Boarding School Education

In the late 1800s, Captain Richard Henry Pratt set out to “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”(A Plea to “Citizenize” Indians). The goal to erase Indian cultures and replace it with white American culture was sought to be achieved through boarding schools. Pratt was the creator of the first Indian boarding school: Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. These government-funded boarding schools would take children from their homes on reservation, often for them to not see their family again until they are grown(lecture). Pratt’s goal was to eliminate the Indian culture and incorporate the Indian people into the more “civilized”(Marr) American culture. This meant forcing the Indian students to speak only English and to give up all cultural traditions, religions, names and take up Christianity and American sounding names. Students were put into these boarding schools with little or no contact with their families for “eight to nine months of the year” (Marr). These schools operated with minimal funds, so the education was very insufficient. It was clear from the beginning; the actual goal was not to give quality education for the Native American children but to get rid of the Indian culture.

With waves of the American population moving westward, government attempted to assimilate, or integrate, Native Americans into American society. Their goal was for Native Americans to live and behave like white Americans, and for them “to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community” (Doc 9). Children were sent to boarding schools where they were given new clothes and haircuts, and taught English, Christianity, and American ways of life (Doc 13). While many Americans believed this would be good for the Native Americans, it effectively destroyed their culture and identity. By forcing them to learn English, they were unable to communicate the concepts, beliefs, and ideas their languages were based on. Americans did not consider the fact that English could not substitute for Native languages, because they are based on different realities, histories, and cultures (Doc 3). Assimilation turned the lives of Native Americans upside-down, forcing them to give up ideas and beliefs they had been practicing their whole lives, without any say. Slowly, Native American culture and lifestyle faded until it was nearly

Indian Boarding Schools, which began in the late 1870’s, were started to transition Native Americans from their traditional cultures and transform them into American citizens. By the 1900’s, there were 147 day schools on and off reservations in the Great Plains. Day schools were first built before the government decided that the children needed to be removed from their Indian lifestyle in order for total assimilation to occur. The first off-reservation boarding schools appeared around 1884 in the Great Plains. By 1890, 25 federal off-reservation and 43 on-reservation boarding schools were operating nationally. Many Indian families chose to send their children to boarding schools because there were no other schools available. After $45 million had been spent and 20,000 Indian children had been put into schools, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Jones put emphasis on the importance of utilizing existing boarding and day schools more effectively. Jones declared that the Indian children had shown little evidence of assimilation and introduced the idea for a hierarchy of schools in order to “provide the greatest opportunity for assimilating the best students with the greatest potential for surviving in the white world” (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, par.8).

Indian tribes had their own education arrangements already in place prior to the landing of Columbus in 1492. Indian education comprised of specific roles played by each member of the tribe that concentrated on survival as a group of people. The transfer of knowledge from elders to the young, from men to boys, from women to girls, encircling the history, culture and religion of each tribe, created an education program that was passed on through oral tradition and practical, hands-on preparation. For Native American children, going to school away from their reservation were the worst thing that could happen to them. Native American children were stripped from their culture as soon as they arrived to their new schools/homes. “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,” a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century” (Reyhner 117). Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The crusaders assumed that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people and make them accept white men’s beliefs

Fulfilling god’s plan, America forced Native Americans to attend boarding schools where the ideals of Christianity were implemented. In Abigail Graham’s article, “The Power of Boarding Schools,” a History of Education professor at Indiana University writes that boarding schools is a tool used to reinforce one’s ideas into individuals. Graham writes, “Boarding schools...significantly impact the social development of their students; for this reason...schools used [this] as tools for reinforcing power relationships and cultural identities.” America’s goal was to eliminate any existence of the Native’s culture by constantly embedding the values of being an American and being Christian inside the school. The boarding school is completely new to the Natives, and having someone tell them what to do was something unheard of. Within a school’s system—the students have the least authority, the teacher is second in line, and the principal is the highest. The students were of Native American descent, of course the teachers were white, and this demonstrates the power relationship with the Native Americans and the Whites; the whites had more power than the other race. Children were targets because if America were able to change the younger generation’s ideals, than as they get older their offsprings will be what America envisioned, a non-Native American who has no knowing of their culture. In Mary A. Stout book, Native American Boarding Schools, the author mentions that boarding schools

After reading Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools by Ward Churchill, I have come to realization of some matters. First of all, while your goal might had been to civilize the Indians by teaching them English, manners, and change their whole appearance, the outcome was totally different. Your goal might have been successful to you, in the end you got what you wanted: to kill the Indian and Save the Man. But also, you stole those kid’s identities by taking them away from their families. You traumatized them, and making them go through so many forms of abuse. “Kill the Indian, save the men” or like U.S. Indian Commissioner William A. Jones said in 1903, the goal was to “exterminate the

In the 1800’s there were 60 such boarding schools which were teaching Indian children values such as possessive individualism. This was the opposite teaching of what is instilled in Indian children by their elders, Indian believe in communal ownership and that the land is for everyone. In 1879 the establishment of Carlisle Indian School was created. Col. Richard Henry Pratt established the school due to his belief that by immersing the Indian children into white society they would start identifying as white and not return to the reservation and their Indian ways. Pratt’s motto was “kill the Indian, save the man” (www.nativepartnership.org). In 1978, 118 years after the first boarding school was established the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed. This new law gave the parents of Native American children the right to refuse to allow their children to be taken and placed in off-reservation schools. But for many Native American children the damage had been done. Many young adults and children returned to their families not knowing the language and culture of their people. Many felt like they no longer fit into any area of society. The damage had been done and the effects are felt to this day.

