Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

January 24, 2025

U.S. Interior Did Not Report Thousands of Children's Deaths in 'Prison Camps' -- U.S. Boarding Schools

The U.S. Interior Did Not Report Thousands of Children's Deaths in U.S. Boarding Schools

(Photo: Albuquerque Indian School, May 10, 1884.) The U.S. Interior did not report the large number of children who died in Albuquerque Indian School. The raw data from Washington Post shows epidemics of tuberculosis, and pneumonia, killed Dine', Pueblo, Apache and Hopi children during epidemics in 1892 and 1911 -- 1912. The Meriam Report in 1928 exposed the U.S. negligence and the overcrowding, lack of food and failed medical care that accelerated the diseases. -- Censored News

Walapai (Hualapai) students in Hackberry, Arizona 1900


(Photo) Geronimo's People: Say Their Names -- Chiricahua Apache children transferred from prison in Florida to Carlisle Indian School in 1886. More Apache children with Geronimo imprisoned in Florida were transferred with Geronimo to the barracks at Mount Vernon in Alabama. From there, Apache children were sent to Carlisle Indian School in the winter and spring of 1886-1887. Of the 106 students who arrived at Carlisle from Mount Vernon, 27 died and more were dying in May of 1889 at Carlisle. Shortly after being taken to Carlisle, during the year of 1887, the teenagers began dying from tuberculosis. Skahsejah, Skah-se-jah, 17, died in June. Eric Gatay, 18, died in October. Fourteen-year-old Edna Graham, Bet-ah-kat-oth, died in July. The following year, more of the children died from tuberculosis. Basil Ekarden, E-kard-en died in March. He was 16. Alida Booth,Ta-pe-na-nah-clin-ah, 15, died in April of 1888. Simon Dakosin, Dak-o-sin, 14, died in June. More of the children and teenagers died from tuberculosis and consumption, the Washington Post's raw data shows. -- Censored News.

The U.S. Interior drastically under-reported the deaths of children at Chemawa Indian School in Oregon.

'Run, run as fast as you can'

By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Updated Feb. 1, 2025

Censored News is examining the raw data from Washington Post, and continuing to expand this article on the thousands of deaths of children in boarding schools that the U.S. Interior did not report. Who were the children, what did they die from, and why is it being covered up in history?

Thousands of Native children died in U.S. boarding schools that were not reported by the U.S. Interior Department in its recent report. 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 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.

Colorado Boarding Schools "Filthy and Abusive"

Teller Boarding School in Grand Junction, Colorado -- Thirty six children died here between 1894 and 1910. The causes of death are typhoid, tuberculosis, pneumonia, kidney problems, blood clot and drowning. They were Dine' (Navajo,) Shoshone, Tohono O'odham, Mescalero Apache, San Carlos Apache and Yuma, Washington Post's data shows.

Of the 36 children who died at Grand Junction, five were Tohono O'odham. Five were Dine'.

The Interior reported that no children died at Grand Junction.

At Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School in Hesperus, Colorado, Southern Ute, Navajo, White Mountain Apache, Pima and Pueblo children died of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases in the early 1900s. An estimated 1,100 children from 20 Native tribes attended the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School in Colorado for 17 years.

"At Fort Lewis, students and staff were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Thomas Breen, a longtime superintendent of the school whose abuses came to light in a series of Denver Post articles in 1903," reports Chalkbeat.

"Students lived in poor conditions. Illness was common. Raw sewage and putrid water conditions were frequent problems at the Grand Junction school. The Fort Lewis school also was hard to heat in the winter, making for miserable conditions."

Twenty-six children died at Fort Lewis of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, scrofula, fever and pneumonia. Seven of the children were Southern Ute, and five were White Mountain Apache. The other children were Mescalero Apache, Dine', Pueblo, and O'odham.

Mary, Southern Ute, was 12 years old.

The U.S. Interior reported only one child died at Fort Lewis -- but the Washington Post documented 26 children died here. Five were Dine'. Five were White Mountain Apache. Seven were Southern Ute children. Most died of tuberculosis and infectious diseases.

At Ute Mountain Boarding School in Towaoc, ten children died. Seven children died at Southern Ute Boarding School in Ignacio, Colorado.

Albuquerque Indian School Militarized Children

Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico

Dine', Pueblo and Apache children were forced to attend the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico, where they were militarized.

