Boarding Schools :
“Kill the Indian and
Save the Man”
In 1892, Colonel Pratt, the founder of
Indian Boarding Schools, made the
following speech: "A great general has
said that the only good Indian is a
dead one. In a sense, I agree with the
sentiment, but only in this: that all the
Indian there is in the race should be
dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save
the man."
To accomplish this goal
– assimilation - the
federal government
adopted a new policy –
Indian boarding schools
where Indian children
would be forcibly taken
from their homes and
enrolled in schools
designed to “Kill the
Indian, save the man.”
The architect of this
philosophy was former
Indian fighter, Colonel
Richard H. Pratt.
Colonel Pratt’s Vision
"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 … 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.... "
And so from the 1880s through the 1960s,
Indian children were taken – often forcibly –
from their families and sent to Indian
Boarding Schools.
And what did the Indian children
experience at school?
The teachers spent the first few
days forcing the children to
discard their Indian ways and
adopt American ways:
– children were forbidden to
speak their native language,
often under threat of physical
punishment.
– their long hair was clipped to
the skull, sometimes as part of
a public ritual in which the
child was forced to renounce
his or her Indian origins.
Their comfortable, loose-fitting clothing were
taken away and burned - boys wore military
uniforms and girls were wore tight-fitting,
Victorian-style dresses. Both boys and girls were
required to wear shoes rather than their
traditional loose-fitting moccasins.
• The children were forbidden to use their
Indian names and were given a new
American name.
• The children were forbidden to practice any
cultural or religious rituals, usually under
threat of punishment, and were instead told
that they were expected to become devout
Christians.
• Their days
included a
strict
routine
defined by
military drill
and
structure.
• Children
marched in
silence to
and from all
classes and
meals.
• Children
attended
school half
of each day
and spent
the other
half training to become mechanics, farmers, and
servants.
Helen Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi Indian,
recalled:
“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 didn't
understand a word of English and
didn't know what to say or do...We
were a group of homesick,
lonesome, little girls...”
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 …. 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 man's clothes and ate
white man's food and went to white man's
churches and spoke white man's 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."
Before and After
A series of “before and after” photographs were
taken to demonstrate the “progress” toward
civilization that the boarding schools were making.
Tom Torlino, Navajo
Hampton students
Conclusions
1. Stereotyping played a
huge role in the efforts to
assimilate Indian people
into white, Euro-American
society and in the creation
of the boarding schools.
• White, Euro-Americans
stereotyped Indian
people as heathen,
savage, and uncivilized.
• The Euro-Americans
wanted Indian people to
act like stereotypical
white Americans who
were civilized, Christian
farmers.
2. The goals of the boarding schools were to
“Kill the Indian and save the man” – to
assimilate American Indians into white,
Euro-American society.
3. The goal of assimilation was never fully
achieved - – as this 1917 report from
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
indicates:
“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 socalled 'returned students' not only do
not show any progress, but actually
go backward."
4. One of the short-term consequences of
Indian boarding schools was that the
“assimilated” Indians were caught between
two worlds – being integrated and accepted
into neither the Euro-American nor the
Indian world.
5. The long-term consequences of Indian
boarding schools are more complex:
boarding school policies that victimized
Indian children were genocidal and modern
day evidence of historical trauma is directly
related to 19th Century federal Indian
policies.
6. Many Indian people consciously refused to be
assimilated into the white, Euro-American world
and instead, remained committed to their
traditional cultural, spiritual, political, and
economic traditions. In so doing, they are not
only victims of the destructive forces of Indian
boarding schools, they are also brave and
courageous survivors.