Separated but Unbroken The Haudenosaunee Boarding School Experience Special Exhibit at the Iroquois Museum

HOWES CAVE — Richard Henry Pratt had a misguided theory.

"Kill the Indian and save the man,” stated Pratt bluntly.  Pratt, a career army officer, believed that indigenous children could be acculturated into the dominant white Anglo-American culture through education. He insisted that for natives to survive, the government had to immerse children in white society and totally assimilate them. Just as newly arrived immigrants had to learn American values to assimilate and be successful in their new home, so did the country’s original inhabitants. Pratt argued to natives that their people would advance “in intelligence and industry” after their children left the reservations and learn to read, write, work, and live among whites.

In 1879 Pratt convinced the federal government to open the Carlisle Indian Industrial School on an abandoned military base in Pennsylvania. It became the model for over 300 schools in the United States. 

When children arrived at residential schools, school officials forced them out of their native garb and into the clothing worn by mainstream Americans or military uniforms and cut their long hair short. School officials ordered the children not to speak their own language or practice their own religion and exchanged their names for Christian names from the bible or Anglo names. The system forbade children to return home for at least five years to ensure that the “civilizing” process had rooted firmly and transformed them into model citizens.   

In sum, indigenous culture had to be extinguished. Pratt believed that to “civilize the Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him civilized, let him stay." This metamorphosis would enable indigenous people to blend into the dominant Anglo-American culture and prosper.

In 1891, a compulsory attendance law enabled federal officers to forcibly take Native American children from their homes and reservations. The federal government forced parents to authorize their children's attendance at boarding schools. 

The schools proved to be a traumatic experience for the children. After being forcibly separated from their families and coerced into abandoning their Native American identities and cultures, many encountered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, malnourishment, and illness. Depression, substance abuse, and even suicide resulted. Overcrowding led to the spread of infectious diseases and death. When not attending class, children had to clean and maintain the schools or to attend Christian churches on Saturdays and Sundays.

Reformers also established boarding schools on reservations, where they were often operated by religious missions. Native American children were separated from their families and communities when they attended such schools on other reservations.

The Thomas Indian School, located on the Cattaraugus Reservation in Erie County, New York, practiced the federal policy of forced assimilation and cultural genocide.  It is the subject of a new special exhibit at the Iroquois Museum titled “Separated but Unbroken: The Haudenosaunee Boarding School Experience,” curated by Erin Keaton, an enrolled member of the St Regis-Akwesasne Mohawk tribe.

Officials forced Ms. Keaton’s grandfather William Conners to leave the St. Regis-Akwesasne Reservation and enter the Thomas Indian School in 1926 at the age of eight. The following year, William’s younger brother, Stanley - only six years old - joined his elder brother. Stanley’s and William’s forced departure ignited a three-year struggle by their grandparents to have the boys returned, which ended successfully. 

Although the Thomas Indian School forbade indigenous languages, Stanley retained his native tongue. Stanley served in the Army as one of the 17 Mohawk code talkers from the Saint Regis-Akwesasne Reservation during World War II, using the little-known Mohawk language to transmit unbreakable coded messages.  He posthumously received a Congressional Medal issued to Mohawk code talkers in 2016. His son accepted it.

Her family’s history inspired Ms. Keaton to research the Thomas Indian School and to curate a special temporary exhibit about the topic.  She first learned that her grandfather and his brother were at a residential school from Stanley’s daughter Vanessa. She then discovered that the student case files were at the NYS Museum and contacted them to find her family’s file.  

“The exhibit is important to me. Few Americans know of what has been done to indigenous peoples and the lengths they went to try to make us disappear,” said Ms. Keaton.  

All in all, Pratt’s vision of acculturation underestimated the durability of indigenous culture, which led to resistance and failure. Instead, the injustices encountered at residential schools and society galvanized Native Americans’ determination to celebrate and preserve their culture while struggling to advance indigenous rights. 

The will of Native Americans became an undeniable force. Damning evidence of abuse at residential schools contributed to the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which President James Earl Carter signed into law in 1978. It gave Native American parents the legal right to refuse their child’s placement in a school. In October 2024, merely six months ago, President Joseph Biden issued an official policy on behalf of the federal government for the abuse suffered in residential schools.

“Separated but Unbroken: The Haudenosaunee Boarding School Experience,” will be displayed at the Iroquois Museum on Caverns Road in Howes Cave until November 30.