The Death Of Their Cultures

Boarding School Seasons by Brenda J. Child offers a look into the boarding school experiences of many American Indian students. Child favors unpublished sources such as letters to give an uncensored inside look into boarding school experiences. However, she also includes other sources such as school newspapers, oral history collections, photographs, biographies, United States government publications, and annual reports. Government boarding schools were created to help the American government gain more control over Indians and to push the Natives to adopt the white ways of life such as language, skill, and education. While integration was the ultimate objective, Child sets out “to show that even with the challenges of cultural assimilation and a devastating land policy, American Indian people, even children, placed limits on assimilation and also defined and shaped the boarding school era.” (viii) The boarding schools designed to tear American Indian families apart did not succeed in isolating children from their tribes, but created bonds and

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.

The boarding schools “educators suppressed tribal languages and cultural practices and sought to replace them with English, Christianity, athletic activities, and a ritual calendar intended to further patriotic citizenship” (Davis 20). Not only had the boarding schools taken away Native American culture, they were forcing the Native Americans into a different culture. The language was quite challenging to learn, especially to the older students. Learning a new language is much harder at an older age, and while being bilingual is vey helpful, these Native Americans were not allowed to speak their Native language. A Native American girl stated she, “remembers another little girl making a mistake in her use of English and being ridiculed for it. ... The English language was difficult to learn” (Vizenor 102). These Native Americans were learning a brand new language, being stripped from theirs, and they would be picked on if they did not have perfect English right away. Many chose to keep quite so they would not make mistakes.

Popular culture has shaped our understanding and perception of Native American culture. From Disney to literature has given the picture of the “blood thirsty savage” of the beginning colonialism in the new world to the “Noble Savage,” a trait painted by non-native the West (Landsman and Lewis 184) and this has influenced many non native perceptions. What many outsiders do not see is the struggle Native American have on day to day bases. Each generation of Native American is on a struggle to keep their traditions alive, but to function in school and ultimately graduate.

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).

The Native American children were educated at Carlisle in order to make a “better” transition into society for post-bellum America. Carlisle was located in Pennsylvania and was a reform school for Native American children. “Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and moves them out into your communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have (Paul Prucha 68).” The Native Americans didn’t have the liberty to live on their land as they were before the whites arrived; “By 1979, my people were no longer free, but were confined on reservations under the rule of agents (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children such as Luther Standing Bear were taken from their families, land, and tradition to be reformed into a civilized American. Luther Standing Bear recalls his time at Carlisle; “The task before us was not only that of accepting new ideas and adopting new manners, but physical changes and discomfort had to be borne un complainingly until the body adjusted itself to new tastes and habits (Standing Bear 69-71).” The Native American children’s names, attire, religion, and diet were changed to that of the white Americans. “…the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much, and in three years nearly one half of the children from the Plains were dead… (Standing Bear

Boarding schools were an issue that plagued both Native Americans and Inupiats. As conveyed by the writings of Mary Crow Dog and other Native American figures, we see how the effects of such schools were devastating to the native population. Boarding schools wiped Natives of their language and culture, teaching young children to be ashamed of what makes them unique. Pupils would return from their long stays at boarding schools, unable to speak to their own family, resulting in an isolation between themselves and their community. Over the years, generations would eventually lose most of what makes them native and, for the most part, their culture slowly faded away. It seems that the Inupiat people faced a similar fate. Inupiat children were forced to learn by Western standards, eventually forgetting their crucial survival skills, language, religion and other unique aspects of their culture. However, we are exposed to a more positive outlook towards boarding schools in the book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, where William Hensley says he enjoyed his boarding school

The animals used were cattle, horses, ducks and turkeys, and mules. The campus was able to be self-sufficient due to the animals that were taken care of and crops that were grown. Students in the school were taught an array of lessons that were different between the genders. Girls learned household duties, and to learn the English Language. The household duties taught to the girls included how to cook, sew and wash. Boys learned farm duties, math, spelling and outside exercise. The boys enjoyed learning and were excited if blackboards were used. Without the classes, the Native American children would be considered “as obstacles to progress” (Document C). The students were taught different subjects appeared in the school to get the best use of the students and their genders. Important information for the historical significance has been given through a description of the school and the classes taught at the Phoenix Indian School.

