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Audubon Technology & Communication Center Middle School, South 39th Street, Milwaukee, WI

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Audubon Technology & Communication Center High School, South 39th Street, Milwaukee, WI

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Audubon Technology & Communication Center High School, South 39th Street, Milwaukee, WI

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Hi, Azariel! Good work adding details to your map! Next time, be sure to include MLA citations (complete citations, not just part). Remember you can create citations easily with Scribbr or Citationmachine.net. Here's a playlist of resources https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9d3FXyUlOhoICzuJ7D1Qu3cebajXm_QR. Also, double-check your writing rules (Spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc.) before turning in your work. Finally, review assignment rubrics as you work so that you have the "recipe" for a Proficient or Advanced assignment. Good work overall.

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Keshena, WI St. Joseph's Indian Industrial School

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Keshena, WI St. Joseph's Indian Industrial School

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Author: Sarah volpenhein published on Milwaukee journal sentinel on august 19 2021
this school was founded in 1883 and it was a terrible experience because the school would purposely isolate the kids. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2021/08/19/history-10-wisconsins-native-american-boarding-schools/8183651002/

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The history of Native American boarding schools in the United States, including Wisconsin, has attracted new attention after hundreds of unm arked graves were discovered in Canada on the sites of former boarding schools for Indigenous children.

Hundreds if not thousands of Native youth are believed to have died from disease, neglect and other causes at U.S. government-funded schools.

At least 11 boarding schools for Native youth were in Wisconsin, most of them founded in the late 1800s. Thousands of Native children in Wisconsin went to those schools, part of a federal policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to assimilate Native youth into white society.

Many of the schools were government-funded and based off the model at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, whose founder Richard H. Pratt famously espoused, "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

The schools stripped Native American children of their language, culture and customs. Youth were discouraged or forbidden from speaking their Native languages and forced to speak English. Their long hair, an important part of their culture and identity, was cut short. Their traditional clothing was replaced with uniforms.
More:'Not in the history books': The dark history of Native American boarding schools is getting new attention in Wisconsin, U.S.
Here is a rundown of the boarding schools that were in operation in Wisconsin. This list was compiled through research by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Some of the schools have been written about or studied more extensively than others.

Lac du Flambeau boarding school

Founded in 1895, the boarding school was operated by the federal government on the Lac du Flambeau reservation.

Kelly Jackson, former tribal historic preservation officer of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, said that as a child, her grandmother spoke fluent Ojibwe. But after going to the boarding school, she felt she shouldn't pass on her native language.

"In her mind, and over those years of being educated, she was told that her language was basically going to be a negative thing for her children," Jackson said.

The children's days were strictly regimented, she said. They would spend half the day studying and the other half doing either domestic work, in the girls' case, or manual labor in the boys', she said.

Jackson, who interviewed survivors as part of an initiative to document the boarding school's history, described overcrowded conditions and substandard heating that contributed to disease and death among the students.

"They started sending children home on the train before they died at the school," Jackson said.

Many of the school buildings no longer exist, but a boys' dormitory was renovated by the tribe and now houses an exhibit with historical objects and photographs, as well as the tribe's historic preservation office and the Ojibwe language restoration program, Jackson said.

"I wanted to save this building," she said of the old dormitory. "I wanted it to become part of the American story."

Jackson said there needs to be "true recognition" from the federal government of the lasting effects the boarding school era had on Indigenous peoples' culture and well-being, as well as efforts to increase social services for Natives and revitalize Native languages.

Hayward Indian School

Founded in 1901, the school was mainly for children from the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in the northwestern corner of Wisconsin, but Native children from reservations around Wisconsin and Minnesota also were placed there.

In his 2009 thesis, then-University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student Titus Overturf wrote the students lived a military-style life, where strict schedules dictated most of their day and children were forced to adopt Christian names, wear military-style uniforms and cut their long hair.

Overturf also found that the school did a poor job of educating students, writing that academics "took a backseat" to the "civilization" process. School officials said year after year that the school needed more teachers, he wrote. In its early years, the school only had two or three teachers for more than 170 students.

On top of that, students would spend only half the day on schoolwork and the other half on training in a trade or agriculture for the boys and housekeeping for the girls. Overturf found that the trade instructors were unqualified and that students mostly learned by doing, to the extent that was possible.

"The Hayward school is a splendid example of things going in a direction in which they ought not to have gone," an inspector is quoted as having said.

Much of the students' labor - in the field, the barn, the kitchen and the sewing room - financially supported the school and helped keep the students fed and clothed, Overturf wrote.

"Students spent large amounts of time working for the school rather than learning from it," he wrote.

In addition, the Hayward school was "marked early on by inadequate medical care and a high mortality rate," wrote Bryan Rindfleisch, now an associate professor in history at Marquette University, in a 2011 article in the Wisconsin Magazine of History.

He wrote that the overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions, as well as substandard heating, sewage and ventilation systems, made it easier for disease to spread among the students. The students suffered outbreaks of tuberculosis and measles, among other infectious diseases.

In 1910, a measles epidemic swept through the student body, "confining 97 children to the deficient facilities and care of the boarding school hospital staff." In 1920, 10 Ojibwe were listed as dying from tuberculosis at the school, he wrote.

Lutheran Mission School

This boarding school was located outside Gresham, in Shawano County, and opened in the early 1900s, according to a presentation by Jolene Bowman, director of education and career services and vice president of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.

In the book "Indian Nations of Wisconsin" by Patty Loew, former student Dorothy Davids is quoted as saying: "They tried to erase us. ... They tried to make us into something else."

The book says Davids described herself as one of the luckier children whose grandfather would pick her up every Friday and take her home for the weekend. Other children, the book says, would stay at the mission for the whole school year, only returning home in the summers, if at all.

Davids described harsh discipline at the school, saying she was once whipped as punishment.

Still, in the book, Davids credits the school with teaching her fundamental skills, such as reading and writing. She later went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Not everyone's experience at boarding schools was negative. Some met their spouses or made lifelong friendships at the schools, including Bernice Miller Pigeon, also quoted in Loew's "Indian Nations of Wisconsin." She became best friends with a girl from Oshkosh.

"I never would have met her if it wasn't for the school," she was quoted as saying.

Bowman, the Stockbridge-Munsee education director, hopes that U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's initiative to investigate deaths at former boarding schools brings understanding and truth.

"I think healing begins with telling our stories, and that's why I think ... every citizen deserves the truth in our history, in our schooling, in our education," she said. "The more that's reviewed, the more they'll find. This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Wittenberg Indian School

This boarding school was established in the 1880s and was initially a Lutheran mission school. In 1895, it became a government, off-reservation boarding school. The school boarded children from several tribes, mostly from the Ho-Chunk and Oneida nations.

