Chambers Library Monthly Exhibitions

"The truth about the US (Indigenous) boarding school policy has largely been written out of the history books. There were more than 350 government-funded, and often church-run, (Indigenous) Boarding schools across the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Native children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages."

Source: National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

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Prior to Oklahoma's statehood,  treaties were offered to the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes requiring every child to attend school. The reservation schools were operated by missionaries and boarding schools were established by religious denominations and the government. Over 65 tribes were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma.

In 1871, the Wichita-Caddo school (later renamed Riverside) was opened by Quaker missionaries. This is considered to be the nation's oldest Indigenous boarding school, as it is one of four in the nation still open today.

From its founding, Riverside integrated students across tribes, although segregated from the rest of society. This was largely by effect that so many were tribes were forcibly migrated to Oklahoma. The only remains of the original campus is a nearby graveyard in Anadarko.

Beginning in the 1880s, the government established non-reservation boarding schools for students from tribes all over the country and offered academic classes and vocational training for primary grades through high school.

Image: The Sac and Fox Boarding School, begun by Quaker missionaries in 1872, was located on reserve land and many children were forced to attend. 

Source: Oklahoma Historical Society

Image: Wheelock Academy, A mission school founded in 1832, functioned from 1844 to 1955 as a boarding school for girls and young women.

Image Source: Oklahoma Historical Society

Bacone College and the "Bacone Style"

On February 9, 1880, Oklahoma’s first college began classes in a small cottage in Tahlequah with three Native American students in attendance. Originally called Indian University, the school was renamed Bacone College in 1910 in honor of its founder and first president, missionary Almon C. Bacone. Chartered by the Muscogee-Creek Nation and governed by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, the purpose of the school was to provide Christian education for Native Americans. The campus was moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1885.

Under the leadership of Roger Getz (college president from 1957 to 1966), Bacone became self-governing under an Oklahoma charter and earned accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. This institution is still open today.

In an effort to revive Bacone’s history as a tribal college established for Native American education, the tribal nations of Oklahoma took control of the college in 2019. As a historic American Indian-serving institution, Bacone College provides a quality, holistic, liberal arts, educational experience for students in a culturally diverse environment, empowering life-long learners with the knowledge, skills, and capacity to be transformational leaders in both Native and non-native communities.

Source: Bacone Website

A traditional form of painting grew out of the school’s focus on aesthetics and Native American culture which came to be called the “Bacone style”. Bacone style portrays tribal life with stylized, outlined forms of bright colors. Bacone College produced many artists in the following years during this defining period of its development; and the contribution of Bacone artists is insurmountable.

Artists in the current exhibition who attended Bacone College include Virginia Stroud and Joan Hill.

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Chilocco Agricultural School

Chilocco was one of many federal schools designed to dissolve tribal identity and erase indigenous beliefs and practices. In the process, the lives of Native people were indelibly altered, and Chilocco alumni, whether they praise or curse its name, will always know themselves as Chiloccoans.

From 1884 until the early 1930s Chilocco operated according to a template devised by U.S. Army officer Richard H. Pratt at Carlisle School in Pennsylvania. The large off-reservation schools used rigorous military discipline and stressed instruction in trades and manual and domestic labor—known as "actual work." Alumni from these years remember twenty-two bugle calls a day, government-issue uniforms, scanty meals, inadequate health care, and a paucity of individual attention. They also remember the bonds of loyalty and love that knit students together, and the rivalries of tribe, degree of blood, age, and language difference that cross-cut school society.

In 1928 an exposé of federal Indigenous Service mismanagement scathingly critiqued conditions in the boarding schools, and in the early 1930s some reforms were introduced. Boys and girls could sit together in the dining rooms, more attention was invested in academic work, and drudgery work devoted to school upkeep was cut back. Nonetheless, many aspects of student life endured: separation from home and family for years at a time, devotion to fellow students, strict discipline, and curricula that remained focused more on vocational than academic preparation.

Through the 1960s and 1970s changing social conditions, growing Native enrollments in public schools, critiques of boarding school conditions, and federal reluctance to fund and operate schools for American Indians (despite treaty and trust obligations) led to the closure of many institutions. Chilocco closed its doors in 1980.

Source: Oklahoma Historical Society

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Dwight Mission School

Dwight Mission was an evangelistic venture and an offshoot of work being done among the Cherokees in the American South before removal. While many buildings were burned in during the Civil war, in 1886 the Cherokee National Council reestablished the school, and the Presbyterian Women's Board of Home Missions provided funds. A large building was erected as a boarding facility for Cherokee girls. Dwight remained open until 1895, after which it served as a day school. It reopened in 1900 as a boarding school for boys and girls. A 1944 report indicated that Dwight Indian Training School consisted of nine buildings on eighty-six acres, operated under the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church USA, and served seventy-one students, mostly Cherokee and Choctaw. The school closed in 1948.

Source: Oklahoma Historical Society

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Riverside School

As the oldest non-reservation boarding school still in existence, Riverside school (Anadarko, OK) is home to over 75 tribes and 800 students, and encourages "an atmosphere of holistic development for each student and staff member through cultural, spiritual, physical, technological and academic experiences."

Source: Riverside School