Native children were forced into militarization. Forced to cut their hair and not speak their language, the children were brainwashed into serving in the same U.S. military that murdered and massacred their people. The majority of children were Dine'. The U.S. government began seizing large numbers of children from their Navajo families in 1919 and without the consent of their families, the U.S. government sent them to distant boarding schools.

The U.S. Interior did not report the large number of children who died in Albuquerque Indian School. The raw data from Washington Post shows epidemics of tuberculosis, and pneumonia, killed Dine', Pueblo, Apache and Hopi children during epidemics in 1892 and 1911 -- 1912. The Meriam Report in 1928 exposed the U.S. negligence and the overcrowding, lack of food and failed medical care that accelerated the diseases. 

Tuberculosis and pneumonia were the leading causes of death at the school, but children also died from typhoid, measles, anemia, sepsis, Addison's disease and injuries. A fifteen-year-old Maricopa Pima died of typhoid in 1890, and two more children died of typhoid in 1892. A Mescalero Apache boy died of typhoid in 1985, and another Apache boy of typhoid in 1916.

The U.S. Interior reported only 10 children died at Albuquerque Indian School.

The Washington Post documented 77 children who died.

Santa Fe Indian School

U.S. Indian School in Santa Fe 1904. Photo courtesy Palace of the Governors.


Forty-seven children died at Santa Fe Indian School.

There was so much sickness in 1982, that the dormitories and storage rooms were full of sick children, dying of pneumonia, and of the epidemics of typhoid and measles. "They were so crowded that some single cots held two patients."

Twenty-two children died that school year.

Many children died far from home at Santa Fe Indian School.

Six-year-old Katalina, Jicarilla Apache, died in 1892. Emily Jones, 18, Maricopa Pima, died of sudden heart failure in February of 1897. Doly Brown, Dine', was only 10 years old when he died of pneumonia in 1896.

James Gorman, Dine', was eighteen when he died in 1900. Gorman is a well-known name on the Navajo Nation.

"James passed away on May 20, 1900, after a lingering illness. Unlike many who had no family at the school while they were ill, James’s cousin Nelson Gorman had been at his side throughout his illness. James’s funeral was held the next day. He was eighteen years old," writes Cody White and Rose Buchanan. In their article, "The Text Message," they write of the wagon accident that killed Frank Lyons, Apache, and the diseases that took the lives of so many children.

Bertha Snooks, Quechan, whose homeland is on the Arizona and California border, was fifteen when she died of tuberculosis in 1898. Frank Charles was Western Shoshone, whose homeland is in Nevada, was 14 when he died of tuberculosis in May of 1901.

Children died from so many diseases, illnesses and accidents -- a wagon accident, stroke, a cerebral hemorrhage, encephalitis and chronic dysentery.

They were as far away as Santa Rosa on the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona, and from as close as the nearby Pueblo of San Juan, Ohkay Owingeh, and other Pueblos. 

Susie Bah, Dine', from the Fort Defiance area, died of a paralytic stroke at the age of 13 in October of 1907.

U.S. Indian School at Santa Fe circa 1900. Photo courtesy Palace of the Governors.


Measles spread in an epidemic in 1916 and 30 children were sick. Ute Mountain Ute and Jicarilla Apache children were among those sick with tuberculosis and two died in 1919. "The wards in the present building are dark and none are too well ventilated," the superintendent wrote.

When the school year ended in 1927, one girl from Acoma Pueblo had died of tuberculosis. A frail boy from Picuris Pueblo ran away, into the cold, and when he was brought back, he died on pneumonia on November 22, 1926.


There were 47 children's deaths documented by Washington Post. The U.S. Interior's report only shows 34.


Apache visiting Ramona Indian School in New Mexico. 1884 -- 1892. Families were given passes once or twice a year to leave the Fort Union prison to visit their children who had been taken to the Ramona Indian School.

Ramona Indian School in New Mexico

Ramona Indian School was created in 1883 by the Congregational Ministry.

The church ministry contracted with the U.S. government to bring Apache children to the school that were being held prisoners along with their parents at Fort Union, New Mexico. They were Jicarilla and San Carlos Apache.