From 1899 through 1910, the school superintendent also acted as agent for the Ho-Chunk people, formerly known as Winnebago, in Wisconsin, according to the National Archives. In 1902, superintendent Axel Jacobson used that position to compel Ho-Chunk parents wary of the boarding schools to send their children to Wittenberg.

"We were able last fall, by persuasion and threats to withhold annuity money, to bring about two-thirds of the (Ho-Chunk) school population into the school," he wrote in a 1903 report to the commissioner of Indian affairs.

Even while run by the government, the school sought to instill Christian values in the children, believing that "true morality must be based upon Christianity" and that the Ho-Chunk people's ways and ceremonies were "barbarous," Jacobson wrote in 1896. The school held Sunday school throughout the year, and children would go to Christian religious services at nearby churches.

St. Joseph's Indian Industrial School

Founded in 1883, this Catholic mission school was located in Keshena, less than 50 miles northwest of Green Bay, on the Menominee reservation. By its location on the reservation, total isolation from the Native community was impossible. However, as Sarah Shillinger, who published a book on the school, wrote in a 1997 article in Ethnic Studies Review, school officials tried to create "a wall of social and cultural seclusion."

To try to isolate the students, the school severely limited home visitation, Shillinger wrote. Runaways were not uncommon. The students were punished if they spoke their native language, some survivors told Shillinger. One told Shillinger that school workers would put kerosene shampoo or soap in their mouth if they were caught.

Menominee Boarding School

This boarding school, also located in Keshena, was operated by the federal government. As many as 150 children, including from the Menominee, Oneida and Stockbridge-Munsee tribes, attended the school in some years, according to government reports.

This is an excerpt from a 1901 report by the school's superintendent to the commissioner of Indian affairs:

"During the year, the pupils have been allowed to visit their homes only every other Saturday, instead of once a week, as heretofore, and I propose another year to reduce this allowance to once each month. I do not think the children have ever come back, after going home, without the necessity of our sending for one or more of them, and sometimes our team has been out as often as three days in a week to bring in absent pupils."

Tomah Indian Industrial School

Founded in 1893, this school was one of the off-reservation boarding schools operated by the federal government in Wisconsin. Located in Tomah, about 40 miles east of La Crosse, it was one of the largest boarding schools in Wisconsin, at one time reporting average attendance of around 350 children, according to a 1929 report by the commissioner of Indian affairs.

Most of the students were from the Ho-Chunk Nation, though children from other tribes in Wisconsin also went to the school.

Tomah received young people from the ages of 6 to 21 and for most of its existence, only went to the eighth grade, according to "Workhouse of Acculturation: Tomah Indian Industrial School," a 1993 thesis by then-University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student Mary Lynn Burke.

Burke wrote that "the vast majority of students" never graduated. The school was criticized for overworking the boys and not giving students enough time in the classroom, she wrote. In 1922, the school faced questions when its records showed that about 60 students had averaged more than two years in a grade, according to Burke's paper.

If students wanted to visit home, parents had to prepay their travel expenses, both from and back to the school, Burke wrote. This kept many of the students at school over summer breaks.

Oneida Indian School

This boarding school was established in 1893 on the Oneida reservation and was run by the federal government.

In the book "Oneida Lives: Long-lost voices of the Wisconsin Oneidas," John Skenandore recalls how he lost one of his hands in an accident while working in the school's laundry room. He said he was injured when he tried to put a sheet through a wringer.

Children at the boarding schools were often detailed to work in the laundry. In the book, Skenandore wonders why he never received some kind of compensation for his injury.

"If I was only playing when this happened, I would not expect a thing, but I was put to work among the machinery at the age of twelve," he is quoted as saying.

Saint Mary's Catholic Indian Boarding School

This Catholic mission school was officially established in 1888 when it won a contract from the federal government to board 20 Native students at a rate of $27 per person per quarter, the school superintendent wrote in an 1889 report. It was located in Odanah on the Bad River reservation in northern Wisconsin.

Mary Annette Pember, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a national correspondent for Indian Country Today, has written extensively about her mother's experience at the school - including shaming and beatings - and the lasting trauma it had on her and her mother's life.

Boarding school at Bayfield

This Catholic mission school was located in Bayfield, near the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, in far northern Wisconsin along Lake Superior. In an 1889 report, the school's superintendent said that boarding school students would attend the day school with white children, which he hoped would help in "civilizing the children and entirely abolishing the use of the Chippewa language." In later reports, the school was referred to as Holy Family.

Winnebago Indian Mission School
Editor's note: This story was updated on Oct. 11 to reflect an 11th school that was learned about after the original publication. Sarah Volpenhein is a Report for America corps reporter who focuses on news of value to underserved communities for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Email her at svolpenhei@gannett.com. Please consider supporting journalism that informs our democracy with a tax-deductible gift to this reporting effort at JSOnline.com/RFA.
This school started in Black River Falls, but was moved about 1921 to Neillsville, about 50 miles southeast of Eau Claire, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. The boarding school was run by missionaries with what was then the Reformed Church in the United States. The Rev. Benjamin Stucki was the long-time director of the school.

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Wisconsin had at least 11 Native American boarding schools. Here's what to know about them.

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The history of Native American boarding schools in the United States, including Wisconsin, has attracted new attention after hundreds of unm arked graves were discovered in Canada on the sites of former boarding schools for Indigenous children. Hundreds if not thousands of Native youth are believed to have died from disease, neglect and other causes at U.S.

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Carlisle Barracks, Ashburn Drive, Carlisle, PA

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Carlisle Barracks, Ashburn Drive, Carlisle, the final boarding school to close

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Carlisle Barracks, Ashburn Drive, Carlisle, the final boarding school to close

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Author: barbara Landis
carlisle was the final native american boarding school to close but the effects and legacy will live on for a while. https://home.epix.net/~landis/histry.html

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Note: I use the term "Indian" throughout this article to identify the peoples of the various autochthonous nations within the U.S. borders,
who were affected by and recruited for the Indian School experiment,
in keeping with the written accounts of the historic period during the school's existence.

Student body assembled on the Carlisle Indian School Grounds.
Photo courtesy of Carlisle-www.army.mil

The story of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School begins with a brief introduction to its founder. Richard Henry Pratt spent eight years (1867-1875) in Indian Territory as an officer of the 10th Cavalry, commanding a unit of African American "Buffalo Soldiers" and Indian Scouts. During this time, he was stationed at Ft. Sill, OK, 60 miles east of the site of the Battle of the Washita where Black Kettle (Cheyenne) was killed in 1867.

