Chilocco Indian Agricultural School
1882 - 1980
Ever since before the
Removal, there were many white people who abhorred the mistreatment of the
Indians: the invasion of their territory by land hungry settlers, the violation
of their treaties, the failure of the government to provide education. The list
was long. Many religious groups, philanthropists, and other well meaning white
citizens sympathized with the Indian.
Before the Removal, Thomas McKenney, a deeply religious man, served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He advocated for the Indians education and integration into white society, but faced with the onslaught of settlers and the hostility of state governments, he eventually recommended the Indians' Removal. After the threats of the treaty commissioners had failed, McKenney approached the Chickasaw with respect and words of persuasion:
Brothers - Whilst then you cherish a sacred remembrance for the bones of your Fathers, forget not to provide for your children, and never stop a moment, but hasten with all speed to place them in a situation that will secure them against the evils that your Fathers endured … This Brothers is Wisdom. The past I know has been cloudy and dark enough, but, brothers, be not discouraged. The Great Spirit will yet open your way.
Footnote: The Chickasaws, Arrell Gibson, P 166 - 167
McKenney purported to understand the Chickasaw and to know what was best for them, but to me his words still sound like a threat, and they sound patronizing. But he didn't really understand. He wasn't evicted from a homeland where his people had lived for hundreds of years. And he wasn't part of a culture of which the land was an integral part. His words didn't move the Chickasaws either. They waited another 12 years before signing the Treaty of Doaksville with the Choctaws agreeing to remove to Indian Territory as a last resort.
From the end of the Civil War in 1866 until the passage of the Curtis Act in 1898, a period of about 30 years, the Chickasaws and the other Five Civilized Tribes governed themselves, and they developed an education system for their children equal or superior to that of any state in the west. The Chickasaw Nation operated neighborhood elementary schools, several "academies," which were the equivalent of high schools, and each year they sent 60 to 100 students away to college. By 1880 the literacy rate among the Chickasaw was 60%.
Footnote: The Chickasaws, Arrell Gibson, P 281
Meanwhile, the other tribes were at the mercy of the federal and state governments. President Grant, who appointed Quaker missionaries as his Indian agents, also formed three cavalry regiments to subdue the remaining plains Indian tribes. General George Custer was one of the Civil War officers who volunteered to help accomplish this mission. The government had decided that the land in the west, once considered useless for settlement, was still too good for the Indian. So the soldiers rounded up the tribes, confined them to reservations, and turned their education over to the Quakers.
During the time after the Civil War there was a resurgence of interest in the welfare of the Indians. Groups such as the Womens' National Indian Association, The Indian Rights Association, and The Friends of the Indian met, discussed the Indians' problems, sent out teams of investigators, and made recommendations. President Grant appointed many of these leaders to a Board of Indian Commissioners which advised him on how to deal with the Indian "problem." His Commission decided that Indians should be taught English, religion, farming and trades to make them self sufficient. Then they were to be given allotments of land and their annuities ended. This would end the expense of the reservations, and make available huge tracts of land for white settlement. There would be no more need for conflicts and treaties with Indian tribes. The Indians would be successfully integrated into "white" society.
For all their good intentions, all that these benevolent groups did was provide the government with a rationale for what they intended to do already: destroy the Indians' tribal bonds, their age old cultures, and their basic beliefs, in order to give their land to white settlers. The various groups, the Friends of the Indians, and others, continued to meet, blaming the Indians' troubles on mishandling by the government, but they all ended by endorsing the government's programs.
The irony of all this discussion about what was in the best interest of the Indian was that never was an Indian included in the discussion. Really. It wasn't until the 1970's that President Richard Nixon, recognizing that the Native American culture still survived, and that the government still had an obligation under the old treaties, proposed a new Indian policy under which the Indian tribes themselves could be authorized to administer federal
programs for their own benefit, but back to the 1800's.
Footnote: The Great Father, Paul Prucha, P 364.
