I
CHEMAWA®AMERICAN
Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education
Vol. XXXII
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 1931
“THE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS”
Under this caption the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his
annual report for the fiscal year 1930, has the following to say:
“Each boarding school situation is being scrutinized
to determine whether the school is to be retained for
sometime, abandoned soon or assigned to purposes
other than that for which it now exists. The rapidity
with which we can carry out our policy of eliminating
young children from boarding schools depends, of
course, upon a number of factors. Some of the edu
cational factors involved have to do with home condi
tions, remoteness from public-school facilities, ascer
tained need for inst ilutional care, possibilities of health
follow up, and social case work not ordinarily available
in the small rural communities in which so many
Indian children live. Other factors that must be
considered are the attitude of the white people of the
community and the older Indians toward the boarding
school and the attitude of w’hite parents toward the
Indian children. If the policy of the Government
to increase public school provision for the Indian
school population is to be carried out, obviously local
communities will have to be considerate and take an
unselfish view of proposals to abandon Indian board
ing schools.
“In the meantime such boarding schools as remain
must be helped to do the best work they can, especially
for older boys and girls, and small children can be
eliminated from these schools except where institution
al care is found necessary after adequate investigation
by trained social workers. Six large nonre>ervation
boarding schools have now raised their grades to in
clude the twelfth grade, or senior high school, and
have concurrently dropped the lower grades.”
The question of the boarding school versus the day school
was the subject of prolonged and heated d s ussion n our Service
twenty-five years and more ago. 't in re have been manv able
and strong advocates in years past of bo h typ s o; schools
for Indian children. One of tlie abh s and most s vr e cr :cs
of the boarding school plan was 1 ram \ E. i. upp. * <>mni s-
sion *r of Ind in AfT.i rs dur: ng th? adm ;i
i o.i o P s d. nt
Roosevelt. Soon aft'r 1 es gu ug f om oiti e Mr. I. upp pub
lished his book., ‘ Tiie Indian and His Prob', m," in wn . h he
said:
“All boarding schools conducted on the lines laid
down by the Govcrnmen o; /ne civil at ion of l he In
dians are an anomaly in our A m - .¡n schme of pop
ular instruction. They turn *h grain on- v no < u v
tuition, but food, clothing, lodging and med:eal super-
vision during the whole pei iod for whi h a pupil is en
rolled. In other words they are simply educational
No. 20
almshouses.
Nay, though ostensibly designed to
stimulate a manly spirit of independence in their
beneficiaries, their charitable phase is obstrusively
pushed forward as an attraction, instead of wearing
the brand which makes the almshouse so repugnant
to Caucasian sentiment. Thus is fostered in the Indian
an ignoble willingness to accept unearned privileges;
from learning to accept them he gradually comes to de
mand them as a right, with the result that in certain
parts of the West the only conception his white neigh
bors entertain of him is that of a beggar as aggressive
as he is shameless. Was ever a worse wrong perpe
trated upon a weak by a stronger race?”
In refer: ng to the practice of separating children from their
paren s amt s-nd ng them awav to nonreservaliou schools,
often long d.stances from their homes, Mr. Leupp says:
“No white mother need be told that her children
are as necessary to her development as she is to theirs,
or reminded what it would be to her to be robbed of
their companionship during a long period while they
are in process of transformation into foreigners. And
if a woman in the midst of civilization, surrounded
with everything that makes life interesting and attrac
tive, mourns when she misses from her home the little
folk for whom she must make daily sacrifices, fancy
what a like experience must be for the poor starved
soul whose lot is cast in a pitiless wilderness, with no
intellectual resources to divert her thoughts. For the
Indian mother, ignorant, coarse, uncouth though she
may be, loves her children with the same fervor as if
she were cultured, graceful and white.
“So the whole subject pivots on the question wheth
er we shall carry civilization to the Indian or carry
the Ind an to civilization, and the former seems tome
infinitely the wiser plan. To plant our schools among
the Indians means to bring the older members of the
race within the sphere of influence of which every
school is a center. This certainly must be the basis
of any practical effort to uplift a whole people.”
Mr. Leupp’s final objection to the boarding school is summed
up in the following paragraph:
“An objection to all Indian boarding-schools,
whether on or off the reservation, is that a pupil grows
up amid surroundings that will never be duplicated in
his own home. Steam-heating, electric lighting, me
chanical apparatus for doing everything—these culti
vate in him a contempt for the primitive contrivances
(Continued on page 4}