ipl-logo

Native American Boarding School System Essay

907 Words4 Pages

The objective was to get rid of Native American culture, religion, law, legends and language. It was planned to save the man and kill the Indian. The government wanted to teach the children, their ways of living and their language. Pratt told leaders that he wanted their children so that the children may come back and help their tribes with leadership. However, Pratt had no intention of the children returning to the tribe. Pratt used to say that an Indian had to die as an Indian to live as a man, which clarifies why Pratt thought, wiping out the culture of Native American children had to be done. One of the first things that were done in the boarding schools is having their names changed. They were asked to choose a new name from a set of names …show more content…

This school was built for the purpose of only teaching female students. Although, a male boarding school was built a few miles away. The Cherokee Female Seminary was originally built in Park Hill. However, after the building burned to the ground. The second school was rebuilt in a different location than the one that burned down. The new location is in Tahlequah, which is in the Cherokee Nation’s capital (Mihesuah 29). The second school location was a good idea based on the amount of people in the Nation’s capital. The decisions regarding the female seminary came from the Cherokee National Council, which were made up of mixed blood tribesmen (Mihesuah 31). Mixed blood tribesmen meaning that the leaders of the council were white men who married Cherokee women. This created a new dynamic in decision making. The council was able to make decisions that didn’t change or influence the female’s religion or spirituality, but also didn’t influence Cherokee values. The council’s main objective for the Cherokee Female Seminary is the knowledge that the females will be gaining. However, they also were concerned with the improvements that the females should attain, and how the new knowledge would make them responsible wives in the Cherokee Nation (Mihesuah 30). The school was a very social setting, as the school is set in most populous location of the Indian Territory. Therefore, it provided a snapshot of the demographic in the territory. An interesting insight is that no matter how the females identified themselves, in terms of backgrounds, they all saw themselves as Cherokees (Mihesuah 30). They all saw themselves as belonging to the tribe, and even if their views differed from one another, they were still a part of the Cherokee

Show More
Related

Pratt's Experiences Of African-Americans, Questions And Answers

208 Words | 1 Pages

1. Pratt opposed reservations because Jefferson’s treaty agreement meant the Great River would be the border between them and the whites. Indians would be isolated and not a part of the American life. 2. Schools would “kill the Indian and save the man” by introducing them to the life of an American.

Read More

Chickasaw Tribe Research Paper

448 Words | 2 Pages

On the calm set day of November 1,1730, everything for the Cherokee tribe seemed ordinary and the least bit unusual. The men were hunting, fishing, and preparing for the cold winter that was soon to creep upon them, while the women were back at the huts cleaning, knitting blankets, and sewing buffalo Hyde to cover the floors, trying there best to create anything to protect the families from the cold, the children

Read More

Cherokee Women Summary

1518 Words | 7 Pages

The different settlers in America had continued to down women as a gender, and make males more superior. As Perdue continues, she addresses how the power that Cherokee women held had began to plummet the more they were involved with Europeans. However, today there are still Cherokee women that stand strong, hold positions of power, and even are still respected as if it was the 18th

Read More

A Comparison Of Morris Indian High School And The University Of Minnesota

667 Words | 3 Pages

The boarding school also wanted to show that they helped these native American girls “adopt the American way.” These girls were able to overcome everything and become great players and an incredible

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis Of Kill The Indian And Save The Man

113 Words | 1 Pages

In the speech “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”, Captain Richard Pratt claims that the savagery of the Indians poses a problem to the advancement of the American society. He argues that their surroundings including language, superstition, and lifestyle cause this problem. TO support his claim, he provides the example of an Indian and White infant. He states that raising them in opposite environments will result in the acquisition of their respective qualities. Pratt proposes the solution of sending Indians to boarding schools, so they can gradually become civilized.

Read More

Junípero Serra

1262 Words | 6 Pages

These schools have been described as an instrument to wage intellectual, psychological, and cultural warfare to turn Native Americans into “Americans”. There are many reports of young Native Americans losing all cultural belonging. According to an interview with NPR, Bill Wright was sent to one of these schools. He lost his hair, his language, and then his Navajo name. When he was able to return home, he was unable to understand or speak to his grandmother.