"Prisoners were held at the fort for several months, and in some cases many years, with a substantial number of the confined being Apache women and children. Some prisoners were physically restrained and held in the guardhouse under lock and key, while the majority of prisoners resided in makeshift tents scattered within the fort's premises," according to Santa Fe Library.

Although few records exist, one of those who died at Ramona Indian School was Maggie White in 1892. She was seven years old, Washington Post shows.


Running Away -- Native teen girls died running away in California


Native teenage girls died from the cold after being beaten with a strap and running away from the Greenville Indian Boarding School near Sacramento, California.

Five girls ran away from boarding school. Molly Lowry was one of the girls who died of freezing and exposure after being hit by a school worker in 1916. The following year, Edith Buckskin, one of those who ran away, died from "exposure, frostbite, infections from subsequent amputations of feet and lower legs."

Across the nation, children who ran away died from freezing temperatures and infections from amputations from frostbite, including children at Greenville and Rapid City boarding school in South Dakota. Children died on the train tracks across the country. It remains unknown if they were sleeping from exhaustion, running, pushed or committed suicide.

When children were captured, they were beaten, and jailed at Chilocco and Haskell. At Rehoboth in Gallup, New Mexico, Dine' were chained in the basement. At Chemawa in Oregon, an eleven-year-old boy was shot and killed while running away.

Beverly Ogle, Maidu and Pit River, published four books about her people in what is known as California. In her last book, on boarding school victims, she relates the story of her own father.

Ogle's father Sidney Benner was taken to Fort Bidwell school in Modoc County, California, at the age of 10. By that time, kidnapping was a legal requirement and her grandmother had no recourse.

"Like many of the students in these schools, he and his brother ran away, but were caught by school patrols that used dogs. Sidney said the patrolmen would shoot their rifles over the childrens’ heads, 'Of course, the kids didn’t know they wouldn’t be shot,'" Ogle said.

Kate Mook's investigation into the deaths of the teenage Native girls at Greenville, California reveals how the deaths of the girls who ran away at Greenville are linked to today's murdered and missing in Indian country -- the failed investigations into abuse. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2100&context=etd

The Children at Chilocco

At Chilocco, children seized from their homes were doused with kerosene, forced to march military style, and punished in a guard house with bread and water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuQtljaCYzo&t=353s

Children died of preventable diseases at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, in a school marked by hunger, loneliness and failed medical care. The Washington Post data reveals the causes of death of children at Chilocco -- pneumonia, heart failure, epidemics of measles, and failed operations. There are 69 students buried in the school cemetery. More than 17,000 students were at the school during nearly a century of operations, from 1884 to 1980, north of Ponca City.


When children became sick at Chilocco, their parents were rarely informed. When students passed away, families received a form letter.
https://library.okstate.edu/search-and-find/collections/digital-collections/chilocco-indian-agricultural-school-photo-collection/

https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-boarding-schools/tree/main/schools/OK/Chilocco_Indian_Agricultural_School


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. However, there are 10 deaths of children that are documented. The family names of the children are well known.

Charles Crowdog died in 1909 at Rapid City Indian Boarding School, where children were locked in jail cells, starved and beaten.

James Means and Mark Sherman were run over on the train tracks while escaping, the Washington Post shows.



James Means and Mark Sherman were run over on the train tracks while running away, the Washington Post shows.




Ben Sherman, 82, Oglala, shared his family's tragedy three years ago. His great grandmother Lizzy Glode Sherman was in the first group at Carlisle in 1879.

"Lizzie and Frank’s fourth child was Mark Sherman. He was sent to school at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School. The school environment was harsh, with regimented routines intended to instill highly controlled behavior. Mark and three other boys ran away from school in 1910. They decided to follow the railroad tracks from Rapid City and go south toward the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation."

"At some point they decided to rest, with Mark and James Means sleeping on the railroad track. A train rolled through, striking Mark and James, killing Mark immediately and fatally wounding James. Mark was 17 years old. He was buried by Lizzie and Frank in a cemetery near their home in Kyle, SD on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation."

"This cruelty was a government policy of a continued war against the children of an Indian population that was hated and reviled by many powerful Americans," Sherman said.

Luke Shell Necklace had only been sick a short time at Rapid City Boarding School when he died in a hospital after an operation in 1917. Luke was Cheyenne. He was seventeen years old. Abner Kirk, 12, Sisseton, died of cholera at the school in 1925. James Short Tree, Northern Cheyenne, died from suicide on April 20, 1921 at Rapid City Boarding School.

