Were Indian boarding schools Catholic?

About half the schools were supported by the U.S. government, but were operated and staffed by Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church.

How many Indian boarding schools were Catholic?

The Catholic Truth & Healing website lists 87 Catholic-run Native boarding schools before 1978 across 22 states. Seventy-four of those schools were run or staffed by Catholic women religious. Fifty-three different congregations of sisters were affiliated with the schools.

What religion were Indian schools?

In the process, these schools denigrated Native American culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations.

What was the ideology behind the Indian boarding schools?

Indian boarding schools were founded to eliminate traditional American Indian ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture. The first boarding schools were set up starting in the mid-nineteenth century either by the government or Christian missionaries.

Which churches ran Indian boarding schools?

With more than 100 schools, various Catholic orders operated most of the Christian Indian boarding schools, some long before President Ulyssis Grant's 1869 Peace Policy formally created the federal school system.

"Kill the Indian, Save the Man" - Carlisle Boarding School - US History - Extra History

What did the Catholic Church do to indigenous peoples?

Catholic missionaries accompanied Native peoples to reservations when they were removed from ancestral homelands throughout the United States. Many tribes were moved from the east to west and eventually relocated in Oklahoma.

What ended Indian boarding schools?

The federal government shut many of them down in the 1930s, and the big story of Indian education became public school education. But some of [the boarding schools] continued, actually, at the demand of the Indian families, who used them as a poverty relief program for their families to survive the Great Depression.

What 3 things were the Indian children in boarding schools not allowed to do?

A group of boys in school uniforms, circa 1890. As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. Clothes mending class, circa 1901.

What is one reason why so many Native students died at boarding schools like Carlisle?

Disease was one reason why many Indian Boarding Schools closed. Though not the reason Carlisle shut down, at least 168 children who attended Carlisle died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and the flu at the school.

What was the goal of sending children to Indian boarding schools?

The purpose of federal Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families and Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and Native Hawaiian Community.

When did Catholic Indian schools end?

Indian boarding schools operated in the United States between 1819 and 1977, and were part of centuries-long attempts by the U.S. government and Christian missionaries to eradicate Native culture and traditions by removing children from their parents and tribes.

What's up with the Catholic school in 1923?

The purpose of these church-operated boarding schools was to eliminate the traditional Indian way of life, and mentally enslave the indigenous population of America into viewing the western culture as the only way to lead a righteous, 'civilized' life.

What would happen if Native American parents refused to send their children to boarding schools?

Parents who refused to send their children to the schools could be legally imprisoned and deprived of resources such as food and clothing which were scarce on reservations. Three of the 25 Indian boarding schools run by the U.S. government were in California.

What is a reason why people died on the Trail of Tears?

The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal.

Did the Jesuits run Indian schools?

Many of the boarding schools were run by Catholic religious orders, including the Jesuits. The experiences of individual alumni are diverse; some have expressed gratitude for their education, but many have asserted that the schools were a place where they were robbed of their Native identity.

Are there any Indian boarding schools still standing?

Sherman and Chemawa remain open as residential schools. Only four schools exist today: Chemawa, Sherman, Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota and Riverside Indian School in Oklahoma.

Were Indian boarding schools genocide?

In 1969, a Senate report known as the Kennedy Report declared Indian education to be “a national tragedy.”[8] Boarding schools have been characterized as institutions of “outright genocide on the grounds that the mortality rate (from disease) within boarding schools was very high and that boarding schools took children ...

How many Indian children were taken from their parents?

An estimated 25% to 35% of Native American children were removed from their families prior to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The Indian Child Welfare Act protects Indian children by prioritizing placement with extended families, within the tribe or with an Indian family.

What did Native American boarding schools forbid?

The U.S. Native children that were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their Native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, ...

What were the physical abuse in Indian boarding schools?

They told stories of being punished for speaking their native language, getting locked in basements and their hair being cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and withholding food.

What bad thing did the Ghost Dance lead to?

Notes from Indian Country: The Ghost Dance leads to the Massacre at Wounded Knee. As South Dakota headed into December of 1890 there was serious consternation among the colonists about a religious ceremony appearing on the Indian reservations called the Ghost Dance.

What happened to the children at the Carlisle Indian boarding school?

More than 150 children lie in the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery; many of them were students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which closed in 1918. Many of the children died from diseases like tuberculosis. The one thing they had in common is they never returned home.

How did Indian families resist boarding schools?

Resistance took on many different forms, including running away, arson, stealing, and other forms of disobedience. Even parents resisted the boarding schools. Parents refused to send their children to boarding schools, and others refused to send them back.

What was the consequence of the Wounded Knee massacre?

The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army's late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians. It broke any organized resistance to reservation life and assimilation to white American culture, although American Indian activists renewed public attention to the massacre during a 1973 occupation of the site.

What is Indian Ghost Dance?

A late-nineteenth-century American Indian spiritual movement, the ghost dance began in Nevada in 1889 when a Paiute named Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson) prophesied the extinction of white people and the return of the old-time life and superiority of the Indians.