Pratt came into contact with Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapaho who had been placed on reservations in the area of the Red River near what is now the Texas and Oklahoma borders. He, his scouts and freed slave soldiers, participated in the many campaigns to keep the Indians on the reservations and away from the encroaching settlers. But Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors continued with their raiding parties in search of game and buffalo. Scant provisions and lack of supplies on the reservations made it impossible for the Indian people to thrive, forcing such raids.

Constant complaints about inadequate government rations brought no relief. After filing numerous reports describing rancid beef, inferior and diseased livestock, poor grains and lack of provisions, Pratt developed a distrust and loathing of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) which endured throughout his military service. This deep hostility began while he was administering supplies on the reservations and eventually led to his resignation as the superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School in 1904.

Frustrated by unsuccessful attempts to 'bring in' the most recalcitrant of the 'hostiles', the United States instituted a plan to incarcerate them. In April, 1875, seventy-two warriors from the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and Caddo Nations, were rounded up for exile to St. Augustine, Florida. There they would be held hostage in exchange for the ransom of the good behavior of their kinfolk with Richard Henry Pratt as their jailer. These men were shackled and transported by rail to Ft. Marion Prison far from their homelands to a hot, humid climate unfamiliar to them.

Shortly after their arrival, Pratt removed the prisoners' shackles, cut their hair and issued them military uniforms. The Indians were expected to polish their buttons and shoes and clean and press their trousers. After a time, they were organized into companies and given instruction in military drill. Eventually, their military guards were dismissed and several of the most trusted Indian prisoners were chosen to serve as guards.

Local women, curious about these prisoners, volunteered to teach them to read in exchange for archery lessons. The Indians were given art supplies to illustrate on paper, their early days as buffalo hunters. With colored pencils, they drew many beautiful pictographic ledger drawings, over a thousand of which survive today. They collected, polished, and sold sea beans as trinkets. They were eventually given the freedom to leave the fort unchaperoned and some found employment as day laborers in the neighboring communities.

St. Augustine in the 1870's was the vacation spot of choice for New Englanders traveling by steamboat down the East Coast. Here Pratt came in contact with several benefactors who expressed an interest in the welfare of the Indians who were beginning to resemble white men. During this era, Pratt's philosophy of Indian education began to take shape.

Quaker and missionary reformers explored new methods to 'civilize' the Indians. They were uncomfortable with extermination policies and began to formulate ideas of assimilation. These methods appealed to Pratt, who was already experimenting with his Ft. Marion charges. He agreed that to 'civilize' the Indian would be to turn him into a copy of his God-fearing, soil-tilling, white brother. By the end of their term of incarceration (1878), Pratt had convinced 17 prisoners to further their education by enrolling in the Hampton Institute in Virginia.

Hampton was founded in 1868 by Samuel Chapman Armstrong. It was a government boarding school for African-American children designed to educate by training "the head, the hand, and the heart". Its goal was to train and return them to their communities to become leaders and professionals among their people. This fit Pratt's developing philosophies about assimilation, with the exception of returning to community. He began to formulate a model similar to Hampton - but exclusively for Indians.

In an address to a convention of Baptist ministers in 1883 Pratt wrote: "In Indian civilization I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked." So Pratt began his aggressive and relentless quest for a school of his own to begin his work. He lobbied Washington; he contacted his wealthy supporters in the East and convinced the powers that be that his experiment would be a success. He would take Indian children from the reservations, remove them to a school far away from tribal influences, and transform them.

RECRUITING THE FIRST STUDENTS

By mid 1879, Pratt had secured the permission of the Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz, and Secretary of the War Department McCrary to use a deserted military base as the site of his school. Carlisle Barracks in central Pennsylvania was chosen. It was a former cavalry post that had been closed after a petitioning campaign by the local community found the Sunday parades disruptive to their church going activities. Sensing potential trouble from the townspeople, Pratt approached the town fathers of Carlisle for approval for his school and was able to get the support of the community which provided him with favorable petitions.
In September 1879 - Pratt, accompanied by Miss Mather, a former teacher and interpreter from St. Augustine, headed to Dakota Territory to recruit the students he had been instructed to enroll in his new Carlisle school. These were to be children from Spotted Tail's Rosebud reservation and Red Cloud's Pine Ridge Agency. Pratt's instructions were to recruit 36 students from each reservation.

He arrived at Rosebud first to meet with Spotted Tail, Milk, Two Strike and White Thunder. Spotted Tail was skeptical. He was reluctant to send his and others' children to be trained in the ways of the men who had violated their treaties and trespassed in their Black Hills. But Pratt was persistent and urged Spotted Tail to reconsider, using the argument that had his people been able to read the white man's words, the treaties would have been better understood and such violations might not have occurred.

Pratt illustrated the problem of communicating such important decisions by insisting they could not speak in confidence, just the two of them - owing to Spotted Tail's inability to speak the white man's language. It was necessary for an interpreter to translate the words spoken, and perhaps the interpreter was not truly conveying the real meaning of their words. It seems not to have occurred to Pratt that had he been able to speak the language of Spotted Tail, greater understanding might have taken place.

Pratt also predicted that no matter what happened, the white man would keep coming and coming and that Spotted Tail's people must "be able to meet him face to face and take care of themselves and their property without the help of either an interpreter or an Indian agent." Spotted Tail consulted with his tribal headmen and after a long time, returned with his consent. "It is all right. We are going to give you all the children you want. I am going to send five, Milk will send his boy and girl, and the others are going to send the rest."

After persuading Spotted Tail, Pratt headed west for Pine Ridge. There he met with Red Cloud, American Horse, Young-Man- Afraid-of-His-Horses and other leaders. He told them of Spotted Tail's consent and got the approval of the Pine Ridge head men. Red Cloud had no children to send, but sent a grandson. American Horse sent three children. All in all, 82 children from both agencies were sent to Carlisle after medical examinations determined their fitness.

While Pratt was securing the children from Dakota, two of his former prisoners were recruiting potential students from their nations. Both Etadleuh (Kiowa) and Okahaton (Cheyenne) agreed to find more children to send to the first off reservation boarding school for Indian children.

Luther Standing Bear was among the first wave of students to travel to Carlisle. He described the journey east in his book, "My People, the Sioux". He talked of traveling on a moving house - his first experience on a railroad car. As they pulled into stations along the way, crowds of curious people peered into the trains, anxious for a look at these 'wild' children. Pratt had telegraphed Chicago of their stopover and the newspapers had publicized the journey. This was only three years since the Battle of the Greasy Grass in which Custer had been killed.

The group arrived at Carlisle in the middle of the night, October 6, 1879. They stepped off the platform to be greeted by hundreds of townspeople, welcoming them and accompanying them to the army post. But when Pratt, Miss Mather and the children arrived at the empty military post, tired and hungry, there were no provisions awaiting them. No bedding, no food, no clothing - none of the requested necessities. Once again, Pratt had been thwarted by the BIA. The children slept on the floor in their blankets.

