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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers led by Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association and the Women’s National Indian Association.
The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to “assimilate” Indian tribes into the mainstream of the “American way of life;” the Protestant Republican ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people, make them accept white men’s beliefs and value systems.
The non-reservation boarding school would be, in the eyes of the assimilationists, the best school for changing Indian children into members of the white society.The most well known of all the non-reservation boarding schools was the school established in Carlisle, Pennsylvania by Col. Richard Henry Pratt in 1879. His goal was complete assimilation. Headmaster of the Carlisle Indian School for twenty-five years, he was the single most important figure in Indian education during his time. His motto was, “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”
Carlisle as well as other non-reservation boarding school instituted their assault on the cultural identity by first doing
*Boys had their long hair cut.
*All children were given standard uniforms to wear.
*They received new “white” names, including surnames.
*Traditional Indian foods were abandoned.
*Students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and dormitories.
*Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized values of white society.
*Students were not allowed to speak their native languages, not even to each other.
*Conversion to Christianity was deemed essential.
Indian people resisted these schools in various ways. Sometimes entire villages refused schooling. When they refused to enroll their children in white men’s schools, Indian agents on the reservations normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency police. In some cases police were sent onto reservations to seize children, whether they were willing or not. The police continued to take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were offered and in other cases families would bargain, negotiating a family quota. Navajo policemen avoided taking “prime” children and would take less intelligent or physically impaired children or those not well cared for.
Parents would band together to withdraw the students en masse, encourage runaways and undermine the schools influence during vacations. In 1893 the U.S. courts said that parents had a legal right to deny their children’s transfer to off-reservation schools. Once the courts ruled in the parents favor, some families used this right keep their children on the reservation. Some parents saw white education for what it was the total destruction of Indian culture. Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the manner of discipline, the drilling. Still others were concerned for their children’s health. They associated the schools with death. Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most fundamental of human ties, the parent child bond.
Sources from:http://www.nrcprograms.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools
