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Erik Evans
Professor Sackman
History 400
November 1, 2011
“We were conditioned to work with our hands, not our minds.” Assimilation through
Individualism and Vocational Education: An Attempt to Americanize Native Americans
Native American assimilation was a process in which many believed would help promote
Natives into America’s society. Richard Henry Pratt would endorse this new beginning for the
red man; for he believed the process would essentially become a success.
Now, I do not believe that amongst his people an Indian can be made to feel all the
advantages of a civilized life, nor the manhood of supporting himself and of standing out
alone and battling for life as an American citizen. To accomplish that, his removal and
personal isolation is necessary. One year in the midst of a civilized community where,
whichever way he may turn he can see the industrious farmer plowing his fields or
reaping his grain, and the industrious mechanic building houses or engaged in other
manufactures, with all the realities of wealth and happiness which these efforts bring to
the farmer and mechanic is worth more as a means of implanting such aspirations as
these you desire for him in his mind than ten years, nay, than a whole lifetime of camp
surroundings with the best Agency school work can be done. Richard Henry Pratt1
Contrary to Pratt’s beliefs many authors and historians claimed Native American
boarding schools to be ineffective workshops that stressed labor rather than education. For
instance, Churchill argues that, “In the course of providing vocational training, the schools
functioned as no more than factories or labor camps, producing goods and generating profits.”
Students were subjected to working long hours, with less time to focus on an academic
1
Richard H. Pratt Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964), 266.
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education. In The Life of a Kiowa Apache Indian, Jim Whitewolf explained how he attended an
Indian boarding school in Oklahoma in 1891 and had worked for days hauling dirt. “From the
school they took us out to Mr. Bright, who was in charge of all the boys who were out working.
They were hauling dirt down to the barn. All day I had to do this work. I had to do this hard
work for three days.” The stress caused from work at the schools discouraged many Native
American students. This experience of strenuous training emphasizing vocational work over
academic instruction was usually predominant throughout the majority of these boarding
schools. As a result, most students rebelled against the education set before them.
During the 19th century, the United States military fought numerous wars with Native
Americans. As these Indian wars came to a conclusion by 1890, the Native American
population in America had been diminished to “five percent of its preinvasion total.” 2 The
question of what to do with the remaining Native population was a big problem for the
government during this time. Ward Churchill, a former professor at the University of Colorado,
is an American scholar who focused on the historical treatment of Native Americans. Churchill
examined America’s plan on what to do with this remaining Native population in his book Kill
the Indian, Save the Man. The weight of policy in the U.S. had been placed on “assimilating” the
residue of survivors.3 To usher in the process of assimilation, the United States government
sought to Americanize Native Americans through government policies, and by establishing
Indian Schools. In 1877, Congress began appropriating funds specifically for the purpose of
2
Ward Churchill, Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools (San
Francisco: City Lights, 2004), 12.
3
Ibid., 12.
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Indian education.4 On February 8, 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed the Dawes
Severalty Act.5 As a result of these developments during the late 19th century, Native American
boarding schools were established throughout America through the federal government and
other organizations. These schools would educate Native American youth by teaching them
American principles. The goal of these boarding schools was to “Americanize” Native
Americans, so they could adapt to American culture.
These schools varied from federally funded institutions to schools sponsored by
religious or nonprofit organizations. In both cases, the people who ran them wanted to
assimilate Native Americans by breaking up their traditional communal tribal identity. Methods
used at these boarding schools would encourage Native Americans to rid themselves of their
tribal culture and accept a life of individuality that was separate from the tribe. Promoting
individual land ownership was seen as the key to ushering in the integration of Native
Americans into American society.
To encourage Native Americans to accept an individualistic identity that would sever
ties with their tribal culture, many of these boarding schools emphasized a curriculum of
vocational and domestic training. Vocational and domestic training would teach Native
Americans to become workers. Instruction in individual work was thought to be a key factor in
promoting separation from the tribe and leading Native Americans to American citizenship.
The annual report at the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in 1934 expressed the importance
of a domestic education for Native Americans: “Vocational training of the type offered at Indian
4
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928
(Kansas: University of Kansas, 1995), 26.
5
Rose Stremlau “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians,” Journal of Family History 281.
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Boarding Schools should prepare Indian youth for effective citizenship more efficiently than any
other method known.”6 Vocational training was implemented by many boarding schools as
one of the more important methods for the assimilation process of Native Americans.
Unfortunately, many of these schools enforced harsh working conditions, from which
many of the students wanted to escape. The curriculum of these institutions focused more on
vocational training than an academic education. Many of these schools were referred to as
“sweatshops” rather than institutions for education. The Indian Boarding schools attempt to
assimilate Native Americans by incorporating individualistic values and teaching them a
domestic education was ineffective, as schools exterminated the values, beliefs, and culture
of the Native American youth while focusing more on instructing students in the field of
vocational work rather than trying to educate Native Americans academically.