SCHOOL LIFE

Teachers were waiting at the school to begin their work. Pratt had hired a full complement of staff, both for academic and industrial instruction. They had been carefully selected and were ready to begin as soon as the children arrived. Pratt left immediately to collect the second wave of students - the Cheyenne and Kiowa recruited by his former prisoners. During his absence, Mrs. Pratt and several teachers took charge of the children to begin the process of assimilation. One of their first responsibilities was to hire a barber to cut the children's long hair. For the Lakota, the cutting of hair was symbolic of mourning and there was much wailing and lamenting which lasted into the night.
Upon arrival of the second wave of Cheyenne and Kiowa children, the requested provisions had still not arrived but for the least important item - an organ. The children were housed in dormitories and classes began immediately. The school was structured with academics for half day and trades, the other half. Half the group learned reading, writing and arithmetic in the mornings, and carpentry, tinsmithing, blacksmithing for the boys, or cooking, sewing, laundry, baking, and other domestic arts for the girls in the afternoons. The other half learned their trades in the mornings and academics in the afternoons.

School life was modeled after military life. Uniforms were issued for the boys, the girls dressed in Victorian-style dresses. Shoes were required, as no moccasins were allowed. The boys and girls were organized into companies with officers who took charge of drill. The children marched to and from their classes, and to the dining hall for meals. No one was allowed to speak their native tongue.

Discipline was strictly enforced - military style. There was regular drill practice and the children were ranked, with the officers in command. A court system was organized in the hierarchical style of a military justice system, with students determining the consequences for offenses. The most severe punishment was to be confined to the guardhouse. The old guardhouse, built by Hessian prisoners during the Revolutionary War, still stands.

An ambitious printing program was developed at the school and the school newspapers were popular among the local folk, available at the post office and by subscription throughout the country. This became a small source of income to supplement funding by the government which was always inadequate. The publications also provided Pratt with a platform from which to publicize his experiment and perpetuate his views on education.

Funding was also secured from the benefactors who had tracked Pratt's activities since his days at Ft. Marion. Among his supporters were former abolitionists and Quakers who were eager to be involved in his success and who often visited the school. They were treated to special programs - concerts and dramas, written and performed by the students. Brochures for these programs were printed at the school and publicity for special programs were spread via the school newspapers.

ADJUSTMENT AND RESPONSE
Zitkala Sa (Dakota) wrote about her early experiences after arriving at a boarding school in Indiana. She described the trauma of having to wear hard, tight fitting shoes and confining dress instead of moccasins and loose shift. She tells about hiding under her bed trying to escape the strict matron's domination and how the matron and the other girls tried to find her. It took her some time to adjust to her new school life. But she did, became an accomplished writer and the darling of the New England literary circle in the late 1800's. She taught at the Carlisle school for a few years, but didn't see eye to eye with Pratt. After some of her works were published, Pratt used the school newspapers to publicly criticize her for her story,"The Soft-Hearted Sioux", in which a young man returns to his reservation unable to effectively participate in tribal life after his exposure to the boarding school experience.
The earliest newspapers featured letters from the students written to their families back home. In September 1882, "THE SCHOOL NEWS" printed the following from Harry Shirley to his father:

"A HAPPY LITTLE CADDO BOY WHO CAME LAST MONTH, WRITES HIS FIRST LETTER HOME. My Dear Father: - I thought I would write you a few lines and I like the place very much and there was one Negro boy got killed on the railroad and we have a very nice farm and cold water to drink and would send my Bow and arrows and how is my little pony getting along I would like to know how are you getting and would please send me some money and we have a great many boy and is great many girls and the boys have a small house I wish they play the band and I have a bed to myself. And I am coming home in two years from now if Capt. Pratt will let me and how are you getting along with the big house and will you tell me in your letter when you write and we got at Carlisle on Thursday and when we got here I did not like the place but since I have being here two or three days I have got used to the place and I like it very well but when we got I felt very home sick and be sure and send my bow and some spike arrows. And we go to church every Sunday. And I have a blue suit to where and there was one Shyenne boy shot himself with a pistol and how is Mrs.Cornet folks getting along Mr. and Mrs. Blankshiy folks getting and the boys have a nice green lawn in which play Kicking a football and how are you getting along with your stock."
Pratt lobbied politicians for support for the school. He often visited Washington or entertained dignitaries at Carlisle. One of his early supporters was Senator Henry Dawes, author of the General Allotment Act, the US government policy which resulted in the loss of more than 40% of tribal lands. Pratt's assimilationist policies for education for Indians coupled with Dawes' checkerboarding allotment legislation formed a perceived potential solution for the "Indian Problem" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In addition to the academic and industrial programs, music and art classes were taught at Carlisle. According to Standing Bear's book, My People, the Sioux, when the first students were given paper and pencils, they pulled their blankets over their heads and began to draw pictographic images depicting their lives as they remembered from their days on the plains. These drawings represent the imagery of buffalo hunting, courting ceremonies, special ceremonies and everyday village scenes. There are three Harry Shirley drawings among these drawings. This is the same Harry Shirley (Caddo) who wrote the letter home asking about his little pony. About 50 of these early drawings are extant.

Music was also an important part of the Carlisle curriculum. Every student took music classes and many received private instruction. A band leader was hired, and the Carlisle Indian School band became a popular parade addition. The band performed at football games and traveled to expositions and competitions. It was featured at every Presidential Inaugural Parade during the life of the school. Dennison Wheelock (Oneida) became the first Indian band leader and after his tenure, his brother James took up the baton.

Choral music was also encouraged and soon the school had several choirs. Regular "entertainments" were held at the school. Visitors were often treated to musical performances and some old-timers still recall the Indian School concerts.