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.

'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 Indigenous 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."

"I knew that I was supposed to run into the woods and hide, this was normal and as children, we were taught this from an early age. If we didn't hide, the government would steal us and we may never be returned."

Leonard didn't escape, and was taken from the log cabin where he lived with his grandmother. Leonard describes the DDT poured on him at the shower, and the abuse that followed in Wahpeton boarding school in North Dakota.

Indigenoous Boarding School Tribunal at Green Bay, Wisconsin.

During the Indigenous Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Lakota, shared the story of a Lakota elder from Cheyenne River in South Dakota. At four years old, he was thrown against the wall repeatedly until his bones were broken for wetting the bed in boarding school. Now, he is over 70 years old and his back is still scarred from the beatings there.

Roxanna Banguis, Ed.D., Tlingit, Haida and Sechelt, said her mother told her that there were constant beatings in the boarding school in Sechelt B.C. When the school partially burned down, skeletons of babies were found in the walls.

"The sexual molesters, the predators, found a job where they can abuse children," Banguis told the Tribunal.

Yvonne Swan is Sinixt, "People of the Arrow Lakes, of the Colville Confederated Tribes from Washington State.

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."

"We have to come from deep within, and get all that out."

Nationwide, tuberculosis was the leading cause of reported deaths in Indian boarding schools in the U.S., Washington Post data shows. Sick children were often forced to sleep in the same bed with others, and the disease spread rapidly due to neglect.

Homicide and Scarlet Fever

The official reports do not list the names of all of the children who were murdered in the boarding schools operated by the U.S. government and Christian churches.

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, the Washington Post data reveals in a list of names and causes of death.

Typhoid, Malaria and Smallpox in Oklahoma and New Mexico boarding schools

At Seneca boarding school in Oklahoma, children died of typhoid. Two children died at Wealaka Boarding School in Leonard, Oklahoma, in 1901 from smallpox. Again, at the Jones Male Academy in Oklahoma in 1922, one child died of smallpox. 

Even before Native children began dying as captives at Carlisle, children were dying at Fort Coffee Academy for Choctaw boys in eastern Oklahoma. Whooping cough, pneumonia and flu killed twelve boys in 1853. 

At Kaw Boarding School in Washunga,OKlahoma, an unnamed child was shot and killed in 1906.

Malaria took the life of a unnamed girl at Wheelock Academy in Millerton, Oklahoma in June of 1914.

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.

Lester Kachina, Apache, died from typhoid at Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico in August.

Epidemics of typhoid killed children and teenagers at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California in the early 1900s.

At Sherman, Robert More, 16, Mono, died when he was hit on the head with a hammer on the athletic field in 1915.

The following year at Sherman, Maude Hope, 20, Paiute, Shoshone, Bannock from Idaho, died of gangrene. An epidemic of Spanish flu took the lives of Tohono O'odham and Pima teenagers at Sherman in 1918.

Jose Juan Francisco and Salvador, both 15 years old, and Tohono O'odham, Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock from Arizona, died after being hit by a streetcar in 1920.

Olin Zhebe Bolli was trying to make it home to Navajoland from Sherman. The report says he was running away and either fell to his death from a freight train while running away, or was found unconscious inside the freight train and died from exposure in 1921.

A fire at Joseph's Mission School in Culdesac, Idaho, a Catholic mission on Nez Perce land, killed six children. Rosalie Branchaud, 12, Andrew Fogarty, 9, Edward Switzler, 4 years old, Simon Broncheau, 5 years old, Lawrence Henry, 8 years old, and Max Ostenberg, 12, died in the fire in October of 1925.

Measles, whooping cough and infectious diseases took the lives of Quechan children in Fort Yuma, California.

Choctaw Indian Academy in Kentucky, the first federally- controlled Indian boarding school, 1825.

Cholera at Choctaw Indian Academy 

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.

With the first roots in the Baptist Church, Kentucky Senator Richard Johnson used money from the Choctaw treaty for education, and his connections at the War Department, to create the school, which ultimately led to a flow of wealth to him. Johnson's common law wife is described as mixed race and enslaved.

"Johnson’s property also included a plantation where he enslaved at least sixty people including his two daughters, Adaline and Imogene, and their mother Julia Chinn," Kentucky History states.

The U.S. Interior's concealment, and under-reporting of deaths in its report, are revealed in the death count at Fort Hall. One of the epidemics that spread through Fort Hall boarding school in Idaho, was scarlet fever which took the lives of children in 1891. The Interior reported a total of 15 deaths at Fort Hall -- but there were 110 children's deaths, Washington Post reports.

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.

Charlie Fiester was shot and killed after he ran away from Chemawa in April of 1907. Charlie was eleven years old. He was Klamath, Modoc, Yahooskin, from Klamath, Oregon.

Chemawa continues to operate as a boarding school.

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.

James Lacey died in a blizzard while trying to run away from the Holy Family Mission and School in Piegan, Montana. His friend who was also running away with him carried James' body three miles to his mother's house, in 1895.

The flu killed more than 22 children at Pierre Indian School in South Dakota in 1919. As in the case of the other schools that Lakota children were incarcerated, children died running away, and from rampant infectious diseases and brutal force.

At Pierre, An unnamed child died of blood poisoning in 1897.  Clarence Loudner, 12, drowned in 1928. Robert McLean drowned in 1948. Marvene Medicine Crow drowned while running away in 1967. Francis Red Bear, 15, was crushed by overturned dairy truck in 1959. 

Brutal deaths in Genoa, Nebraska

The children's deaths at Genoa in Nebraska shows the brutal abuse. 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.

At Genoa, Felix Milk Williams of Rosebud was "accidentally killed" with an injury to the neck by another student in 1921. Albert Cottier, 13, Assiniboine, died from blood poisoning from an abscessed tooth in 1930. Amos Cadue died from an "accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound from a sawed-off rifle" in 1925.

An unnamed child died from a ruptured spleen after being kicked by an employee at Genoa. Robert Potter's death was reported as an "accidental shot killed by another student when the two were playing with guns" in 1898. Clarence White was killed by a train in 1921. Clarence Walker, Winnebego, was crushed by a train at Genoa in 1927.

“They were beaten up like dogs,” said Julia Carroll, an employee at the Genoa Indian Industrial School who testified before a congressional hearing in 1929. “I have seen those children beaten up until the blood would flow out of their noses.”

In Hawaii's boarding schools, Native children were murdered

Joe Kahakauila died suddenly after he told adults he was sick and was forced to work anyway at the Industrial and Reformatory School in Haleiwa, Hawaii. He was sprayed with a hose when they found him sleeping in 1918. Joe was forced to return to the reform school without notifying his family and family was not told of his death until after burial.

At the same school in Hawaii, William Keawe was beaten to death by a school guard in 1930.

On the Longest Walk, Haskell and Carlisle

On the Longest Walk northern route from coast to coast in 2008, walkers went to 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.

(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.

The long list of names of children who died at Haskell include an unnamed child who died of sepsis following a gunshot wound in 1916.

Native American students at Haskell said the remains of the children who ran away, and others who died and disappeared, are believed to remain here in the Haskell wetlands.

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.

Carlisle opened in 1879 and operated for nearly 30 years with the motto of "kill the Indian and save the man." 

The children began dying of infectious diseases when they arrived at Carlisle.

Ripped from their families, many were Lakotas from Rosebud in South Dakota who died in 1881.

Dennis,"Strikes First, son of Blue Tomahawk," 13, Lakota from Rosebud in South Dakota, died from pneumonia at Carlisle  in January of 1881. Ernest,"Knocks Off, son of White Thunder," 19, Lakota from Rosebud, died of pharyngitis (throat infection) in December of 1880. Dora,"Her Pipe, daughter of Brave Bull," 17, Lakota from Rosebud, died in April of 1881 of pneumonia. Rose,"Red Rose, daughter of Long Face," 19, Lakota from Rosebud, died of congestion of lungs in April of 1881.

At Carlisle, Willie Curley, 9, Arapaho, died of pneumonia in May of 1881. Albert, son of Tulsey Mekko, Creek, Muscogee, Seminole, died of measles in April of 1881. Giles, son of Wooly Hair, 17, Cheyenne, died of congestion of the lungs in May of 1881. Frank Cushing, 12, Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, died of tuberculosis in July of 1881. 

Stolen from their families, and brought to Carlisle, the children did not return, and many died as teenagers from disease and abuse.

Northern Arapaho from Wind River, Wyoming,"Little Chief, son of Sharp Nose" died in January, 1883 at Carlisle. Little Chief was 16.

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.

Sick and dying far from their families, tuberculosis and pneumonia took the lives of many children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania in the 1800s and early 1900s. 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.

Charles Packineau died in the spring, running away from Carlisle at the age of 21 in April 21, 1912. Charles' student file shows he is Hidatsa, and entered the school on November 11, 1906. Six years later he died running away at the age of 21.

Lakota Chiefs White Thunder, Swift Bear, and Spotted Tail wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., on December 27, 1880, asking for the return of the bodies of their dead children.

“Our hearts will grieve too long if we don’t have what’s left of them back. We want to dig their graves with our own hands, we wait when the birds begin to sing and the flowers begin to bloom…” There is no record of a response.

 Fort Defiance, Tse Ho Tso, by O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882.

Fort Defiance: The 'Trachoma School' Where Navajo Deaths were Not Reported

On the Navajo Nation, sixty-nine Dine' children died at the Fort Defiance Indian Boarding School. Tse Ho Tso, the Meadow Between the Rocks, is at the opening to Blue Canyon, and bears the stain of Kit Carson and his brutal and genocidal Longest Walk to Fort Sumner.

Sixty-six Dine' children died here during the years of 1911 through 1919, but the cause was not written. The number was drastically under-reported by the U.S. Interior in its recent report, which says that only 13 children died in Fort Defiance.

The Meriam report in 1928 revealed that the boarding school at Fort Defiance was turned into a trachoma school in January of 1927.

"All children enrolled there suffering with the diseases were retained, those free were exchanged with other schools for their trachomatous children."

In March, approximately 450 trachomatous children were at this school. The spread of the disease in schools was accelerated by reusing towels, and the lack of food.

Pointing out that trachoma results in blindness, the report adds: "The diet at Fort Defiance is notably lacking in the two great preventive foods, milk and fresh vegetables and fruits."

Dine' children died at boarding schools in Leupp, Tuba City, Ganado, Crownpoint, and 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.

At Tuba City boarding school, epidemics of flu took the lives of many children at Tuba City in 1919 and again in 1926. Dine' children died of pneumonia. Chee Harold Calamity, 13, Dine', drowned when his raft turned over in March of 1944.

Tuberculosis killed Dine' children in Shiprock, New Mexico. In Chinle, Arizona, an eight-year-old Dine' girl died of whooping cough in 1924.

Navajos died at Keams Canyon Boarding School in Arizona from the rampant spreading diseases. Six children died from scarlet fever in 1904. Children died of measles, spinal meningitis and pneumonia.

At Fort Wingate boarding school, east of Gallup, New Mexico, there was little medical care and children died of pneumonia, appendicitis, meningitis and tuberculosis. Seven children died of meningitis in 1933.

"We were not equipped to take adequate care of our pupils," the Fort Wingate Superintendent wrote in 1927. "Our hospital facilities consisted of an unrepaired set of Army quarters."

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.

The tragedies and deaths continued in the 1960s and 1970s on the Navajo Nation.

Dine' continued to run away from the boarding schools. Ronald Yazzie, 9 and Willie B. Yazzie, 13, froze to death after running away from Crownpoint, New Mexico, boarding school in 1968.

"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 Washington Post reported.

West’s death was one of the most recent recorded by The Post came as the era of federal boarding schools drew to a close.

Before he passed to the Spirit World, the great painter Carl Gorman, Dine' of Chinle, lived in Fort Defiance. Seated at the Navajo Nation Inn Restaurant, Gorman described the cruel treatment in boarding school, and how he was chained in a basement at Rehoboth Mission School in Gallup for refusing to speak English, and running away. The years did not diminish Carl's memory.


     Stewart Indian School in Nevada

Stewart Indian School: Boarding Schools Violated Geneva Convention on Genocide

The brutal history at Stewart Indian School in Nevada is revealed in the death reports of children.

Native students died of tuberculosis, pneumonia and meningitis during the early 1900s. In 1898, one child died from a fractured skull. Three students died from eating wild parsnips in 1909, and one Paiute teenager, sixteen years old, took her own life. Ten-year-old Enis Johnson died from drowning in 1926.