The progression towards Americanization was not a simple process. Only through a
comprehensive understanding of events that led up to Native children attending these schools
can one fully grasp the concept of integration. This process primarily began with the
implementation of the Dawes Severalty Act which broke down Native American’s communal
ties by dividing tribal lands into individual allotments. Once the Dawes Act was set forth,
nuclear families would be encouraged to live in “Model Homes,” which would be a prime
example for Natives, impelling them into civilization by adopting American values of home-life.
Thus, Native American boarding schools would be the next essential step in teaching the Native
6
Margaret Archuleta, Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima Away from Home: American Indian Boarding
School Experiences, 1879-2000 (Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum, 2000), 30.
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American youth how to tend to the model home. First, a cleansing of Native American values,
and second, instructions on how to work the land in which Natives were allotted.
The Dawes Severalty Act can be referred to as the fundamental basic policy that marked
the beginning of the Native American assimilation process. This policy would ultimately force
Native Americans into adopting a new lifestyle that would disconnect them from their
communal kin relations. The policy predestined various new beginnings for the Native American
people. Although many views on the motives of American reformers in their intentions to help
guide Native Americans to a civilized life may have differed, a common theme is fundamentally
recognized, a theme of injustice which prevented Native Americans from living according to
their understanding of social order.
In his excerpt from the history matters website, a historical collection online, “Kill the
Indian, and Save the Man,” Richard Henry Pratt, the superintendent of the Carlisle Indian
School in Pennsylvania, expressed his opinion in 1892 against communal land ownership.
“Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe….It has preached against colonizing Indians,
and in favor of Individualizing them.”7 Richard Pratt emphasized individualization from the
tribe. The Dawes Act forced Native Americans into individual allotments of land, ending tribal
living, which was practiced by Native Americans.
The implementation of distributing individual land allotments to Native Americans
would ultimately be viewed by many historians as a technique to advance Native Americans
into American society. Rose Stremlau, in her article “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians,”
7
Richard H. Pratt, The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites: Americanizing the American Indians: Writings
by the Friends of the Indian 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 268-271.
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focuses on reformers credence to their obligation to Americanize Native Americans. She
explains, “Above all, [reformers] shared a belief that by imposing their culture on American
Indian people, they were fulfilling the destiny of their nation and giving American Indians the
greatest gift possible- civilization, as they defined it.”8 According to Stremlau, reformers
considered the individual land allotment process a gift to the Native American people, the gift
of a chance to become civilized in the great American society. Reformers interpretations
claimed communal tribe characteristics to be uncivil, thus the breaking up of communally
owned land was essential to Americanization. Thus, the Dawes Act was set forth. When looking
at the significance of reformers promoting individual land ownership over communal ownership,
one must seek to understand the perspective of these reformers when determining what they
regarded as “civilized.”
In Individuality Incorporated, Joel Pfister, a professor of American studies at Wesleyan
University, describes reformer’s perspectives on Native American philosophies during the 19th
century. He wrote that reformers believed, “Too many Indians lived according to the ethos of
communal giving and welfare, an interpretation of collective responsibility insufficiently
cognizant of the virtues of self making and self interest.”9 According to Pfister, most reformers
thought Native Americans had a personality based on communal characteristics that would
benefit the interests of a tribe over the individual. Indian boarding schools had high hopes of
ridding Native Americans of these characteristics, breaking their native identity through
teaching them the values that differed from communal values and promoting characteristics
8
9
Rose Stremlau “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians,” Journal of Family History 268.
Joel Pfister, Individuality Incorporated: Indians and the Multicultural Modern (Durham: Duke UP 2004), 50.
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that would benefit the individual. Pfister also gives an account of Senator Henry L. Dawes, in
which he expressed in 1883 his thoughts on civilizing Native Americans: “The last and best
agency of civilization is to teach a grown Indian to keep [emphasis added]. Keeping fueled
incentive to own land, his [emphasis added] exclusively to enjoy...the separation of the
individual from the mass, breeds usable money generating citizens and workers.”10 Most
reformers like Senator Dawes believed that if they could break the Native American thought
pattern by emphasizing individual well-being over the interests of the community, then Native
Americans could eventually become Americanized.
When the Dawes Severalty Act was enacted in 1877, many white reformers throughout
America felt that individual land ownership would encourage Native Americans to break away
from tribal civilization. Most reformers felt that if Native Americans were given individual land
ownership, they would abandon tribal relationships and become more “civilized.” Sara Kinney,
leader of the Connecticut auxiliary of the Women’s National Indian Association, expressed in
1889 her opinion of individual land ownership: “Tribal relations could only be broken by giving
to the members of a tribe individual ownership of land and homes.”11 Individual land
ownership was perceived as a crucial part of the integration process. It was also believed by
the superintendents of many boarding schools that if Native Americans had their own
individual allotments of land, then this could usher in a new generation of civilized Americans.