In 1900, Richard Pratt surveyed his teachers and asked them to compare their students to the non Indian students they had taught before coming to Carlisle. Their comments were published in the February 1900 issue of "The Red Man" (school paper). Among these comments:

"...they have been systematically taught self-repression. They are also close observers and render nature with truth; Miss S. commends the Indian's 'true eye', also regards them as 'more patient and painstaking than white children.' She was struck at first with the marked stillness, the 'reposeful feeling' in a room full of Indian pupils. In the natural sciences, and in civil government - a favorite study - they are more at home. Miss W., teacher of the Juniors, declares that her pupils show superior ability in solving for themselves problems in physics and physical geography. She thinks that, 'with sufficient training, some will be found to have special gifts for original research.' Discipline is universally admitted to be easier than in white schools.. This may be explained partially by the fact that here the children are under continuous discipline, from which there is no appeal. The problems quite different in a reservation day school. The easier control was attributed by some, however, to the Indians' 'patience' and 'lack of nervous irritability,' while others thought 'they are more in earnest than the average white child - they really want to learn.' It was Prof. B's opinion that while we found here many unevenly developed characters and strong idiosyncrasies, owing to a lack of systematic home training, yet 'he had seen more genuine beauty of character among these Indian children than among any others he had ever known'. 'They seem', he said, 'to be remarkable keen judges of human nature. I believe that we have lost some things by civilization - among them this native unconscious keenness. I do not suppose they formulate it to themselves at all, but instinctively, as it were, these children seem to size you up with wonderful quickness and accuracy'. 'If they possess one quality', he added, 'that is all but universal, among them and in which they are our superiors, it is that of personal dignity'.
Several of the teachers found that the older girls were self-conscious and embarrassed by the presence of the boys. It was on that account, said one, that the boys excelled in recitation, while the girls usually did better written work. It is hard work to persuade an Indian girl, in school for the first time, to stand up and recite at all in a class with boys. It is contrary to all their ideas of modesty and propriety. Miss S., who teaches vocal music, says that 'the Indians have a strong sense of rhythm, but are deficient in ear. The male voices are rather better than the female, and there is an unusually large proportion of tenors, owing, perhaps to the habit of singing in unison, with the men singing falsetto, in tribal music.'"

Pine Ridge Sioux children of American Horse and High Wolf: Bear Don't Scare, Lone Hill, Singer, Frank Twiss, Daisy Glade, Lucy Day, Mary Bridgeman
Courtesy of Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center

Maggie, a Sioux girl, dictated this letter to an interpreter for publication:

"Carlisle Barracks, PA, Jan. 24,1881.

My dear father: AMERICAN HORSE:- I want to tell you something, and it makes me feel very glad. You tell me that my brother is married and that makes me feel very glad. My cousins, and brothers, and I are all very well, at this Carlisle School. We would like to see you again. I am always happy here, but lately I sometimes feel bad, because you tell me that my grandfather is getting very old. Tell me how my brothers are. I would like to see my brother's wife's picture. Tell my brother Two-Dogs to write to me again. Miss Hyde's father died two weeks ago, and I am very sorry. I remember all of my friends. If you don't answer my letter soon, I'll feel bad. I don't always answer your letter soon, but it is because I can not write. As soon as I get so that I can write myself, I will write as often as I can. Tell Brave Bull that Dora (Her Pipe) has been a little sick, but is most well now. Tell if my grandfather is well. If he gets sick tell me. You wrote to my cousin Robert and told him that you had a house to live in, and lots of pigs and cows and such things, and I was very glad. You've got a white man's house to live in now and I am anxious to learn all that I can, so that I can come home by and by and live with you. I hear that they have a big school out there and it makes me very glad. If you can, come again, and tell me if you can come again, when. I want to tell you that some more girls and boys came here. Twenty-five. Fifteen of them are girls. There are a great many of us here now, and Capt. Pratt is very kind to us. That is all I want to say now. Give my love to all of my friends. Your daughter, Maggie Stands-Looking."

Maggie Stands Looking was among the first wave of children brought from Rosebud. She was the daughter of American Horse. According to Pratt in his book, "Battlefield and Classroom," Maggie had difficulty adjusting to the demands of her new lifestyle at Carlisle . She once slapped Miss Hyde, the matron, when Hyde insisted that Maggie make her bed every day and keep her room clean. Instead of retaliating, Miss Hyde stood her ground and Maggie acquiesced.

THE OUTING SYSTEM

Like most of the Carlisle students, Maggie was enrolled in the Outing Program. [See 1907 Outing Contract, between student William Peters (Chippewa) and patron, Isaiah Gibble. ] Instead of returning the Indian children to their families during the summer months, the detribalizing process was continued by placing them for hire with non Indian families. After her arrival to her country home, Maggie wrote this letter to the Superintendent:

"Dear Captain Pratt: What shall I do? I have been here two weeks and I have not bathe. These folks have no bath place. Your school daughter, MAGGIE STANDS LOOKING"
Pratt advised her to do as he had done on the frontier...[after] filling a wash basin with water and "rubbing myself well, have had a bath that made me feel as good as jumping into a river." He signed his letter - "Your friend and school father," R.H. Pratt.
Pratt often referred to himself as the school father. He wrote in the June 16, 1893 Indian Helper: "George Kirochuma writes that he has a very nice country home and that the 'folks are all kind to me all the time.' Mr. R. with whom George lives says he cannot spare him to go home, and George feeling that he is in a place where he is wanted says he does not want to go. This is the secret of the solution of the Indian question, and there is no other."

For the farmer, businessman, or craftsman, the Outing System provided a source of cheap labor in the home and on the farm. Some children remained with families year-round and went to the local public schools with their non-Indian siblings. This, to Pratt, was the ultimate means of acculturation.

"SOMETHING NOBLER AND HIGHER"

Pratt was driven by his strong desire to see the Indian become an imitation of the white man. This article from the March 18, 1898 school newspaper, the "Indian Helper" embodies Pratt's assimilationist philosophy. This is his response to a letter asking for Indian stories:
WANTS INDIAN STORIES "'I am inclined to say that the 'HELPER' is a good little paper, but I would think it would interest its readers more if at least one of the inside pages contained some interesting stories or would describe the Indian a little better by telling how he is tamed and brought up,' writes one of our Eastern subscribers. We thank our friend for his interest and kindly suggestion. The author of the letter evidently has the idea of Indians that Buffalo Bill and other showmen keep alive, by hiring the reservation wild man to dress in his most hideous costume of feathers, paint, moccasins, blanket, leggins, and scalp lock, and to display his savagery, by hair lifting war-whoops make those who pay to see him, think he is a blood-thirsty creature ready to devour people alive. It is this nature in our red brother that is better dead than alive, and when we agree with the oft-repeated sentiment that the only good Indian is a dead one, we mean this characteristic of the Indian. Carlisle's mission is to kill THIS Indian, as we build up the better man. We give the rising Indian something nobler and higher to think about and do, and he comes out a young man with the ambitions and aspirations of his more favored white brother. We do not like to keep alive the stories of his past, hence deal more with his present and his future."
Pratt is often quoted as saying "Kill the Indian, save the man".
Of the 10,000+ Indian children who attended the Carlisle school over its 39 year life span, most returned to the reservation. Some of the returned students, much to Pratt's dismay, joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Pratt disliked the Wild West shows and was upset that he was forced to share exhibition space with Cody at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Proud of the fine displays recognizing the stellar accomplishments of his Indian students, Pratt railed against the exploitation of Indians for show.

