Indian Boarding Schools

Indian boarding schools were residential educational institutions designed to assimilate Native American children into the dominant American society by using a Western-style educational model while attempting to destroy all traces of Indianness in students. Many boarding schools were run by religious organizations, though beginning in the late 19th century, most were run by the federal government.

At the beginning of the 19th century, this education effort was still largely the domain of mission organizations, though the government set aside funds to support the efforts of these organizations beginning in 1819, with the Civilization Fund Act. Toward the end of the 19th century, however, the government became more directly involved in Western-style education among the Native American population, cutting much of its support and funding to religious schools in order to support its government network of schools.

There were two types of boarding schools: reservation and off-reservation. Reservation boarding schools were usually located at the government headquarters on the various Indian reservations. Normally, students spent nine months of the year in residence at the schools, and then returned to their families for the summer. Off-reservation boarding schools were located away from the reservations in order to isolate students from their home communities. Most of the famous boarding schools, such as Sherman, Haskell, Carlisle, Phoenix Indian School, and Chilocco, were offreservation boarding schools. Normally, students spent three to five years (or more) at an off-reservation school, without returning home. Although contact with parents or visits home occurred at some off-reservation boarding schools, it was unusual. In theory, the best students from the reservation boarding schools attended an off-reservation boarding school upon graduation.

Once a student progressed from a day school to his or her reservation boarding school, and finally graduated from one of the many off-reservation boarding schools, he or she would have received the equivalent of an elementary through high school education. The system seldom operated so smoothly. Many students entered off-reservation boarding schools with little or no prior education in the lower schools, and only a small minority of off-reservation boarding school students ever completed the highest levels of coursework.