But most reformers failed to understand what the communal ethos meant to Native
Americans. Rose Stremlau illustrates in greater depth the importance of these communal
10
Ibid., 50.
Cited In Jane Simonsen, “Object Lessons: Domesticity and Display in Native American Assimilation,” (American
Studies) 43, no. 1 (2002): 87.
11
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kinship ties and how they were perceived by white Americans. Native Americans had always
used communal ties as a way of enduring together. As Stremlau explains:
Reformers failed to comprehend the extent of dislocation caused by disease,
warfare, and relocation and the ways that kinship informed adaption and
survival. While kinship strictly determined Indians roles and dictated the
standards of appropriate behavior, these social activists saw organization into
clans and other extended familial groupings as chaotic and anarchical.12
Reformers essentially did not understand the importance placed on communal living, for it
came as first nature to Native Americans in aspirations to thrive as a community in order to
survive. Reformers believed, “obligations of kinship,…prevented Indian people from working
appropriately and accumulating individual wealth.”13 The perception of communal living had a
dramatically different meaning from Native Americans to reformers. For where Natives
regarded communal norms as the basis of native life, reformers condemned them as keeping
the Native American from transcending a savage state. The circumstance of perceiving cultural
norms according to one’s perceptions ultimately led to the allotment of land which essentially
forced Natives to give up their most essential way of survival. Even though many reformers
viewed the process as beneficial to Native Americans, the majority, if not all, failed to recognize
the significant negative impacts the allotment act had on Native Life in the breaking of
communal ties. One of the most important aspects of the act essentially stripped Natives of
their most key essential survival tactic, which were their kinship ties.
12
13
Rose Stremlau “To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians,” (Journal of Family History) 30, no. 3 (2005): 271.
Ibid., 271
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The Dawes Act would ultimately promote values of individual interests, but would also
encourage Native Americans to become self sufficient in terms of establishing an individual
economic life. Native American success would basically be determined by attaining the life the
Dawes Act had set before them. This strategy would therefor be adopted by most Indian
boarding schools across the country. As Pfister explains, “Individualizing provided the
ideological impetus for the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Indian schools celebrated the day of
its enactment as Franchise day.”14 Franchise day would be a term used to claim the Dawes Act
as the start of a foundation in Native American instruction. For when this act was implemented
schools would have the backing of government policy when promoting individualistic
characteristics.
In “Object Lessons,” Simonsen also recognizes the importance of the Dawes Act.
“Breaking up tribal reservation lands would destroy tribal identity and foster economic
individualism and nuclear family life… A crucial part of the act’s plan to set [natives] coveting
Christian homes instead of a tent, was to send children to schools where they would learn the
trades of employment and then send them back to their homes. In ten years the parents would
have passed away, the greater part of them, and a new race would come up. Educators had
stressed the importance of homes as models.”15 The emphasis of model homes came to be a
major component of the assimilation process. Reformers wanted Native Americans to become
accustomed to nuclear families situated in model homes, because they believed this was the
foundation of American life. Much importance would then be placed on teaching Natives to
14
15
Ibid., 50.
Jane Simonsen, “Object Lessons: Domesticity and Display in Native American Assimilation,” 79-80.
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love this way of life and encouraging them to accept roles of a domestic life that would evolve
around these homes. The WNIA president Amelia Stone Quinton “promoted the physical
structure of the home as an object lesson, a metonym for civilization…. [which would] serve as
an educational tool for Native Americans who would create new nests to lodge the ideals of
civilized culture.”16 Model homes were to be examples for Native Americans of what it meant
to be American. The example would essentially be to isolate oneself from the tribe, along with
picking up characteristics that benefited the interests an individual.
In Making Home Work, Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American
West, Simonsen gives an in-depth insight as to why many reformers at the time believed
communal kinship living of the tribe to be uncivil. Most reformers perceived that the
establishment of a nuclear home as the starting point of civilization. In a review of Simonsen’s
book, Linda Frost explains, “Simonsen notes that the first half of her book explores how
reformers exported domesticity to the West through literature, science, and the ideal of the
modern home.”17 Many reformers used literature to promote the assimilation of Native
Americans. Simonsen gives an account of a reformer, Lewis Henry Morgan, who essentially
used science and social evolution to promote and explain how communal tribal life was
considered to be savagery. Simonsen explains that Morgan, “published in 1871, a kinship study
that proposed that a society’s evolutionary status could be measured by its progress toward a
monogamous, nuclear family secured by private property ownership. He asserted that the
increasing control of a society over the sources of subsistence was the force behind its social
16
17
Ibid., 82-83.
Linda Frost “Review of Making Home Work,” Journal of American Women Writers 178
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evolution.”18 Morgan presumed that breaking communal traditions would advance Native
Americans in the evolution process. He saw their traditions of communal ties as inhumane,
proclaiming that one was only making progress as one came closer to living in the setting of a
nuclear family by establishing model homes. The perception of the model home and how
Natives were to attend to these homes could be viewed as one of the fundamental aspects of
Native American assimilation.
