Boarding Schools & Potawatomi

by Gary E. Mitchell

One fairly consistent thing for most tribal members is living with the pain of the past and never really confronting those issues. A part of this past excessive social baggage is poverty, and Potawatomi people, in the late 30s and on up, had to attend Indian boarding schools simply because parents could not afford to feed that extra mouth at home.

The boarding school idea came from an early reformist line of thought that said “take the Indian out of the child” by removing the child from his home. They also were designed to teach “manual skills that would help Indians overcome their racial handicaps.” Richard Henry Pratt, founder of Carlisle Boarding School summed up the evil intentions of boarding schools when he wrote: “Kill the Indian and save the man.”

For the Potawatomi, stories, some told and some untold, were about going away to far away schools in buses, and sometimes in farm trucks used to haul grain. When the vehicle left the reservation, the children did not see their parents and home for nine long months or until summer vacation. For young children this trauma never was forgotten. Tears sure can develop thinking of first grade and second grade Indian kids going to a strange environment, not knowing what to expect. As a result, a bond did develop between brothers and sisters that lasted a lifetime.

All of the boys were inducted into the school protocol by getting all of their hair cut off. In other cases, some were lined up to get their tonsils removed. Why? Who knows? I guess, they thought conformity was the essential element to life away from the reservation.

Indian children were usually forced to conform to the religion of the school, which was a day and night commitment. For instance, in the morning, there was prayer when you awoke, a mass, prayer before and after each meal during the day, a service in the evening and once again before bedtime.

The regime of the day also included learning to fix beds, clean up the living quarters, wash dishes, and working in the laundry. In defense of the boarding school environment, prayer and work habits became lifetime habits for many Indian children.

On the downside, some of the teachers and priests were cruel in spreading the word of the Bible. Punishment by school officials was usually fairly severe and happened often. Indian people still talk about the punishment so happily given out by people designated by some as “people of the cloth.” Some stayed with the Judeo-Christian religion, and others fled away as far as possible because of these early experiences.

If this wasn’t bad enough, fighting was a necessary learned trait in boarding schools. Fights happened over nothing, maybe because of differing tribal affiliations or simply to establish a pecking order among the young boys. Survival was one thing, but for some, the mean streak stayed with them for many years after.

Those long months away from home also cost a chance to learn an Indian language from fluent speaking parents. That, too, had an adverse affect in the lives of many Potawatomi people, but that could be learned later if a person really desired it. After all, the boarding school experience only lasted a few short years.

Nonetheless, Potawatomis learned how to survive the conversion process, the jail-house atmosphere, and developed hard heads to survive the Friday night fights. Was it worth the experience? Not hardly in some respects, but yes in others.

What a lot of Indian children didn’t realize at that point in their lives was parents simply could not afford to feed them at home so boarding school was the only alternative.