Navajos from remote communities, including Pine Springs and Oak Springs, were taken to Stewart and seldom returned home during their childhoods.

Stewart Indian School has a history of kidnapped children from outside the state of Nevada, abuse, and exploiting students for labor. Photo: A historic photo on display at the Stewart Indian School and Cultural Center in Carson City on Jan. 13, 2020, by Jazmin Orozco-Rodriguez.
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/new-stewart-indian-school-museum-reflects-on-a-dark-history-brings-hope-for-native-communities

Today, Stewart Indian School has a new policy. "Assimilation is genocide," the school states on its website.

The "U.S. government’s assimilation policy set up 408 boarding schools for American Indian children to provide vocational training and English classes," the school says. Although it is part of treaty rights, the school said the policy "justified dividing up Native land through allotment and was intended to destroy Native culture."

Stewart Indian School states that the "cruel policy gave school officials authority to kidnap children from their families and bring them to boarding schools like Stewart."

The school points out that the treatment of Native children in boarding schools violates the Geneva Convention on Genocide:

-- Thousands of children, families, and Native communities were affected by this policy which meets the United Nation’s definition of genocide
-- 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention)
-- Killing members of a group;
-- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
-- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
-- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
-- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Poisoned by eating wild parsnips

Native children in boarding schools were starving and hungry. Across the nation, children desperately searched for food, and died from eating poisonous wild parsnips.

At Fort Shaw Government Industrial Indian School, in Fort Shaw, Montana, thirteen-year-old William Manning was poisoned after ingesting wild parsnips in 1900. His records say he was Flathead, Colville or Salish.

Eight-year-old Jerry O'Brein Buska died in June of 1906 at Vermillion Lake Indian School in Minnesota after eating a root resembling parsnips in the woods, the records show.

At Stewart Indian School in Nevada, three students, two boys and one girl, died after eating wild parsnips in 1909.

The Tragedy in Southern Utah

     Panguitch Indian Boarding School, southern Utah

Paiute children as young as six were taken and forced into farm labor in southern Utah.

Here, in the remote southwest corner of Utah, near the Grand Canyon, 12 unmarked graves of children were discovered at Panguitch Indian Boarding School in 2023. The school operated from 1904 to 1909 and was shut down due to rampant illness.

When the unmarked graves were found, Hope Silvas, chairwoman of the Shivwits Band of Paiute Indians, reflected on the children. “When we first gathered to find you, far away from home we felt your spirits welcome us with mischief and happiness only we could recognize and respect."

"Our hearts filled with sorrow and anger to hear of your mistreatment, to forcefully change your spirits into someone you are not. We will remember you always and how you walked here in life. Our tears will fall as we sing for you. May your spirits journey home in a good way to reunite with your family who also wondered where you went," Silvas said.

The Paiute Tribe of Utah said a Utah State University study in 2023 confirmed the bodies were those of two Kaibab Paiute children, four Shivwits children and additional children from other tribes.

Forced into farm labor when they were as young as six years old, some children were taken at gunpoint from St. George, Utah, and in the northwestern Arizona community of Moccasin.

Who was Hastiin Tadidiin?

Hastiin Tadidiin, referred to as Taddy Tin, Dine', in Kaibeto, was shot and killed while trying to protect his children from being taken away to boarding school. Tadidiin was killed by agents sent by the former superintendent at Panguitch.

"Hastiin Tadidiin (Diné) was murdered in the winter of 1916. Federal agents found him inside his hogan, about 10 miles northeast of Kaibeto, Navajo Nation, Arizona, when they came to round up his children and forcibly transport them to a nearby federally funded boarding school," writes Alastair Lee Bitsóí in High Country News.

Tadidiin is known for his name 'Corn Pollen Man.'

"His family estimates that he was in his 70s when he was shot with at least 10 bullets. Records and family history reveal that he died trying to protect two of his children, at least one of whom, a daughter, was taken away after his death and placed in boarding school." https://www.hcn.org/articles/who-does-the-federal-boarding-schools-investigation-leave-out/


The superintendent at Panguitch, Walter Runke, also worked at Tuba City Boarding School as a disciplinarian, before he moved on to oversee a Navajo boarding school system, Salt Lake Tribune reports. 
https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2021/08/23/bodies-paiute-children/

The superintendent was charged with ordering three white men to arrest Tin for not sending his kids to school.