The incorporation of model homes opened the door for the idea that Native Americans
must be taught to work the land they owned, but first they would have to be instructed in the
field of domestic work. Indian Boarding schools would now incorporate the importance of
model homes and domestic training into their pedagogy. Many schools underlined vocational
training as a major point of emphasis at their institutions. Edwin Chalcraft was superintendent
of Indian boarding schools across the Northwest region from 1883 to 1925. He acknowledges
the importance of domestic training in his autobiography. He wrote, “In order to capitalize on
the vast potential lying before them, the rising generation needed thorough instruction in
agriculture matters, such as will prepare the boys to become successful farmers and the girls to
take their places as homemakers and worthy helpmates.”19 Institutions educated Native
Americans through vocational training to emphasize a civilized home. As Native Americans
were to be educated to become farmers, Chalcraft recognized the connection of education and
allotment, and how this correlated with assimilation:
18
Jane Simonsen, Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the West, 1860-1919
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2006), 77.
19
Edwin L. Chalcraft and Cary C. Collins, Assimilation's Agent: My Life as a Superintendent in the Indian Boarding
School System (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2004), xxiv.
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Upon many of the reservations in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the Indians have
received individual title to the land, and the work of allotting is being continued.
Reasonably to conclude that in a short time practically all Indians in this section will be
classed as citizen land-holders, and be in a position to apply the benefit of themselves
and the Nation such education as may be given them, if it is in harmony with their
environment and the vocation they should follow for a livelihood….Upon the efficiency
of these industrial schools depends the future of the Indian race. -Edwin Chalcraft 20
Chalcraft wanted his institutions to be places where the education focused on vocational
training, for he felt this would raise Native Americans up to be class citizens, specifically farmers
of America. Chalcraft believed that the Native American existence depended on Indian schools
teaching Natives a domestic life.
Richard Henry Pratt structured his Carlisle school in a similar fashion. For he believed, as
did Chalcraft, that instruction in industrious matters would help prepare his students for
civilization. In his book, Battlefield and Classroom, Pratt stressed the importance of vocational
training in the many letters he wrote to congressmen. Writing to Thaddeus Pound, a U.S. house
representative, Pratt expressed, “While here, removed from their tribes and placed in the midst
of civilization, the teaching is practical, all the surroundings help. The industrious farmer and
mechanic is in sight daily. The evidence that man must obtain his living by the sweat of his brow
is constantly before the children.”21 Pratt believed that Native Americans could easily be
educated through this education. Much emphasis was placed on this type of training for Pratt
thought a vocational education would inspire Natives into wanting to live according to EuroAmerican values. Pratt’s perspective was that this specific instruction would bring prosperity to
20
Edwin L. Chalcraft, Assimilation’s Agent, xxiv.
Richard H. Pratt Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964), 259.
21
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Native Americans. As he explained, “Properly fed, clothed, and well taught, as much
industrially as possible, would in four years send the children into a new life and destroy
savagery in this country.”22
Many boarding schools took the same course of action as Pratt and Chalcraft. In the
book To Change Them Forever, Clyde Ellis, an assistant professor of history at Elon College,
addresses the field of work for Native American men and women, observing that there was
“Manual industrial training for the boys, and domestic training for the girls.”23 The various
tasks Native American men and women had would complement one another to encourage life
in model homes on individually owned land. Industrial and domestic training, as Adams puts it,
consisted of “the boys working on the school farm, trying their hand at stock raising horses,
cattle, and sheep, and acquiring skills such as blacksmithing, carpentry, and harness making,
while girls were to be systematically trained in every branch of housekeeping.” 24 Men were to
be hard laborers, while the women were to take care of the house.
In her life story, Louise Sekaquaptewa explains the duties boy and girls had at the
Phoenix Indian School: “Besides sewing the girls were assigned to laundry and home-cleaning
details. The boys were put on Janitor work, caring for the premises and learning shop skills.” 25
The domestic training students received would reflect values that would be essential in the
process of becoming average land owning American citizens. Robert Trennert, a former
22
Richard H. Pratt. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 247.
Clyde Ellis, To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893-1920
(Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996), 10.
24
Adams, Education for Extinction, 30.
25
Helen Sekaquaptewa, Me and mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa (Tucson: University of Arizona Press),
135.
23
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professor at Arizona State University, expressed in his article on non reservation boarding
schools that “the federal government had committed itself to educating Indian girls in the hope
that women trained as good housewives would help their mates assimilate.”26 Native women
played a very important role in the assimilation process, because through a domestic education
they would value keeping the house clean and organized, to help their mates adjust to home
life. Boarding schools would use these different methods of vocational training to prepare
Native American boys and girls for successful citizenship in America, using the different skills
and values together to reinforce their dominant message. But were these techniques being
implemented successful in preparing Native Americans for American society?