The government's plan involved separating the Indian children from their families in order to immerse them in white culture. In 1840 the government, in partnership with the Methodist Church, established a boarding school in Kansas for Indian children called a manual labor academy. It was modeled after similar schools in Europe which were designed to teach poor children to accept their station in life. Children from many tribes including Shawnee, Delaware, Kansas, Peoria, Potawatomie, Wyandot, and Ottawa were taken from their homes and sent to this and other boarding schools. This type of school was to became a model for Indian education for almost a century.
Listening to Our Grandmothers' Stories, Amanda Cobb-Greetham.
The idea was to separate the children from their parents and from their cultures, to teach them to speak English, and to accept white cultural values. The boys were taught farming and trades and the girls were taught domestic skills. Ezra Hayt, Commissioner of Indian affairs in 1877 summarized the so called benefits of these schools:
the exposure of
children who attend only day schools to the demoralization and degradation of
an Indian home neutralized the efforts of the schoolteacher, especially those
efforts which are directed to the advancement of in morality and civilization.
The Great Father, Paul Prucha, P 233.
By 1890 there were 7000 Indian children in boarding schools, often far away from their homes. By 1900 it was clear that the boarding schools were a failure. Many were run like reform schools, using the Indian children as free labor, without teaching them anything useful. As soon as they were able, the children returned to their homes. It wasn't until 1928 that a study was done condemning Indian boarding schools. It showed that the schools were providing poor diets, and inadequate medical care. They were overcrowded, underfunded, and they provided poor education with too much emphasis on labor. The study, the Meriam report, led to some reforms, but not to the end of the schools.
The study's recommendation was that Indian children be integrated into public schools. This practice, which had actually been going on for some time, started receiving government support, but it was a failure before it started. The Indian children faced prejudice and social isolation, and became underachievers and dropouts.
My grandfather, William H. Paul, and his brother, Smith W. "Buck" Paul, were educated mainly in white schools even though they completed their schooling before the Curtis Act abolished the Chickasaw government in 1898. An early
history of Oklahoma described my grandfather's education:
Receiving the rudiments of his education in the schools of White Bead, Wm H Paul subsequently continued his studies at the Tishomingo Academy, under the instructions of Judge Benjamin Carter, at Savoy Texas, at Austin College, and at Sherman Texas.
From what my mother told me, Uncle Buck went to the same schools as my grandfather.
Footnote: The History of the State of Oklahoma, Luther B Hill, 1910.
These schools were run by white men. My grandfather's father, Sam Paul, was very progressive in his thinking, and he believed that the Chickasaws' future lay in integration into the white culture. That's the reason my grandparents met. They both attended a subscription school together in Pauls Valley. My grandmother's father had come west from Georgia after the Civil War and settled in Indian Territory, possibly at the invitation of my great grandfather Sam Paul, who actively recruited white settlers to come into the area.
My grandfather and his brother were sent to boarding schools for much of their education. My mother said that her father told her that he and Buck ran away several times, only to be taken back to the school by their father, Sam Paul. They must have attended one of the Chickasaw boarding schools, because the boys were all Indian, and my grandfather described how difficult it was for those who couldn't speak English, which was forbidden, even then. He liked to tell the story of a young Chickasaw boy who wrote a letter home to his parents. The boys' were required to write only in English. The boy was trying to tell his parents about one of his classmates who got a fatal case of diarrhea from eating green apples. His letter came out: "Little boy, green apple, shoot the shoot, dead."
The other story my grandfather told about his boarding school education concerned a teacher, who was a white man and apparently treated his Indian pupils with contempt, calling them "little Indian pups." When my great grandfather Sam Paul found out about this he caught the teacher on his way home from school, pulled him from his horse and whipped him with his buggy whip. As my grandmother used to say: "If you don't like Indians you shouldn't be living in Indian country," but this was before the Curtis Act.
Even though my grandfather and his brothers faced prejudice, they were educated during the time of Chickasaw sovereignty, and they each got the equivalent of a college education. As long as the governments of the Five Civilized Tribes were able to control their own education system, they provided their young people with the opportunity to become educated and to compete with the white settlers who were coming to the Territory in increasing numbers.
Bloomfield Academy, 1900
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