Enrollment at the Indian School began to swell as more and more nations' children were recruited. The original group of 82 grew to yearly averages of 1,000 students, necessitating more living and classroom space. The students built an administration building, a gymnasium for athletics, shops for the industrial training, and a chapel for worship on the grounds.

A cemetery was also needed.

The Carlisle Indian School Cemetery

At the Carlisle school, as on the reservations, the health of many Indian people was in peril particularly after European contact. Some students were stricken with tuberculosis or smallpox. Others could not cope with the severe stress of separation from family and tribe. Most of the children who became ill were sent back home to their families, but some did pass away at the school and are buried there.

From Luther Standing Bear's book, Land of the Spotted Eagle, we hear the stories of an Indian informant who wrote about the deaths at Carlisle. He wrote about the responsibilities of a challenged youth, determined to make his family proud by braving the unknown, anticipating the possibility of never returning. His fears may have been exaggerated in their concerns about being killed, but the dread faced by his relatives and friends back home were realized in the numbers of Rosebud Sioux children buried in Indian Cemetery at Carlisle.

During the first five years of the Carlisle experiment, at least ten burials were of deceased children enrolled from Spotted Tail's Rosebud Agency. Three of the girls and two of the boys had traveled to school with the fifteen-year-old Luther. Their ages ranged from twelve to eighteen years. Two of these children who had arrived October 6, 1879 also passed away on the same day - fourteen months later.

"It was a sad and mysterious coincidence by which two of our pupils were taken from us by death on the night of the 13th of December, both of them being from the same agency and the same band of Sioux.
ERNEST, Chief White Thunder's son, was sent to the hospital in October to receive treatment for a slight sore throat. The applications being disagreeable he would not submit to them. He rejected not only medicine but nourishment, so that he became so weak and exhausted that when toward the latter part of his illness he was willing to recover, the most strenuous efforts proved powerless to save him. He was the only son of his father who was most anxious he should become an educated, useful man.
MAUD, (Little Girl) the daughter of Chief Swift Bear, was a bright, impulsive, warm-hearted girl, much loved by her school mates. She came to the Training School suffering from diseased lungs, and so had not strength to resist pneumonia which seized her. She was the first girl to die here, and the first Sioux out of more than ninety connected with the school.
Funeral services were conducted by Professor Lippincott, and the double burial is one which will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
EADLE KEATAH TOH., Vol. 1 No. 3, p. 3. December 1880.

White Thunder was among the very first tribal head men Pratt visited to recruit children. The chief agreed to send a son and daughter to Carlisle, as did Milk, Spotted Tail, and others from the first group from the Rosebud. Pratt's letter of December 13, 1880, to White Thunder informing him of his son's illness, contradicts the obituary published after the boy's death. In the letter, he assured the father that the boy had been fortified with good food and that Ernest's friend, Robert American Horse, was stationed at his side to care for him.
Two days later, Pratt sent the following letter to Chief White Thunder:

My dear Friend,
Yesterday when I wrote you I told you that I would write to you when we buried your son and tell you all about it because I know you want to know that we did what was right.
I had them make a good coffin and he was dressed in his uniform with a white shirt and collar and necktie. He had flowers around him that some of the ladies brought for the white people love to get flowers for their friends who are buried. Six of the Sioux boys who were Ernest's good friends carried the coffin into the chapel and then the people sang about the land where people's spirits go when they are dead. The minister read from the good book and told all the teachers and the boys and girls that some day they would have to die too. He told them they should think a great deal about it and they must be ready to die because none of the teachers or scholars could tell when the time would come for them to die.
Then he prayed to the Great Spirit we call God. He prayed for you and for the other friends of your son that the Great Spirit would take away all your sorrow.
Then they let all the boys and girls go and look once more at their friends, because Chief Swift Bear's daughter had died on the same night that your son did, and we buried them at the same time.
The teachers and boys and girls cried a great deal because their hearts were sad. After that all the people walked down to the graveyard slowly and then put the coffins in the graves and the minister said more words and prayed again to God and then we filled the graves up, just the way our people always do.
My friend my heart is heavy when I write to you about your son but I want you to learn about the good book and what it says. That was the best thing we taught your son while he was alive.
I shall not forget you my friend, and I hope your heart will always be good toward me.
I look upon this detachment of children away from your people somewhat as you would look upon a party sent out to gather a quantity of buffalo meat or even sent out to make war upon some other people or to capture horses from some other people. You know how that is, my friend, how that very often there are some who never come back and such is the course of things in this life. We must expect death to come to some of us in a good cause as well as in a bad cause.
I find that I have two pictures of Ernest which I think you will like to have.
Your friend,
R. H. Pratt,
Lieut.
Despite his passing in December 1880, Ernest White Thunder's photograph continued to be advertised for purchase in the April 1881 Eadle Keatah Toh.
The deaths of the relatives of Swift Bear and White Thunder on the same day, were of particular concern back home at the Rosebud Agency. Illnesses contracted at boarding schools, or brought to school from home communities were the typical communicable diseases so prevalent at the boarding schools: tuberculosis, trachoma, measles, pneumonia, mumps and influenza. "Every off-reservation school had its own graveyard."

Of the 192 native American Indian children buried in the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery from more than three dozen nations, the Apache represent the greatest number.

When Geronimo was arrested and sent to Ft. Pickens, Florida, the Chiricahua Apache women and children were sent to St. Augustine to the Ft. Marion prison. Conditions there were unspeakable. Food was scarce, disease rampant, and there was terrible overcrowding.

In 1886, Pratt traveled to the fort and chose 62 of the older Apache children to be removed to Carlisle. Many of these children were sent to Pennsylvania against the wishes of their grieving parents, who protested their departure, trying to hide them. Asa Daklugie was among this group along with the sons of Chatto, the scout who had helped General Crook convince Geronimo to surrender. Geronimo's son, Chappo was also sent with these children. One-fourth of the graves in the Carlisle Indian School cemetery hold the remains of these Apache children. Chatto's son Horace is among them.

Geronimo visited Carlisle en route to Washington for the inaugural parade of Teddy Roosevelt in 1905. He and head men representing several nations - American Horse and Hollow Horn Bear (Lakota), Little Plume (Blackfoot), Buckskin Charlie (Ute), and Quanah Parker (Comanche) rode on horseback through the streets of Carlisle, dressed in regalia. These six men addressed the students of the school, with Geronimo speaking the following words recorded in the "Carlisle Arrow",
March 9, 1905:

"My friends: I am going to talk to you a few minutes, listen well to what I say.
You are all just the same as my children to me, just the same as if my children are going to school when I look at you all here. You are here to study, to learn the ways of white men, do it well. You have a father here and a mother also. Your father is here, do as he tells you. Obey him as you would your own father. Although he is not your father he is a father to you now.
The Lord made my heart good, I feel good wherever I go, I feel very good now as I stand before you. Obey all orders, do as you are told all the time and you won't get hungry. He who owns you holds you in His hands like that and He carries you around like a baby. That is all I have to say to you."