In the early 1900s, Samuel Eliot, a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
traveled to the Northwest region of the United States to report on the conditions of Native
Americans. He traveled to multiple boarding schools and discovered that each school was
instructing Natives in matters of vocational training. Reporting on the Chemawa school in
Oregon, he explained, “The school curriculum is well planned….there are courses in agriculture,
blacksmithing and wagon making, carpentry and cabinet making, dairy work, domestic science,
engineering, printing, shoe and harness making, sewing and dress making, and trained
nursing.”27 Every aspect of the schools Eliot visited displayed a domestic education. Eliot had
also met with the superintendent of Indian affairs in the region at the time, Governor Isaac
Stevens. For Steven’s policy for civilizing Natives in the region had been, “To furnish to the
Indians the free schools needed to prepare them for citizenship, and give to them instruction in
26
Robert Trennert, “Indian Girls at Nonreservation Boarding Schools, 1878-1920,” The Western Historical
Quarterly 13, no. 3 (1982): 272.
27
Samuel, Eliot. Report Upon the Conditions and Needs of the Indians of the Northwest Coast. (Washington, D.C:
s.n., 1915), 23.
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the trade and industries by which they could earn a living.”28 Eliot had understood the basis for
assimilating Natives in the region through domestic work. But Eliot also took notice of the
effects of simply stressing a vocational education. Eliot explained, “Most of the Indians are still
very poor and very few have risen above the lower grades of an industrious society.”29 Eliot had
recognized that this system proved to be somewhat insufficient in preparing natives to be
successful, for many Natives, even though attending these boarding schools, still were
considered to be underprivileged in America’s society.
As most Indian Boarding schools started to open in the late 19th century, their first
objective was clear: seek to break communal tribal identity. The Superintendents of these
institutions believed that Native Americans must first and foremost break their tribal identity in
order to be integrated into American society. In an article on Indian Schools, Tsianina
Lomawaima explains guidelines used at boarding schools:
In the early 1900s, federal boarding schools forbade native language use and
religious practice, and they separated families. Policy makers calculated these
practices to achieve far-reaching social goals, to civilize young Indian people and
so draw them away from tribal identification and communal living. The
government’s ambitious goals of individual transformation was mobilized in the
boarding schools.30
Boarding schools forbade Native Americans from using tribal culture including their native
language. By banning the use of their Native language, policy makers of boarding schools felt
that Native Americans would have to adapt to a new identity. Thus, rules were put in place at
28
Ibid., 16.
Ibid., 17.
30
K. Tsianina Lomawaima, "Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority over Mind and
Body," American Ethnologist 20, no.2 (1993): 227
29
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these schools to prevent Native Americans from practicing their old customs. The schools put
these restrictions on Native Americans to promote individualism.
The transformation process would not be easy for most Native Americans, as many
were subjected to beatings or cruel tactics in order to incorporate these American ideals into
their character. The process of trying to instill individualistic values into Native American
children was appalling in many ways. Many Native Americans were subjected to harsh
consequences when they broke the rules that instructed them not to incorporate native
traditions in their training at boarding schools. Sally McBeth, a professor of Anthropology at
Moorehead State University, focused on Native Americans of western Oklahoma during the
early 20th century in Ethnic Identity and the Boarding School Experience of West-Central
Oklahoma American Indian. McBeth describes Native American experiences in boarding schools
in Oklahoma. All of the first-person accounts she included were from the Doris Duke oral
history collection. One of the accounts is from a Kiowa Native American woman who attended
the Sherman Institute boarding school in Riverside California in the early 20th century. She
explained how administrators used terrible acts of punishment on students:
They really discouraged you from speaking Kiowa, and often would paddle you if
you were caught speaking it….At Riverside they would make you put lye soap on
your toothbrush, and then would stand right there until you put it in your mouth
and brushed your teeth with it. The kids would end up with the whole inside of
their mouth raw.31
The display of this harsh punishment was immoral. Corporal punishment was severely
administered throughout these schools to discourage students from identifying themselves
31
As quoted in Sally Mcbeth, Ethnic identity and the boarding school experience of west-central Oklahoma
American Indians (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America), 105.
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with their Native culture. The result of cruel punishment at boarding schools was experienced
by many Native Americans. With discipline to this extent being carried out at many boarding
schools, many Natives could have been reluctant to stay or even attempt to adopt American
values.
In Me and Mine, Helen Sekaquaptewa testified about the punishment endured at the
Phoenix Indian School in 1915. Sekaquaptewa explained that “discipline was military style.
Corporal punishment was given as a matter of course; whipping with a harness strap was
administered in an upstairs room.”32 Churchill also indicated the relentlessness of the beatings
the students received by noting, “The severity of such beatings, sometimes undertaken with
fists, rubber hoses and even baseball bats. Just about everything the children did was subject to
discretionary punishment by their overseers.”33 Any display of tribal culture was subject to
discipline in boarding schools. This was a cruel method in trying to get students to abandon
their old culture and adopt something totally new. Boarding schools used many different
methods to break communal ideals in trying to bring out individuality in students.