Runke and the white men, though, were acquitted by an all-white jury, which said they were acting in self-defense.

The Meriam Report 1928: The Spread of Tuberculosis

"The prevalence of tuberculosis in boarding schools is alarming," the Meriam Report stated in 1928.

The lack of health examinations when children were admitted, serious overcrowding, poor rations, and the industrial method of operating schools led to widespread tuberculosis.

Sick children were forced to work at duties too difficult. "A full-fledged case of the disease thus develops before the case is diagnosed and treated. To aggravate these conditions the child in an advanced stage of the disease is frequently returned to his family, there to infect others in the home and himself to be the victim of neglect on account of ignorance and lack of facilities to meet his needs," the Meriam Report said.

The highest rates of tuberculosis nationwide were in the Lakota communities in Pine Ridge and Rosebud in South Dakota, and the southern Arizona communities of O'odham (Pima) and Tohono O'odham (Papago.)

U.S. Interior Did Not Report Thousands of Children's Deaths

(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/

The Washington Post shares the names of the children that died, and warns that as many as 40,000 Native children are feared dead from malnutrition, disease and abuse, since many deaths of children in unmarked graves were never reported, and other documents were destroyed.

"As the number of schools increased, waves of deaths swept across the system, according to enrollment records, government reports, death certificates and news clips."

"At least 270 died at Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, 146 at Haskell Indian Industrial Training School in Kansas, 110 at Fort Hall Boarding School in Idaho and 100 at Sherman Institute in California," Washington Post reports.

Preston McBride, a Pomona College historian who wrote his dissertation about four of the largest Indian boarding schools, has estimated the death toll to be as high as 40,000.

The Washington Post article includes the names of the children who died in U.S. boarding schools. Read the article:


Rapid City Indian Boarding School


Children's deaths at Rapid City Indian School
Source Washington Post 





Lists of Students in U.S. Boarding Schools


Fort Defiance Boarding School, Arizona, Navajo Nation, Student list 1940 -- 1972

Phoenix Indian School, List of Students, 1902--1989

Albuquerque Indian School, List of Students 1886 -- 1964

Abuse of children at Fort Totten, Chemawa, other schools


Apache children 'prisoners of war' transferred to Carlisle

These materials include a cover letter and Descriptive Statement of Pupils regarding 37 Chiricahua Apache prisoners-of-war transferred to the Carlisle Indian School from Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, where a larger group of Geronimo's band remained imprisoned. The 37 individuals transferred to Carlisle represented a portion of all prisoners aged between 12 and 22. A second group of prisoners from Geronimo's group were transferred in the Spring of 1887.


Carlisle digital file: Apache prisoners of war at Carlisle with Geronimo from Florida and Alabama taken to Carlisle


Canada's Independent Report

The final report by the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burials calls on Canada to implement its 42 obligations for “truth, accountability, justice and reconciliation” that must be carried out through a new Indigenous-led legal framework to support the search for and recovery of the missing children.

"Students were not only strapped and humiliated, but in some schools, they were also handcuffed, manacled, beaten, locked in cellars and other makeshift jails, or displayed in stocks. Overcrowding and a high student-staff ratio meant that even those children who were not subject to physical discipline grew up in an atmosphere of neglect. From the beginning, many Aboriginal people were resistant to the residential school system. Missionaries found it difficult to convince parents to send their children to residential schools, and children ran away, often at great personal risk and with tragic outcome."


In conclusion, for now, these words from the Meriam Report in 1928, describing the meals at boarding schools:

"In some schools the child must maintain a pathetic degree of quietness. In fact, several matrons and disciplinarians said that they did not allow the children to talk."


About the author

Brenda Norrell has been a journalist for 42 years, beginning at the Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a correspondent for Lakota Times, Associated Press and USA Today. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored and fired and created Censored News in 2006. On the Longest Walk northern route, Govinda Dalton and Norrell hosted the Long Talk Radio, live from coast to coast on the mobile broadcasting bus Earthcycles, in 2008. Govinda and Norrell broadcast live again from the Indigenous  Boarding School Tribunal in Green Bay on the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin in 2014.


Copyright Brenda Norrell, Censored News. Censored News content may not be used without written permission or used in any way for revenues.


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