Boarding Schools : “Kill the Indian and

Save the Man”

Boarding Schools : “Kill the Indian and

Save the Man”

In 1892, Colonel Pratt, the founder of Indian Boarding Schools, made the following speech: "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

In 1892, Colonel Pratt, the founder of Indian Boarding Schools, made the following speech: "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

To accomplish this goal – assimilation - the federal government adopted a new policy – Indian boarding schools where Indian children would be forcibly taken from their homes and enrolled in schools designed to “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The architect of this philosophy was former Indian fighter, Colonel Richard H. Pratt.

Colonel Pratt’s Vision

"I believe that the system of removing them from their tribes and placing them under continuous training in the midst of civilization is far better than any other method... I am sure that if we could bring to bear such training … for only three years, that savagery among the Indians in this country would be at an end... The end to be gained...is the complete civilization of the Indian and his absorption into our national life, [for] the Indian to lose his identity as such, to give up his tribal relations and to be made to feel that he is an American citizen.... "

And so from the 1880s through the 1960s, Indian children were taken – often forcibly – from their families and sent to Indian Boarding Schools.

And what did the Indian children experience at school?

The teachers spent the first few days forcing the children to discard their Indian ways and adopt American ways: – children were forbidden to

speak their native language, often under threat of physical punishment.

– their long hair was clipped to the skull, sometimes as part of a public ritual in which the child was forced to renounce his or her Indian origins.

Their comfortable, loose-fitting clothing were taken away and burned - boys wore military uniforms and girls were wore tight-fitting, Victorian-style dresses. Both boys and girls were required to wear shoes rather than their traditional loose-fitting moccasins.

• The children were forbidden to use their Indian names and were given a new American name.

• The children were forbidden to practice any cultural or religious rituals, usually under threat of punishment, and were instead told that they were expected to become devout Christians.

• Their days included a strict routine defined by military drill and structure.

• Children marched in silence to and from all classes and meals.

• Children attended school half of each day and spent the otherhalf training to become mechanics, farmers, and servants.

Helen Sekaquaptewa, a Hopi Indian, recalled:

“Evenings we would gather in a corner and cry softly so the matron would not hear and scold or spank us...I can still hear the plaintive little voices saying, 'I want to go home. I want my mother.’ We didn't understand a word of English and didn't know what to say or do...We were a group of homesick, lonesome, little girls...”

Sun Elk, from the pueblo of Taos, recorded this experience at Carlisle:

"They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized. I remember that word too. It means ‘be like the white man.’ I am willing to be like the white man, but I did not believe Indian ways were wrong …. And the books told how bad the Indians had been to the white men - burning their towns and killing their women and children. But I had seen white men do that to Indians. We all wore white man's clothes and ate white man's food and went to white man's churches and spoke white man's talk. And so after a while we also began to say Indians were bad. We laughed at our own people and their blankets and cooking pots and sacred societies and dances."

Tom Torlino, Navajo

Before and After

A series of “before and after” photographs were taken to demonstrate the “progress” toward civilization that the boarding schools were making.

Hampton students

Conclusions

Conclusions1. Stereotyping played a

huge role in the efforts to assimilate Indian people into white, Euro-American society and in the creation of the boarding schools.• White, Euro-Americans

stereotyped Indian people as heathen, savage, and uncivilized.

• The Euro-Americans wanted Indian people to act like stereotypical white Americans who were civilized, Christian farmers.

2. The goals of the boarding schools were to “Kill the Indian and save the man” – to assimilate American Indians into white, Euro-American society.

3. The goal of assimilation was never fully achieved - – as this 1917 report from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs indicates:

“For some years we have been painfully impressed with the large proportion of boys and girls who, after returning to their reservations from Indian schools, fail to put into practice what they were taught at the schools. In too many cases these so-called 'returned students' not only do not show any progress, but actually go backward."

4. One of the short-term consequences of Indian boarding schools was that the “assimilated” Indians were caught between two worlds – being integrated and accepted into neither the Euro-American nor the Indian world.

5. The long-term consequences of Indian boarding schools are more complex: boarding school policies that victimized Indian children were genocidal and modern day evidence of historical trauma is directly related to 19th Century federal Indian policies.

6. Many Indian people consciously refused to be assimilated into the white, Euro-American world and instead, remained committed to their traditional cultural, spiritual, political, and economic traditions. In so doing, they are not only victims of the destructive forces of Indian boarding schools, they are also brave and courageous survivors.