Along with incorporating methods of severe punishment in promoting individualistic
values, institutions focused more on manual labor than actually educating Native Americans
academically. Many superintendents and administrators at these Indian Boarding schools did
not see Native Americans as fit for higher education, thus the curriculum of these institutions
would be remedial. Estelle Reel was appointed superintendent of Indian schools in 1898 by
President McKinley. Reel’s perspective on the intelligence of Native Americans was displayed in
32
Helen Sekaquaptewa, Me and mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa (Tucson: University of Arizona Press
1969), 136.
33
Churchill, Kill The Indian, Save The Man, 52.
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Away from Home by Tsianina Lomawaima. Lomawaima points out, “Estelle Reel believed that
Indians were ‘too dull’ ever to excel intellectually.”34 From this perspective, one could assume
that many superintendents took for granted Native American’s lack of intelligence. For if
Natives were perceived as being ‘too dull’ to learn, as Reel believed, then why would one invest
the time in teaching a Native American academically? This perspective many superintendents
held about natives learning capabilities was a major flaw in the boarding school system.
Another Native American student who attended the Riverside boarding school in the
early 20th century gives an example of its working conditions. He claimed that “We were
conditioned to work with our hands, not our minds. Academic subjects weren’t stressed at
all.”35 Rather than teaching Native Americans academic subjects to help them acquire a higher
education, most Indian Boarding schools preferred vocational training schools. One could
assume that the assimilation process being implemented was ineffective because of the
resistance to institutional methods of stressing domestic and vocational training over academic
education. Many students at these schools explained experiences of strenuous work.
Brenda Child and Tsianina Lomawaima explain the curriculum introduced at Indian
Boarding schools. “Boarding schools were organized on a half-day schedule that put students in
the classroom for only a few hours a day, and so-called academic instruction was largely
remedial and restricted to lower grades….Their curriculum stressed vocational and domestic
34
Margaret Archuleta, Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima Away from Home: American Indian Boarding
School Experiences, 1879-2000 (Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum, 2000),
35
As quoted in Sally Mcbeth, Ethnic identity and the boarding school experience of west-central Oklahoma
American Indians, 93.
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instruction.”36 From this perspective, Native Americans were not given a sufficient academic
education but rather an education that stressed domestic work. As a result most Native
Americans obtained only minimal education. Churchill cites research conducted by Jean
Barman, Yves Hébert, and D. McCaskill in which “They estimate that in the period between
1890 and 1950 at least 60 percent, and in some decades over 80 percent, of the children in
Federal Indian schools failed to pass grade three. They acquired no more than basic literacy.”37
Because most Indian boarding schools focused more on vocational training, many Native
Americans likely believed that hard work meant becoming American. This perspective could be
seen as stressful in terms of accepting this new way of life. If these Indian boarding schools
spent less time on hard labor and more time in the class room, maybe students would have
been more inclined to accept individualistic values of American life.
David Adams, in Education for Extinction, provides a testimony of a Navajo woman. She
expresses the tough labor endured at these schools:
Getting our industrial education was very hard. We were detailed to work in the laundry
and do all the washing for the school, the hospital, and the sanatorium….We canned
food, cooked, washed dishes, waited on tables, scrubbed floors, and washed windows.
We cleaned classrooms and dormitories. By the time I graduated from the sixth grade I
was a well trained worker….By the evening I was too tired to play and just fell asleep
wherever I sat down. I think this is why the boys and girls ran away from school; why
some became ill; why it was so hard to learn. We were too tired to study.38
With so much stress put on domestic training, many students resisted these schools to separate
themselves from the traumatic times experienced at boarding schools. The methods used in
36
Tsianina Lomawaima, Away from Home, 31.
Churchill, Kill The Indian, Save The Man, 50.
38
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 18751928 (Kansas: University of Kansas, 1995), 26.
37
Evans 20
trying to assimilate Native Americans were unsuccessful in many ways. Most schools forced
Native Americans into working long hours and, as a result, many of the students resisted,
rebelled, and were opposed to learning a vocational education.
The institutional theory was that Native Americans were not fit for professional work
but rather that Indians should be compliant to be assimilated through vocational and domestic
training. This process of assimilation proved to have failed in many ways. Native American
students might have been more willing to change if they had in fact been more effectively
educated academically. If Native Americans were not viewed as “savage” but rather unique
human beings capable of learning unlimited amounts of information, then academic instruction
could have been more widely accepted by Native Americans, thus supporting the assimilation
process more effectively. The boarding schools aimed to educate Native Americans by
individualizing them, cleansing them of their Native history, and emphasizing a domestic
training, but many Native Americans did not share the same viewpoints as their educators.
