Physical Violence at Native American Boarding Schools

To what extent did employees at Native American boarding schools use violence against students and their parents? Was violence a rare or common occurrence? Was it more likely during the early years these schools were open? This post answers these questions and explores others related to this difficult, but important topic.

Before getting into the specifics, it is important to emphasize that the Native American boarding school system was a form of violence against Indigenous people. It was connected to the broader colonization of Native peoples and the attempted genocide of Indigenous nations. As I have written previously, boarding schools were intended to completely erase Indigenous cultures, languages, and values. The early motto, “kill the Indian to save the man,” sums up this line of thinking quite clearly and is, legally, a form of genocide. Further, the act of forcibly removing children from their families and communities is a violent and traumatic act, as many boarding school survivors will assert. So, aside from individual acts of violence against boarding school students or their families, I want to emphasize that violence was embedded in the boarding school system, both logistically and in its assimilationist mission.

From the beginning, federal officials approved the use of violence in forcing the enrollment of Native children at boarding schools. In the late 1800s, when many boarding schools were first established, the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) threatened Native parents reluctant to send their kids to these schools. In 1904, the Secretary of the Interior wrote that OIA officials were authorized to “withhold rations, clothing, and other annuities from Indian parents or guardians who refuse or neglect to send or keep their children of proper school age,” and should engage in “every effort” to compel parents to send their children to school. Some officials took this to mean firing gunshots at families who refused to send their children and threatening them with bodily hard should they refuse to obey.

Once enrolled at a boarding school, students were subjected to a variety of punishments for breaking school rules or speaking their Indigenous languages. Though extra cleaning duty was often assigned to students, especially later in the history of boarding schools, the vast majority of punishments focused on physical violence. Again, this was sanctioned and encouraged by the federal government. In 1892, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote that if students did not respond to “milder forms of punishment,” school employees should engage in harsher measures, including “corporal punishment, confinement, deprivation of privileges, or restriction of diet.” The federal government thus recommended beating, imprisoning, and starving boarding school students to force them to behave. To ensure these punishments were carried out, many boarding schools, including the Stewart Indian School, had jails on campus in which students were confined for breaking the rules. Heartbreakingly, the Haskell jail included the use of a tiny set of handcuffs for students who were imprisoned – you can see the picture below and read about them here.

Students were punished with physical violence for a variety of infractions: forgetting their homework, misbehaving in class, failing to perform well in militaristic drills on campus, speaking their Indigenous languages, getting their uniforms dirty, or, most commonly, attempting to run away. The most common response to these violations was corporal punishment, though boarding school officials also used other tactics to hurt students. Though their hair was cut upon arrival at school, some officials cut female students’ hair progressively shorter as a form of punishment. Students also had their mouths washed out with lye soap as punishment for speaking Indigenous languages, a painful experience that burned the inside students’ mouths.

In 1928, a federal study on U.S. policies toward Native Americans uncovered the frequent use of violence against boarding school students. As a result of this document, known as the Meriam Report, policy changes were enacted in 1931 in connection with the treatment of Native children and their parents. The OIA declared the forced “dragging-in” method of student enrollment must stop, and that parents should instead be persuaded to enroll their children in OIA schools by “the lure of good facilities, good personnel, [and] need of education.” Further, the practice of beating disobedient children was also officially banned. The Indian Office asserted that it “…emphatically does not and will not tolerate flogging” and that it would address violations to this rule “vigorously.” The end of physical violence against Native students was reiterated in 1934 as part of New Deal reforms focused on improving the lives of Native Americans. Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier wrote that year, “…it is, or should be self-evident that so long as physical force, and acts of humiliation directed against the children, are used, no happy or healthy morale will be possible.” He further pledged that any “teacher or disciplinarian guilty of…abuses will be held responsible for committing them.”

Above: Female students learning domestic skills at the Stewart Indian School.

Though corporal punishment was officially banned in the 1930s, student accounts into the 1970s indicate the continued use of physical violence as punishment at boarding schools across the country. At the Stewart Indian School, students were beaten for running away into the 1940s, and alumni recall being hit by teachers with wooden boards on their buttocks for misbehaving. Teachers, perhaps aware that they were officially banned from using physical violence against students, also forced classmates to participate in beatings of their peers. In a practice known as the “hotline” students created a tunnel with their bodies, and an offending student was forced to crawl through the tunnel while their classmates hit them. This practice continued into the 1960s, when a Stewart administrator ended the practice, but admitted that he continued to “spank” students who broke the rules.

By the 1970s, boarding schools had moved away from corporal punishment for several reasons. More and more Indigenous people were working at federal boarding schools by that time, and while some viewed older forms of discipline in a positive manner, many did not and refused to engage in the practice. Further, because of the Red Power and self-determination movements that began in the late 1960s, there was more interest in and amplification of Native American voices across the country, as well as a willingness by major media outlets to investigate claims of abuse at boarding schools. Indigenous activist groups conducted their own investigations of boarding schools and worked in conjunctions with local newspapers to uncover abuses against students and hold school officials accountable.

However, there is little evidence that the federal government similarly investigated boarding school officials who used physical violence against students. Until 1931, U.S. officials would have had no reason to do so, since corporal punishment was both allowed and encouraged. After the 1930s, however, they could have investigated and fired individuals who used violence against students in contravention to federal rules. I have found no records of these types of investigations in any of the archives I have examined over the course of my research. I believe there are two reasons for this. The first is related privacy rules that govern access to federal records. Documents from the past 75 years are not accessible to researchers. This means that any personnel records (where evidence of abuse investigations might be found) after 1945 are inaccessible to the public. Similarly, it is difficult to find any Bureau of Indian Affairs records older than the early 1960s. According to archivists I have talked to, this is because the BIA has either not yet turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) or because NARA has not yet processed the records they have received.

Above: A statue pedestal at the National Archives and Records Administration building in Washington, D.C.

The second reason these records are difficult to find has to do with the unwillingness of institutions to admit wrongdoing or to chronicle the darker aspects of their history. In the U.S., this is a problem that extends well beyond the history individual boarding schools, and one that is also reflected in official archival collections. There are some records from the late 1800s and early 1900s that chronicle investigations into alleged crimes at boarding schools. However, I have not found records devoted specifically to boarding school investigations beyond this early period. This does not mean that boarding school personnel suddenly stopped behaving in abhorrent ways against the children enrolled in these schools. In fact, I have found individual investigations into abuse perpetrated by school employees in later years, but such accounts are rare. Based on the many alumni accounts of abuse committed by school employees, it seems more likely that employees who hurt children were ignored, moved to a new position, or quietly fired with little documentation. This underscores the importance of boarding school survivor testimonials in discovering the truth about student life at these institutions, and the bravery of students who worked with reporters and activists to publicize examples of abuse.

Students who attended boarding schools endured physical violence at the hands of employees and their fellow students. If not for their willingness to share these stories, the true extent of their abuse would remain largely unknown. As survivors and their families work toward healing, the institutions that perpetrated so much harm need to be held accountable and share, to the extent possible, any records that shine further light on this history.

Sources:

Lajimodiere, Denise K. Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors. (Fargo: North Dakota State University Press, 2019).

National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the Educational Division. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives - Pacific Region (San Francisco).

National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the Educational Division. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives – Washington D.C.

Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum Collection