Chiricahua Apache's from Geronimo's band as they arrived in Carlilsle in 1887 and after the assmimilation process began to take hold.

Hugh Chee, Bishop Eatennah, Ernest Hogee, Humphrey Escharzay, Samson Noran, Basil Ekarden, Clement Seanilzay, Beatrice Kiahtel, Janette Pahgostatum, Margaret Y. Nadasthilah, Fred'k Eskelsejah. November 4, 1886

Samson Noran, Fred'k Eskelsejah, Clement Seanilzay, Hugh Chee, Ernest Hogee, Margaret Y. Nadasthilah, Humphrey Escharzay, Beatrice Kiahtel, Janette Pahgostatum, Bishop Eatennah, and Basil Ekarden. Four months later

Text Copyright (c) 1996 Barbara Landis.
For more information about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, emailBarbara Landis

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Carlisle Indian Industrial School History

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Note: I use the term "Indian" throughout this article to identify the peoples of the various autochthonous nations within the U.S. borders, who were affected by and recruited for the Indian School experiment, in keeping with the written accounts of the historic period during the school's existence.

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Author: graham lee brewer, published on nbcnews.com on May 11, 2022
so the united states had the most native American boarding schools. and with that comes a high body count it has been estimated by "Preston McBride, an Indian boarding school historian and a Comanche descendent McBride" might be as high as 40,000, and as he says in the article " almost every school had a cemetery". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/indian-boarding-school-deaths-interior-department-report-rcna28284

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The report identified more than 500 child deaths after examining records for 19 of the facilities, a small share of the total number of schools identified. "As the investigation continues, the Department expects the number of recorded deaths to increase," it states. The number is significantly less than some estimates, which are in the tens of thousands.

"The United States doesn't even know how many Indian students went through these institutions - let alone how many actually died in them," said Preston S. McBride, an Indian boarding school historian and a Comanche descendent. McBride has found more than 1,000 student deaths at the four former boarding schools he has studied, and estimates the overall number of deaths could be as high as 40,000.

"Basically every school had a cemetery," he said. "There are deaths at or deaths because of virtually every single boarding school."

Those deaths were the result of everything from illness to abuse, McBride said, based on his review of historical records, including letters written by students, parents and administrators. Getting to the true number would take a significant amount of time and research, McBride said. "I think we have a long way to go."

The report notes the investigation will likely "reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands."

The Interior Department's investigation located 53 gravesites across the country - a number that is also expected to increase - but did not name the schools to prevent "well-documented grave-robbing, vandalism, and other disturbances to Indian burial sites."

Haaland, a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead the department, announced the investigation last June. It is intended to provide a basis for how the U.S. government will reckon with its troubling history by researching and locating potential gravesites, repatriating children's remains and offering resources and access to the affected Indigenous communities to address the ongoing impact of the boarding schools.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Bryan Newland, who led the investigation and is a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe), said most of the staff who worked on the report for the department are Indigenous.

Their work has helped place the Indian boarding school system in its historical, legal and policy context, he said

"It's been an exhausting and emotional effort for them to confront this horror on a daily basis to bring this information to you," Newland said at the news conference, pausing several times to collect himself. "This has left lasting scars for all Indigenous people. There's not a single American Indian, Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian in this country whose life hasn't been affected by these schools."

Beginning in the early 1800s, the U.S. government stole Native American children from their communities and forced them to attend Indian boarding schools, where they were stripped of their languages and traditions, given English names and trained to perform military drills.

The report found 408 schools in 37 states that were established from 1801 to 1969 and received funding or other forms of support from the federal government. Half of them also received support from religious institutions or organizations, "including funding, infrastructure, and personnel," the report found. Many of the religious institutions were also paid by the government for each Indigenous child they placed in the boarding school system.

The report found that the U.S. government "targeted" Indigenous children as part of its efforts to assimilate them and dispossess their tribal nations of land, and it lays out the history of that method, developed largely by Thomas Jefferson. While the history may be new to many Americans, it is familiar to many in Indian Country. Survivors and their families have documented countless examples of systemic abuse and generational trauma, as some of the schools remained open into the 1990s.

The report, which is intended to be a first step, includes a recommendation for a continuing investigation and additional funding. Other recommendations include creating a repository for the information gathered from federal agencies and private institutions and providing more funding for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the federal law that regulates the repatriation of Indigenous remains.

While the report acknowledges an era of violence perpetrated on Native American children, it does not ensure that the government will take any immediate steps to address the devastation left by its policies. The report notes that the federal government has never provided a forum for survivors or their descendants to voluntarily detail their experiences.

The report is just a first step and only scratches the surface of the boarding school-era's legacy, Haaland said. She will be conducting a year-long tour of Indian Country to give survivors the opportunity to share their stories and create a permanent oral history, she said, as well as connect them with trauma-informed support.

In Canada, following the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission, the government recently set aside $4.7 billion to support Indigenous communities affected by its residential schools. The U.S. has no similar commission. Congress has provided $7 million to the Department of Interior for its investigation, Newland said.

Two measures before Congress could change that. Bills by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation, would create a truth and reconciliation commission on Indian boarding schools, offering a framework for how the government responds to the tribal nations and citizens its policies have negatively affected.

The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearingon the legislation Thursday, and boarding school survivors can submit testimony about their experiences until May 26.

Even if the measures pass, they would still leave open legal loopholes that limit the government's ability to investigate the history of boarding schools, including an exemption that allows some religious organizations to opt out. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act applies only to land that is under federal control or institutions that receive federal funding. The government has little control over gravesites on private land and records held by private organizations - like the Catholic Church, which operated several Indian boarding schools.

The report does not address that issue, but it does recommend that the second phase of the investigation compile a list of organizations that supported and benefited from the Indian boarding school system. And it recommends consultation with tribes for the reclamation and co-management of burial sites. Still, the recommendations do not include a clear path to action.

Survivors are long overdue a formal apology from the U.S., said Samuel Torres, deputy CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. If and when it comes, he said, it needs to be followed up with action.

"If the federal government really wants to be a part of a truth speaking, of an accountability process, and wants to be able to lay a foundation to be able to open up pathways towards healing, now's the time."

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U.S. counts Indian boarding school deaths for first time but leaves key questions unanswered

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The report identified more than 500 child deaths after examining records for 19 of the facilities, a small share of the total number of schools identified. "As the investigation continues, the Department expects the number of recorded deaths to increase," it states. The number is significantly less than some estimates, which are in the tens of thousands.

