950s.

Bibliography

Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Ellis, Clyde. To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893–1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.