How many Native American boarding schools were there across the U.S.? Are all of them closed? How many Native children attended these institutions? Looking at the Native American boarding school system from the macro level underscores how widespread this system was, and just how many Native families it impacted. Some of these questions are currently impossible to answer, due to a lack of official records, leaving Native communities, historians, and advocacy organizations, such as the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, to estimate based on available records and interviews with survivors and their families. The information below is the best I have to date, but will surely change over time as more details about boarding schools are uncovered. 

When was the first Native American boarding school established? How many boarding schools were there? Were there different types of boarding schools? Efforts to educate and “civilize” Indigenous children in the United States go back to the early 1800s and a network of schools governed by varying religious groups. By the mid-1800s, when the federal government began forcing Native nations onto reservations, the Office of Indian Affairs established a network of day schools and boarding schools on the reservations. Students who attended these schools remained in contact with their families, which school officials considered an impediment to their assimilation. Off-reservation boarding schools were viewed as the solution to this problem, because students would be separated from their families and therefore unable to engage with their languages or cultures. The first off-reservation boarding school was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in 1879 and located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the model for all other off-reservation boarding schools. Experts from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition estimate that the combined number of boarding schools, on- and off-reservation, along with those managed by religious groups, number in the hundreds.

Where were boarding schools located? As you can see from the above chart, Native American boarding schools were spread out across the United States. This chart lists all types of boarding schools – religious, on-reservation, and off-reservation. The image below shows the locations of the off-reservation boarding schools in the U.S. In addition to those listed below were the Bismarck Indian School in North Dakota, open from 1907-1937; the Hayward Indian School in Tomah, Wisconsin, open from 1901-1934, and the Wahpeton Indian School in North Dakota, open from 1908-1966. Additionally, the Chamberlain Indian School previously existed on the grounds of St. Joseph’s Indian School from 1898-1909.

How many children attended these boarding schools? This is difficult to answer. The Office of Indian Affairs (which later became the Bureau of Indian Affairs) did not keep track of the individual number of children who attended these schools. Federal records include yearly boarding school enrollment numbers, but not the total number of children who attended these schools over time. Scholars estimate, however, that by 1926, 83% percent of all American Indian children had spent time at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. This translates to nearly 61,000 children at that specific time. The number of students who attended off-reservation boarding schools shrank to 5,600 in the 1930s, after many of these schools closed and Native children transitioned to attending public schools. By the 1960s, however, the numbers of students enrolled at off-reservation boarding schools doubled to 11,600. At the same time, another 23,000 children attended BIA-run elementary schools. Tens, and perhaps hundreds, of thousands of children attended these schools, though the exact number remains elusive.

Who decided whether students attended a boarding school or a local public school? The answer to this question depends on time period, location, and Indigenous communities’ proximity to different types of schools. In Nevada, students were initially sent to boarding schools on reservations until these schools ran out of room. Local children were then sent to out-of-state off-reservation boarding schools until the Stewart Indian School was built in 1890. Similar patterns emerged across the country. In the 1930s, reformers pressed for more Native children to remain with their families and attend public schools, and began paying local school districts to educate Native children. However, if a student did not live near a public school or was considered an orphan or a child living in an unsafe or disorderly home (according to federal officials), they were sent to a boarding school. This remained the case through the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 1970s, some Native students with behavioral problems (again, as defined by federal officials) were also sent to boarding schools.

Photographs: Left: Haskell Indian School, 1910; Right: Tulalip Indian School Office, 1910. Wikimedia Commons.

What was the graduation rate at these schools? How many Native students attended college after leaving boarding school? When the Native American boarding school system was established, federal officials believed (quite erroneously) that the majority of Indigenous children were intellectually incapable of attending college or succeeding in higher education. As a result, academic instruction at boarding schools was deemed secondary to students’ vocational training. This began to change a bit in the 1930s, but even in the 1960s and 1970s students complained that their classes were not challenging enough and that they did not prepare students to succeed in college. This did not stop boarding school students from attaining university educations, but it did make it harder for them. The only statistics about graduation rates and college attendance I have found are from a 1969 report prepared by a Special Senate Subcommittee on Indian Education -- and these figures illustrate the challenges boarding school students faced. According to the report, just eighteen percent of BIA school students enrolled in college, whereas the national average was fifty percent. Only three percent of those who enrolled in college actually graduated, compared with a national average college graduation rate of thirty-two percent.

When did the last Native American boarding schools close? Actually, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition estimates that 64 boarding schools remain open today. The majority of these are local schools – only five of these are off-reservation boarding schools: Chemawa, Flandreau, Pierre, Santa Fe, and Sherman. These schools are quite different than they were in the past, though they are still managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The majority of boarding schools were closed between the late 1920s and mid-1930s. The Stewart Indian School remained open until 1980.

Where are the records for these schools? How can I look up their histories or see if my specific family member attended a school? Because these schools were managed by the federal government, the majority of records are held in National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) repositories across the country. Some organizations have digitized records – Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, for example, digitized the records of the Carlisle Indian School, and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is working to digitize all boarding schools records with the goal of providing copies to the tribal nations impacted by the schools. Local historical societies and universities may also have some records related to boarding schools. Currently, however, the National Archives maintains the majority of these records. For tips on getting started in your research, check out my beginners’ guide to researching Native American boarding schools.

Photographs: Left: Chemawa Indian School; Right: Yakima Indian Agency Schoolchildren, 1888. Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:

Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center: http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/

Fuchs, Estelle and Robert J. Havighurst. To Live on this Earth: American Indian Education. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.

National Native American Boarding School Healing Center: https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/resources/

 National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., Record Group 75.

Report of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U.S. Senate, Special Subcommittee on Indian Education. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, November 3, 1969).

Reyhner, Jon and Jeanne Eder. American Indian Education: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.