When arriving to Carlisle they cut the children’s long hair and supplied them with military uniforms and they were banned to use their native language. Not only did they lose their language, but they would also lose their Indian names. The school wasn’t prepared when the children arrived, so they had to sleep on the bare floors and had very little food. The children would attend school regularly with the classes structured with academics during the

However, boarding schools steadily increased in enrollment from 3,598 to 21,568 students due to parents hoping education would offer a better life for their children, students wanting to escape reservations, and those who went unknowingly. With the increase in Indian student population came an increase in spending to $2,936,080 in 1900. Despite these numbers, the assimilation-through-education experiment failed to destroy Indian culture. Instead of returning as agents of cultural change, Indian children returned with valuable knowledge of the white world and a new sense of collective Indian identity creating a stronger Indian civil rights front. This was because the boarding schools served as a mechanism to bring Indians of different tribes together for the first time in many cases. Other Indian students left boarding school with no cultural identity; they were too white for Indian communities and too Indian for American communities. These students had little success once they left boarding

Many of the Native Americans were driven out of their homes and were forced to colonize with the people of the United States. Many of their children were sent to missionary schools to incorporate the beliefs of the white culture and drive out the traditions of the Native Americans (Zitkala-Sa). Zitkala-Sa used “The School Days of an Indian Girl” to explain her experiences of those schools.

In order to make this assimilation possible, federal boarding schools were established outside the reservations, and were quite far from the reservations. The phrase chosen encapsulate this federal policy was expressed by “the Father of the US Boarding School Movement,” Richard Henry Pratt, in 1890 as follows: “Kill the Native American and save the man” (Hirschfelder 129) meaning destroy the identity of the Native Americans and then build them into the dominant White society. To achieve this goal, federal boarding schools deprived children of “all outward and inward signs of […] identification with tribal life, at the same time instructing them in the values and behaviors of White culture” (128). “Children caught speaking their Native language or performing religious rituals” (129) were severely punished. The Native American children were denied their right to use their own mother tongue, and without the words of their tribal language, over time they became unable to create their own identity because not only were the Words missing but also the traditions and the spiritual power located in it. Consequently, the emergence of identity crisis

In 1820, the United States made plans for a large scale system of boarding and day schools Noriega, 377). These schools were given the mission to, "instruct its students in 'letters, labor and mechanical arts, and morals and Christianity;' 'training many Indian leaders'" Noriega, 378). In the case of boarding schools, Native American children would be forcibly stripped from their homes as early as five years old. They would then live sequestered from their families and cultures until the age of seventeen or eighteen (Noriega, 381). <br><br>In 1886, it was decided, by the United States federal government that Native American tribal groups would no longer be treated as 'indigenous national governments.' The decision was made, not by the conjoint efforts of the Native American tribes and Congress; but, by the "powers that be" the United States Legal System. This self-ordained power allowed Congress to pass a variety of other laws, directed towards, assimilating, Native Americans, so that they would become a part of "mainstream white America" (Robbins, 90)<br><br>By this time the United States Government, had been funding over a dozen distinct agencies, to provide mandatory 'education' to all native children aged six through sixteen. Enrollment was enforced through leverage given by the 1887 General Allotment Act, which made Natives dependent on the Government for

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.

The school was founded by Captain Richard Henry Pratt following his military service in Indian Territory. Pratt’s goal was to assimilate Native American youth into mainstream culture, which he believed was necessary for them to live productive lives as American citizens. About 12,000 young native people attended the school during its operation. These children were removed from their homes, forced to cut their hair, change their names and give up their mother tongue. Although modern audiences see Pratt’s actions as immoral, his ideology was much less extreme than most Americans of the time. Pratt believed that you “could kill the Indian, but save the man”(qtd. in Landis); this is in stark contrast to the prevailing attitude of the time which was: “the only good Indian is a dead