     In 1858, Commissioner of Indian affairs, Charles E. Mix, in his annual report, stated that manual labor schools were to be established for the Native American children. This was to help prepare them for agriculture. The schools also taught basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic. In order to maintain harmony between the whites and the Indians Commissioner Mix “recommended that a military force should remain in the vicinity of the reservations to add in controlling the Indians (Spring, 1997, p.28).” The second idea for schooling Native American children was to send them away to

The Canadian government saw the residential schools as the only a way to change native culture into civilized culture and this was by keeping their children away from native traditions. The purpose of the residential schools was to civilize the Indians and to make them good, useful and lawful members of society with strict punishments for any wrong doings. Richard Pratt, who was the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, one of the very first reservation schools, proclaimed “you must kill the Indian in him; to save the man”. Canadian government adopted these ideal and the goal of residential schools was to assimilate Aboriginals into white society with the help of children as they were the influence of native people. This

Colin G. Calloway called the enforced European-style education of Native American children “the educational assault on Indian children” (383). Native American children were taken from their homes to be raised and educated in boarding schools in an effort to make them better members of European-American society. In 1880, the Board of Indian Commissioners wrote that “as a savage we cannot tolerate him [Native Americans] any more than as a half-civilized parasite, wanderer, or vagabond. The only alternative is to fit him by education for civilized life” (as cited in Calloway 383). The board did not hide their use of education as a way of destroying Native American culture and/or making it into

Indian Boarding schools were the best way to convert people and their beliefs that potentially disrupted the way of the manifest destiny. These schools would take young Indian children and assimilate them to the Anglo American way of life. The highest priority of these Indian schools were to teach the Indian youth reading and writing the Mathematics, English language, history, science, and the arts hopefully encouraging the “self-directing power of thought.” Religious education and training in Christianity was taught. Political structure, institutions, and principles of a democratic society were part of the citizenship training. All this effort was to eliminate all trace of the Indian culture.

Children were taken away from their homes and told everything they knew was wrong. They were sent to boarding schools to change their culture. These boarding schools were run by the United States government. The government's goal was to civilize Native Americans. They sent children to these schools against their will. Native American children were educated like Americans and they had to change their native ways to be more like whites (Cayton 266). Teachers abused their students and beat their native ways out of them. They were not allowed to see their families so they would try to escape, but their attempts were unsuccessful. The United States government’s Boarding Schools of the mid-late 1800s irreparably changed Native American culture.

“Indians were mean people — I'm glad I'm not an Indian, I thought." These are the thoughts of Merta Bercier, she was a young Indian at a boarding school. Native Americans were relentlessly forced to change through education, so that they may fit into the new culture, and so that they may also become citizens. Likewise, they had no choice when it came to assimilation, there was no running away. In fact, they weren’t even allowed to speak their native language. The girls at St. Lucy's and the Native Americans both experienced merciless forced assimilation evidenced by the girls and Native Americans both had to be reeducated to conform, the girls could run away if they wanted whereas the Native Americans could not, and they both had to learn a new language.

The United States’ history is full of ethnocentric beliefs that have led to the ethnocentric development of the country. One of the most remote examples of this ethnocentric belief is displayed with the construction of off-reservation boarding schools for Native Americans first started in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, by former general, Richard Henry Pratt. The purpose of the schools was to strip Native Americans of their cultural traditions and teach them the skills necessary to function in American Society, according to Pratt. Pratt keyed this belief with the saying “Kill the Indian, save the man,” in order to justify his reasons to assimilate the Indians to the white culture (Mintz 2016). What Richard Henry Pratt did was wrong. The Indians should find self-actualization through their own cultural background, and become accepted throughout society for being the race they are. Many cease to accept that having assimilated the Indians was an act of racism. However, because racism is derived from the ethnocentric beliefs of an individual, people redefine it with something else.

In the Indians and European cultures, they both faced a certain backlash when it came to being able to live with each other. For example, the Indians would offer an education in the way of living in New England, but Massachusetts and Connecticut would make sure that the people that lived over there would stay over there because they did not want the settlers to move over there. In contrast, they both could have a cultural crossing successfully. For example, Europeans men lived with Indian women and the French and English were good friends with the Indians. In this essay, Europeans and Indians culture are divided, but together in terms of the nature of the borderlands, the appeal to the Indian cultures that may have had for some Europeans, how most Europeans viewed Indians, the way Indians treated captives and those who lived amongst them voluntarily, the role of trade and economic exchange, the role of education, and finally the difference between the English and the French settlers in their attitudes towards the indigenous peoples. Through all this, the essay will explain what kind of people live in the Indian culture as well as compare all the descriptive information that has been received.