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| Chemawa Indian School, Oregon |
U.S. Interior Report Fails to Reveal Thousands of Deaths of Native Children in 'Prison Camps' -- U.S. Boarding Schools
'Run, run as fast as you can'
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Jan. 13, 2025
Thousands of Native children died in U.S. boarding schools that were not reported by the U.S. Interior Department in its report, the Washington Post reveals. Suffering from malnutrition, diseases and abuse, the largest number of unreported children's deaths were at Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, followed by Haskell Indian Industrial School in Kansas. The largest total number of deaths were at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Interior reported only 12 deaths at Rapid City Indian Boarding School in South Dakota. However, The Washington Post reveals there were 45 children that died there. At the Pine Ridge Boarding School, the Interior reported only 4 children died, when there are 10 documented deaths of children.
At St. Labre Indian Mission Boarding School in Montana, the Interior reported only one child died. However, thirty-three children are documented as dying there. The same Catholic boarding school was successfully sued by the Northern Cheyenne Nation for exploiting children in fundraising scams and funneling millions to the Catholic Church.
The year-long investigation by The Washington Post documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970 -- three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department. The actual number of deaths could be as high as 40,000, since deaths of children in unmarked graves were either never reported or the records were destroyed.
'Run, run as fast as you can'
Leonard Peltier described his abduction when he was nine years old on Turtle Mountain Little Shell in Belcourt, North Dakota. Leonard's words are in a letter to the Indian Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the Oneida Nation in 2014.
"Grandma was telling me, "Leonard, run and hide” ( in midcef, a French and Chippewa Language Native people created). But I felt as if I was hypnotized. I could not move and stood frozen in place. Finally, grandma understood that she could be taken to jail," Leonard said in his statement, published here.
"On this particular fall September day, I was outside playing, waiting for breakfast. I could see coming down the road a few miles from our place this huge cloud of dust that could only be made from a high speeding car. I knew the only people who had cars that went that fast was the B.I. A." |
| Indian Boarding School Tribunal at Green Bay, Wisconsin. |
"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children," Banguis told the Tribunal.
Speaking about the purpose of the Boarding School Tribunal, Swan said it is important to heal. "The United States took a lot of things from our people."
One homicide is documented at Cherokee Boarding School in Cherokee, North Carolina. Twelve-year-old Fred Warner Cooper was murdered in January of 1918, Washington Post data shows.
In Hopi's Keams Canyon, children died from scarlet fever. In South Dakota, one Lakota youth died sleeping on the train tracks while running away from boarding school in Rapid City. Running away from Pierre boarding school in South Dakota, another Native child drowned, The Washington Post data reveals in a list of names and causes of death.
At Seneca boarding school in Oklahoma, children died of typhoid. At Jones Male Academy in Oklahoma in 1922, one child died of smallpox. At Armstrong Academy in Bokchito,Oklahoma, two students were poisoned. Charles Wallace, 17, and Gissel Tonihka, died in March of 1910. Fire spread through the Dwight Mission School in Vian, Oklahoma in 1918, killing 13 children and teenagers.
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| Choctaw Indian Academy in Kentucky, the first federally- controlled Indian boarding school, 1825. |
Cholera was deadly at Choctaw Indian Academy in Sulphur, Kentucky in June of 1833. Nine Choctaw, Seminole and Miami boys and young men died from cholera. The original school, which failed due to lack of funding in 1818, was created by Baptists. "The epidemic lasted three weeks and the death toll reached twenty-four: fourteen [enslaved], one white man, and nine students, including six Choctaws, one Miami, and two Seminoles. It was built in 1825 and was the first federally-controlled Indian boarding school," according to Kentucky History.
Measles took the lives of children at the Osage school in Kansas. Meningitis spread, killing Mescalero Apache children in New Mexico. On Whiteriver in Arizona, a fifteen-year-old boy committed suicide at Fort Apache in 1935.
An epidemic of scarlet fever spread through Fort Hall Boarding School in Idaho, killing children in 1891.
The abuse and neglect were rampant at Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska, where John Roubideaux from Rosebud in South Dakota died from blood loss and shock after being struck by a freight train in 1918. Ernest Saul, Santee, died from blood poisoning there from a severely broken arm the same year, 1918. Felix Milk Williams of Rosebud was accidentally killed with an injury to the neck by another student in 1921 at the Nebraska school.
The Spanish Flu spread rapidly through Chemawa in Salem, Oregon, in 1918, killing Ojibwe, Aleut, Cree, Lummi, Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Yakama, Klamath, Suquamish, and Hoopa. They were all twelve-years-old or teenagers. Elmer Mitchell, an eight-year-old Alaskan Native, died of scarlet fever there in 1903. Jennie Schulzhagen and Annie Jessen, Tlingit, died from drowning at Chemawa in 1907.
Carlisle Indian School: The motto was 'Kill the Indian and save the child.'
Sick and dying far from their families, tuberculosis took the lives of many children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania, and one was killed by a train while running away. In-nah-ilth-tah-hoze-hee died in July of 1888 from tuberculosis at Carlisle.
