Essay On Native American Boarding School

To understand what the Native American boarding schools were, we must look back to why they were created in the first place. In the 1830s president Andrew Jacksons issued a policy of removing eastern Native Americans to the west saying that lands west of the Mississippi would remain “Indian Country”. Not only did many plains Indians refuse to restrict where they lived, but when news of gold in the west came out came the moving of the settlers. With the movement of miners, cattlemen and homesteaders westward and onto native land, war was inevitable. These battles would become known as the Indian Wars which would be a driving force into the creation of the Native American Boarding Schools. In 1864, the Colorado militia massacred an encampment

This is where the boarding schools come in. The people who believed in assimilation as the solution, or assimilationists, were humanitarians who believed that formal education and conversion to Christianity would help the Natives become functioning members of society. In these schools, reformers assumed that is was necessary to “civilize” the Native Americans. These schools also served as ways to silently advance the belief in Manifest Destiny. By assimilating the Natives that is seen as one less obstacle in their expansion westward. The first priority of the schools was to teach the basics of an academic education including: reading, writing, and speaking the English language. Religious training in Christianity would also be along with the principles of democracy, institutions and the political structure in order to give the Natives training on how to be good citizens. They hoped that they would be able to produce students that were economically self-sufficient and individual which went against many of the Native’s beliefs of communal