Luther Standing Bear, one of Pratt’s students, expresses his opinion on the education he
received at Carlisle:
So we went to school to copy, to imitate not to exchange languages and ideas, and not
to develop the best traits that had come out of uncountable experiences of hundreds
and thousands of years of living upon this continent. Our annals, all happenings of
human import, were stored in our song and dance rituals, our history differing in that it
was not stored in books, but in the living memory. So while the white people had much
to teach us, we had much to teach them, and what a school could have been established
on that idea. –Luther Standing Bear 39
39
Richard H. Pratt. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, xvi.
Evans 21
Luther Standing Bear felt that the educational system failed at keeping alive Native history.
Standing Bear viewed education as a means of social interaction, where different cultures could
learn from one another. Maybe if reformers and teachers at these boarding schools had
embraced the cultural differences as just that, differences, instead of viewing them as
inhumane and savage practices, a focus could have been on sharing and exchanging, not
eradicating and changing values and beliefs. As Standing Bear certainly respected parts of the
white man’s culture, reformers and superintendents of these schools should have respected
parts of the red man’s culture. For Standing Bear believed his boarding school experience not
only failed by stressing a vocational education, but also failed by suppressing Native American
culture. The boarding school system could have found better ways to adopt and incorporate
Native values into their curriculum in which Natives and whites could peacefully co-exist.
Joel Pfister also explained how “Not all students thought of indentured labor as
educational.”40 As a result, many students ran away and resisted training from these schools.
Many students simply did not want to accept the culture that was trying to be instilled into
their lives. Native Americans at these schools were subject to harsh working conditions without
a promise of an education that would help them adjust and assimilate into the American way of
life. If the emphasis had been made on academics and not primarily on labor, would these
schools have been more successful with the assimilation process? Tsianina Lomawaima
expresses how many boarding schools reflected training that was limited, introducing an
education that could only go so far in American society. “The schools vocational training
reflected federal intentions to fit Indian people into the lower economic sectors of American
40
Pfister, Individuality Incorporated, 46.
Evans 22
society as small scale farmers, manual and unskilled laborers, or domestic workers.” 41 Many
Indian boarding schools wanted to assimilate Native Americans, but at a level where their
independent citizenship would be substantially unimportant, thus providing an ineffective
education that could not effectively assimilate Native Americans into society.
The theory was that in order to completely assimilate Native Americans you would first
have to change their way of thinking, their belief systems, and their core values. Native
American culture was perceived to be savage and uncivilized. A culture steeped in
communalism would need to be broken apart and values of individualism instilled. Under the
Dawes Act, Native lands were redistributed into individual allotments and Native American
boarding schools were established to educate Native Americans on American principles. Indian
boarding schools sprung up across the nation providing instruction on vocational and domestic
training with an emphasis on individual work. They also served as institutions of cultural
genocide, stripping and cleansing Native Americans of their traditions, values, and beliefs.
Harsh punishments were awarded to those who attempted to continue to practice their old
ways. The redistribution of land among the Native Americans with goals of individual
ownership broke every ideal of communalism, however, reformers and superintendents failed
to understand that the principles of communalism among the Native Americans ran much
deeper than land ownership. Communalism was the mechanism of which the Native Americans
withstood hardship and as a community, survived.
The focus of these schools turned to manual labor as opposed to education, because of
the belief that Native Americans were not fit for higher education. As the schools limited
41
Tsianina Lomawaima, Away from Home, 34.
Evans 23
academic instruction to only a few hours or less per day, the bulk of the day was dedicated to
strenuous work activity. Students found themselves too exhausted to study and most were left
with little more than a 3rd grade education. The negative experiences from these boarding
schools and the lack of accepting native traditions, as well as not providing an appropriate
education academically was discouraging to Native American students, proving the boarding
school system to be unsuccessful at assimilation.
Evans 24
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Chalcraft, Edwin L., and Cary C. Collins. Assimilation's Agent: My Life as a Superintendent In the Indian
Boarding School System. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
Autobiography about the Life of Edwin Chalcraft. Chalcraft a Superintendent at multiple
boarding schools across the Northwest. His perspective on education was that Native Americans
needed to be able to learn a domestic education. His institutions emphasized vocational training
because Chalcraft believed land allotment correlated with the assimilation process. Thus Indians
must work the land in which they owned.
Eliot, Samuel A. Report Upon the Conditions and Needs of the Indians of the Northwest Coast.
Washington, D.C: s.n., 1915. Print.
Member of the Board if Indian Affairs who traveled the northwest to look at the
conditions of Native Americans. Great insight on the perspective of boarding schools during that
time period.
McBeth, Sally J. Ethnic Identity and the Boarding School Experience of West-Central Oklahoma American
Indians. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983.
