As the wars for the West came to an end, the United States and Canadian governments began to reform existing Indian policies, shifting their focus towards eliminating Indian cultures, values, and families. These reform groups determined that the government should try and “save” Native peoples by assimilating them into Western society. Assimilation policies aimed to solve the “Indian problem” by following the mantra of “Kill the Indian and Save the Man,” which was developed by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the father of the Indian boarding school system and founder of the Carlisle Indian boarding school. The United States government needed a consistent model of transformation for all tribes, regardless of the cultural or spiritual differences between them. Thus, the first policies of detribalization were created for use on Native reservations, where government agents would be able to consolidate Native tribes so that the process of Americanization could more readily be enacted and accepted. Some of the most significant of these policies included allotment of Native reservation lands under the Dawes or General Allotment Act of 1887, and the creation of off-reservation Indian boarding schools starting with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879. Separating Indigenous children from their families and cultures was crucial to forcing these children to jettison their old customs and language in order to become English-speaking “Americans.” This essay aims to highlight the assimilatory nature of the Indian Boarding schools and some of the long-term effects of this system on Indigenous people, while also shedding light on the specific experiences of the people going through these schools.
Life in Indian boarding schools was often cruel, punishing, and meticulously tailored for the complete transformation of Indigenous children into individual “Americanized” citizens. These assimilationist methods included a militaristic discipline and strict regimentation of student activities from the morning until bedtime. Students were given new Anglo-American names, had their hair cut, and were forced to wear military uniforms instead of native clothing. One of the first students at Carlisle, Luther Standing Bear, described wearing this military clothing and how “discomfort grew into actual torture.” Students were rarely, if ever, allowed to return home during vacations or when family members were sick or had died, and their daily routines were completely transformed from what they had previously known. Homesickness was prevalent among Indigenous students, with many young children being especially susceptible to the emotional toll of these lifestyle changes. Basil Johnston, a Canadian Anishinaabeg who attended a Jesuit school, described how many young children would cling to one of the priests or stay in the corner away from others out of fear. Attempts to calm them down would almost always end in failure. This feeling of homesickness contributed to high suicide rates, which along with the ravages of diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis created a horrific environment for Indigenous students that had life or death consequences. Luther Standing Bear explained how “the change in clothing, housing, food, and confinement combined with lonesomeness was too much,” and that “in the graveyard at Carlisle most of the graves are those of little ones.” These traumatic experiences demonstrate the implementation and impact of assimilationist policy on Indigenous people within the Indian boarding school system, and how these policies were a method of violence enacted upon Indigenous communities.
The lasting legacy of the Indian boarding school system in the United States includes a harsh physical, mental, and cultural toll that Indigenous communities are still coping with today. The recent discovery of unmarked mass graves of 1,300 Indigenous children buried in five former residential schools in Canada has forced the United States to reflect on its legacy of Native American genocide, and its role in creating the residential school system. Confronting this ugly history of settler-colonialism is crucial for the United States in their attempts to get on the right side of human rights, and for Indigenous communities to begin the process of healing in response to this generational trauma.
[1] Colin Calloway. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 2013. p. 371
[2] Calloway, 387
[3] Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction : American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 1995. p. 38
[4] Calloway, 388
[5] Love, David A, “Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide,” The Washington Post, August 10, 2021,
References
Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction : American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Colin Calloway. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 2013.
Hoxie, Frederick E. Talking Back to Civilization : Indian Voices from the Progressive Era Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. pp. 1-28
Love, David A, “Residential schools were a key tool in America’s long history of Native genocide,” The Washington Post, August 10, 2021,
Native American Rights Fund. “Trigger Points: Current State of Research on History, Impacts, and Healing Related to the United States’ Indian Industrial/Boarding School Policy.” Boulder, CO, 2019.