How se-eh Jose Kowseah, an eighteen-year-old Queres (Keres) Pueblo, died from suicide at Carlisle in April of 1886, the Washington Post and the digital record at Carlisle reveals.
Tuberculosis killed Dine' children in Shiprock, New Mexico. In Chinle, Arizona, an eight-year-old Dine' girl died of whooping cough in 1924.
At Fort Wingate boarding school, east of Gallup, New Mexico, there was little medical care and children died of pneumonia, appendicitis, meningitis and tuberculosis. Nearby, at Crownpoint, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation, whooping cough spread taking the lives of children and seven children died of chicken pox in 1924. Ronald Yazzie, 9 and Willie B. Yazzie, 13, froze to death after running away from Crownpoint boarding school in 1968, Washington Post data shows.
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| (Page 1 of 60) The Washington Post reveals that the Interior failed to report thousands of deaths in its report. This list shows the difference in the number of deaths reported by the DOI, Department of Interior, and the number of children's deaths documented by The Washington Post. The list continues at https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/native-american-deaths-burial-sites-boarding-schools/ |
On the Longest Walk northern route from coast to coast in 2008, walkers visited both Haskell and Carlisle and offered their respects to the children who died incarcerated, lonely and suffering. At Haskell in Kansas, the museum displayed the history in photos of children forced to work in the boarding school. They were underfed, sick with malnutrition, and imprisoned for running away. Haskell students told the walkers that children remain in unmarked graves in the wetlands.
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(Photo) The Haskell jail, where children were punished and imprisoned for running away and breaking the rules. "There were severe physical and emotional consequences applied to the children for failing to abide by these new rules. They were often subjected to inadequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Later, in the period from 1910-1933, they would have been incarcerated in the Haskell jail, but prior to its construction, fruit storage cellars were used to punish students," said Haskell Cultural Center and Museum. Jessica Lackey, member of the Cherokee Nation and the Wetlands Preservation Association described the reign of terror targeting Indian children beginning in the 1880s, including those who were brought here to Haskell Indian boarding school. Haskell Indian Industrial School began in 1884, as Indian children were forcibly removed from their families. Young Indian children were torn from their families and brought here. They were taught Eurocentric ways and were the targets of forced assimilation into the mainstream culture. The goal was to get rid of their Native American culture. “When they came to these schools, they weren’t allowed to speak their language. If they had long hair, it had to be cut. Often times they couldn’t associate with other family members that were at the schools with them. It was a very militaristic, harsh, system and a lot of them died,” Lackey said in 2012, after the Longest Walk. The wetlands were a place where boys were taught to become farmers, because that was what the school administrators wanted them to become. “But the wetlands were also a sanctuary, a site of resistance.” The children often ran away to the wetlands to flee forced assimilation. Since the children’s parents were not allowed to come to the school or to stay in Lawrence because of racial prejudice, the families camped out here in the wetlands. “The kids would run away to their families.” “A lot of us believe that the wetlands are a final resting place of the children who ran away.” Lackey said the cemetery has about 100 grave stones. However, hundreds of children are still missing and unaccounted for from Haskell Indian boarding school. 'The Children who Never Came Home,' Longest Walk Northern Route at Carlisle  Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879, was among the first boarding schools to systematically kidnap Native children from their families, cut their hair, and abuse them if they spoke their language. Forced into harsh labor, they were starved and tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other diseases spread rapidly. This pattern of systematic genocide continued, as is documented in the forced sterilization of Native American women by doctors at the Indian Health Service. Even after the forced sterilization was exposed in the 1970s, secretive medical research continued on Native victims who spoke little if any English. Johns Hopkins University has carried out vaccination experiments on both Navajo and White Mountain Apache children for the past 40 years at Indian Health Service hospitals on tribal lands in Arizona, with little information made available to the public. It is now documented on the Johns Hopkins website. |
Fort Defiance, Tse Ho Tso, by O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882.The U.S. Interior Department Failed to Report Widespread Deaths at Boarding School Deaths on the Navajo Nation
On the Navajo Nation, sixty-nine Dine' children died at the Fort Defiance Indian Boarding School. The number was drastically under-reported by the U.S. Interior, which said that only 13 children died there. The U.S. Interior failed to report More Dine' children's deaths at boarding schools in Leupp, Tuba City, Ganado, Crownpoint, Mariano Lake on the Navajo Nation.
The children who ran away often died in the cold, and if they were captured, they were imprisoned, starved and brutalized.
"In 1970, 11-year-old Johnson Kee West died after he fled the Kayenta Indian School in northern Arizona and tried to climb a snowbound mesa to get home. “Frozen,” the Navajo boy’s death certificate noted," the Post reported. |
| Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico |
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| Paiute children as young as six were taken and forced into labor in southern Utah. Twelve unmarked graves of children were discovered at Panguitch Indian Boarding School in 2023, Paiute leaders said. The school operated from 1904 to 1909 and was shut down due to rampant illness. |