Mcbeth’s testimonials from Native Americans were key in understanding how Native
Americans adapted to boarding schools. The interviews she displays gives deep emotion of how
Native Americans felt and expressed their opinions of these schools. Gives a first account
perspective, directly from students who attended the Indian boarding schools.
Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians:
Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1973), 260–271. Web. 8 Apr. 2011. <http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/>.
Through Richard Pratt’s Excerpt one can better understand the feeling and emotions of
superintendents who actually ran Indian boarding schools. Even though his view of Native
Americans was harsh, Pratt expressed that the colonization of Native Americans on reservations
was crippling them and the only way for them to become equal to whites was to live individually
and separately from the tribe.
Pratt, Richard H. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1964. Print.
One can get a great understanding of Pratt’s ideas on assimilation through his book.
Goes in-depth of the policies for teaching Native Americans at Carlisle. Also writes many letters
to congressmen in this book including Senator Dawes. Great book which gets into the boarding
school at Carlisle. Pratt writes many letters to the government explaining what he is trying to
accomplish at his school. Expresses the vocational track system and how the practical teaching
of domestic work must be taught.
Sekaquaptewa, Helen, and Louise Udall. Me and mine; the life story of Helen Sekaquaptewa. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1969.
Evans 25
The autobiography of the life of Helen Sekaquaptewa was a good insight on how
boarding schools were run. Helen not only expresses corporal punishment administered at
boarding but also she explains the different working environment for boys and girls. Her
perspective helps to uncover the daily routines of boarding schools.
Whitewolf, Jim, and Charles S. Brant. Jim Whitewolf: The Life of a Kiowa Apache Indian. New York: Dover
Publications, 1969.
Briefly read through the chapter where Jim Whitewolf attended Indian school. His
experience of hard manual labor illustrates how hard some of the Native Americans were
being worked at these boarding schools.
Secondary Sources
Adams, David Wallace. Education for extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience,
1875-1928. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Great secondary source that expressed the whole process of the Indian boarding schools.
Adams expressed how and why these boarding schools where started. His book shows every
aspect of the boarding school experience, and opens readers eyes to the harsh realities of some
of the techniques used at these schools.
Archuleta, Margaret, Brenda J. Child, and K. Tsianina Lomawaima. 2000. Away From Home: American
Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000. Phoenix, Arizona: Heard Museum, 2000.
Great resource in that it describes Native American boarding schools in great detail.
Through pictures and testimonies from people who attended these schools, this book explains
the vocational education Native Americans received. This book also shows viewpoints of
administrators of the schools, and how many believed Indians weren’t fit for an academic
education.
Churchill, Ward. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential
Schools. San Francisco: City Lights, 2004.
Great descriptive book which showed the assimilation process of Native Americans.
Churchill explains how many students resisted the education being taught to them. Churchill
perspective of these schools can be seen as too critical but sources he presented was helpful to
his main points.
Ellis, Clyde. To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 18931920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.
Briefly skimmed through the text to find sources that were relevant to research topic.
Frost, Linda. "Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West
(review)." Legacy. 25.1 (2008): 177-179. Print.
A brief review of Simonsen’s work, gives good input to the model home theory.
Evans 26
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina. "Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority over Mind
and Body". American Ethnologist 20, no. 2 (1993): 227-240.
In this scholarly article Lomawaima focuses on the goals of the Native American
boarding schools and how they sought to destroy tribal culture. She shows the methods used in
trying to destroy tribal identity and how the goals of these schools wanted to transform them
into individuals.
Pfister, Joel. Individuality Incorporated: Indians and The Multicultural Modern. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2004.
Pfister’s book introduced a great deal of historical background information on how
Native Americans came to be. His book is mainly of quoting others and providing lots of
evidence to show how the government wanted to assimilate Native Americans.
Simonsen, Jane E. "Object Lessons": Domesticity and Display in Native American Assimilation". American
Studies 43, no. 1 (2002): 75.
Great article review. Simonsen expresses how many reformers throughout America felt
that teaching Native Americans domestic work would help them become civilized. Author
explains how the Dawes Severalty Act was viewed as a main factor in the assimilation process.
Simonsen, Jane E. Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American
West, 1860-1919. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Print.
Book which expressed the importance of the Model Home and how this correlated with
the assimilation process. Simonsen poses some very good ideas in this secondary source.
Stremlau, Rose. "To Domesticate and Civilize Wild Indians: Allotment and the Campaign to Reform
Indian Families, 1875-1887." Journal of Family History. 30.3 (2005): 265-286. Print.
Great article which stresses the importance of the Dawes Act and how reformers
perceive its enactment. Also illustrates the importance of communal kinship ties for Natives.
Trennert, Robert A. "Educating Indian Girls at Nonreservation Boarding Schools, 1878-1920". The
Western Historical Quarterly 13, no. 3 (1982): 271-290.
Great article review which displayed the Native American women’s point of view in
boarding schools. He argued that in many cases Native American women were important in the
process of helping men assimilate more easily into American life