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New York had the worst Indian boarding school.

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New York had the worst Indian boarding school.

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Author: Terry Belke published on wgrz.com on 11/24/2016
The Thomas Indian School is titled the worst Indian boarding school. but for a good reason and it all started when in 1875 the state board of Charities took over. they started making new rules. like not being able to speak your native language no matter what it was. and they would take kids away from their homes at the age of 5 to 6 a lot of the time. and new york has never taken responsibility for what happened or made a public apology. https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/the-thomas-indian-school-a-forgotten-tragedy/71-355708973

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The Thomas Indian School on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation has a horrifying history, and it's a story that's been largely untold here in WNY.

IRVING, N.Y. -- Through the passage of time, events become distorted and even forgotten. In the case of Native Americans in the United States, much of their chronicles have been lost or deliberately unrecorded.

We in Western New York are as guilty as anywhere else, and the Thomas Indian School at the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation is a living testament to the folly of losing our shared history.

Keith Burich is the author of The Thomas Indian School and the "Irredeemable" Children Of New York.

"It's a story that needs to be told," Burich says.

"It's also a story that needs to be told for the children who went here, and their families. They need their story to be told, and their families need to know what happened here at the Thomas Indian School."

Indian Boarding Schools in the 1800's were widespread across the United States and Canada, and a direct result of the failing reservation systems. For many reasons, conditions on the reservations were brutal. Native people often fell to the many headed hydra of social ills from being forced to live as pariahs in American society.

Poverty, disease, alcoholism and domestic abuse ran rampant through their communities, forcing Indian families who were unable to care for their children to surrender them to boarding schools, or worse: having them taken forcibly by federal and state authorities.

Burich says the Thomas Indian School is still considered to be the worst of them all.

"The traditional structures, the traditional institutions for taking care of children who might be abandoned or orphaned or whatever, broke down, because you were attacking the communities and the families and they were no longer able to take care of their own. And so what do you do? You create institutions to take care of them, and that was what the Thomas Indian School was all about. The Thomas Asylum For Orphaned And Destitute Indian Children."

The school actually began as a somewhat benevolent institution. It was founded in 1855 by two Presbyterian missionaries, the Reverend Asher Wright and his wife, Laura. Indian children from across the state were taken in, including those from the Seneca Nation. At the time, the Wrights were still teaching the Seneca language and employing teachers who spoke Seneca and were sympathetic to their plight.

But that all changed when in 1875, the state Board Of Charities took over. David George-Shongo is Director of the Seneca Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca.

"When the state started taking over, they started making new rules, and changing," George-Shongo said.

"So you were no longer able to speak the language. Some people were forced to go there. Some people had good experiences, the majority of people didn't have good experiences."

For many of the children of Thomas Indian School, the experience was traumatic right from the beginning.

Elliott Tallchief was only five years old when a state social worker came to take him and his six year old sister away from their family.

"We were small. They just dragged us into the car," Tallchief recalled.

"We were crying and screaming too, I don't know, but I remember crying all the way. How do you get used to it, you know? The tears stop, and eventually you fit in. "

Carson Waterman turned five shortly after his admittance to the school. He says he learned some hard lessons at an early age, lessons that no child should have to learn.

"For me, after a number of years, you get used to it and you get toughened to it, and you think, well, I'm on my own, I'm the only person I can rely on."

Carson and Elliott both recall being punished for speaking Seneca. It was just the first step in stripping them of their culture in an effort to force assimilation to the American way of life.

George-Shongo recounted a particularly horrible experience.

"I had one cousin, I heard , they thought she had passed on. It was the middle of winter, the ground was real hard, and I guess there was a place in the attic where they would keep the kids that had passed on there until they could break the ground, and she wasn't passed on, she was in a coma, and she woke up, and all her friends were dead around her. "

Tallchief has his own bad memories.

"We used to watch movies on Saturday in the gymnasium, that's where we used to go for movies. They got us to the point where we used to cheer when the cavalry came, you know what I mean, to defeat the Indians."

"There was severe emotional and psychological effects from being treated as Indians," says Burich.

"From them realizing they were being punished for being Indians, and if they're punished for being Indians, there must be something wrong with being Indians, and therefore they're something inferior."

Many of the children were institutionalized at Thomas until they were legally able to leave, making them dependent on the rigid routine of the institution. They had no job, and often no family to return to.

If they did return to the reservation, it was to crushing poverty and the other numerous ills that plagued them. Others were simply lost. Very few were left unscathed.

Photojournalist Terry Belke asked Waterman if the school prepared him for outside life afterwards.

"No! Ha! I mean, where are you supposed to go? Leave? You know, there were very few jobs at that time."

"I look at the thing now, from the point when I was brought up here, to the point of when I quit," Tallchief wonders.

"I think about why they put us through this. To erase who you are, that was the point."

The Thomas Indian School closed in 1957, long after most other Indian boarding schools were shut down. Some of the buildings still stand, and for many of the children, the only trace of their existence are some names scrawled on an attic rafter in a decrepit dormitory and a few forlorn headstones in an all-but-forgotten cemetery across from the old school.

The repercussions, however, are still being felt in the Seneca Nation today. Communities were shattered, and their language is fading, despite efforts to teach it.

This is particularly damaging because traditional ceremonies use the Seneca language exclusively. This further hampers efforts to keep their proud culture alive.

New York has never taken responsibility for what happened, nor has the state issued an apology. Though the scars still run deep, the Nation remains strong, and continues to look to the future.

The motto was "kill the Indian and save the child." Tallchief says the school lived up to that motto, and it still takes an effect today.

George-Shongo remains optimistic.

"My Grandpa, he did teach me things that are Indian and stuff. He said if someone says something bad to you, he says, say nya:weh to them. In our language, nya:weh means thank you."

"You might think: why would he say that? You say nya:weh because it gives it back to them, and you don't carry it with you. It's up to you what you're going to carry, and what you're not going to carry."

A great source to learn more of this tragedy is Keith Burich's book The Thomas Indian School And The "Irredeemable" Children Of New York. You can see it here.

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The Thomas Indian School: A Forgotten Tragedy

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The Thomas Indian School on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation has a horrifying history, and it's a story that's been largely untold here in WNY. IRVING, N.Y. -- Through the passage of time, events become distorted and even forgotten. In the case of Native Americans in the United States, much of their chronicles have been lost or deliberately unrecorded.

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Pennsylvania where the first native American boarding school was made in the u.s.

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Pennsylvania where the first native American boarding school was made in the u.s.

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"above is a list that was compiled by Dr.Denise lajimodiere for the national native American boarding school healing coalition."