Read More

Railroad Strike Dbq

1852 Words | 8 Pages

Children were also forced away from their families and into boarding schools to try and assimilate them. While many things changed due to this Act, some things continued to stay the same. Despite the massive amounts of land that was taken from them, the goal of assimilation did not take the effect that the government hoped. Efforts to end Indian religious rituals and to spread the idea of Christianity did not affect Native Americans like it was thought it. Instead, the overall discontent that the Indians had toward forced assimilation caused its

Read More

What Was The Role Of Boudicca In The Iceni Tribe

325 Words | 2 Pages

In the Iceni tribe’s society, “women held positions of prestige and power .

Read More

Theodore Fontaine's Experience In The Fort Alexandria Residential School

2209 Words | 9 Pages

Introduction: In Theodore Fontaine’s work about his experience in the Fort Alexandria Indian Residential School, he narrates his perspective on the various methods, ideologies, and religious beliefs adopted by the school. His narrative describes the structure and purpose of the residential schools, it also helps point out the how this structures influence or affect the lives of students. The book helps to identify how the method adopted by the school was that of a total institution like that of the military. The method of a total institution striped away the individuality and culture of the students.

Read More

Mary Rowlandson Captivity Summary

867 Words | 4 Pages

The narrative offers an account which can be used to describe the particularly puritan society based on the ideals of Christianity and the European culture. It offers a female perspective of the Native Americans who showed no respect to the other religious groups. The narrator makes serious observation about her captors noting the cultural differences as well as expectations from one another in the society. However, prejudice is evident throughout the text which makes the narratives unreliable in their details besides being written after the event had already happened which means that the narrator had was free to alter the events to create an account that favored her. Nonetheless, the narrative remains factually and historically useful in providing the insights into the tactics used by the Native Americans

Read More

Analysis Of Gertrude Bonnin's The School Days Of An Indian Girl

1138 Words | 5 Pages

The nature of these boarding schools was to assimilate young Native Americans into American culture, doing away with any “savageness” that they’re supposedly predisposed to have. As Bonnin remembers the first night of her stay at the school, she says “I was tucked into bed with one of the tall girls, because she talked to me in my mother tongue and seemed to soothe me” (Bonnin 325). Even at the beginning of such a traumatic journey, the author is signaling to the audience the conditioning that she was already under. Bonnin instinctively sought out something familiar, a girl who merely spoke in the same “tongue” as her. There are already so few things that she has in her immediate surroundings that help her identify who and what she is, that she must cling to the simple familiarities to bring any semblance of comfort.

Read More

Verna Kirkness On Residential Education

1689 Words | 7 Pages

They faced many challenges, as some had dependents to look after—children or partners, some of whom did not have jobs.” She took on the counselling for the girls and women, while a male college took on the counselling of the boys and men. She wanted to help women achieve better jobs and future by helping them with their education. Kirkness discusses the difficultly students had adjusting to the new way of life, “Since most of the homes were with non-Native families, our students had to get used to a different way of life in totally different cultures.” The students were Indigenous, but the placement homes these students were placed in were not, for the most part, Indigenous.

Read More

Native American Boarding Schools

967 Words | 4 Pages

Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle Barracks as a demonstration to convince the government that Indians could be reeducated in an American way. After the government agreed to reshape our culture, the numbers of boarding schools and students increased rapidly. They had an enrollment of 3,598 in 1877 and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, 20,000 Indian students were enrolled in 148 boarding schools and 225 day schools. Many of the schools that the children were forced to attend were built extremely poorly. When boys first arrive in the camps they had their hair cut short, many would have had longer hair, for having short hair was looked at poorly in the native American culture because it represented a state of mourning and was associated with death.

Read More

Essay On Indian Boarding Schools

1278 Words | 6 Pages

The school got its name form Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale, “Truxton” was his brothers first name and mother's maiden name. Truxton functioned as an Indian Boarding School from 1901 to 1937. When it opened, there was only 88 other indian boarding schools like it, making it large in size. Truxton came from the Hackberry Day School. In 1890, the government started sending Hualapai students in Fort Mohave to the day school, but the parents of the children disliked how far the school was from where they were residing.

Read More

Essay On Native American Boarding Schools

527 Words | 3 Pages

The government believed that if the children remained with their parents the problems would only increase, with the boarding schools it would make it easier to cut off their culture and religions. They decided it was best to christianize the children making almost every boarding schools either christian or catholic. The Native American kids were forced into going to church two to three times a day. It was against the

Read More

More about Native American Boarding School System Essay

Related Topics

Open Document