Native American outing programs were associated with
American Indian boarding schools
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid 17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Na ...
in the United States. These were operated both on and off reservations, primarily from the late 19th century to World War II. Students from boarding schools were assigned to live with and work for European-American families, often during summers, ostensibly to learn more about English language, useful skills, and majority culture. Many boarding schools continued operating into the 1960s and 1970s.
The boarding schools were established by law in 1891, and more were founded by the federal government in the early 20th century. Their goal was to educate Native American children to learn English, math, literacy, and European-American mainstream culture. This was thought to be necessary for the survival of Native Americans in modern American culture.
Richard Henry Pratt
Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt (December 6, 1840 – March 15, 1924) was an American military officer who founded and was longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is associa ...
developed the first such boarding school at the
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...
in 1879, which became a model for the government program. He also developed the outing program. In 1891 the federal government authorized by law establishing other Indian boarding schools. By 1900, several other American Indian boarding schools in the west had begun federal outing programs modeled after that of Carlisle. These included schools in
Salem, Oregon
Salem ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County, Oregon, Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river ...
;
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas River, Kansas and Waka ...
;
Riverside, California
Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...
;
Carson City, Nevada
Carson City is an independent city and the capital of the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 census, the population was 58,639, making it the sixth largest city in Nevada. The majority of the city's population lives in Eagle Valley, on the ...
; and
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...
.
Most of the children involved in outing programs lived and worked with their assigned families for part of every day and often whole summers.
Other children stayed with their assigned families throughout the year.
Typically, boys were assigned to do farm work and girls were assigned to domestic tasks.
Pratt emphasized that children participating in outing programs should be treated as members of the assigned family, rather than as servants.
But enforcement of such a vision was lacking. For most children, taking part in outing programs entailed long days of hard work with little time off; such work was also typical for members of farm families.
History of outing
As historian Victoria Haskins writes in her journal article, "Domesticating Colonizers: Domesticity, Indigenous Domestic Labor, and the Modern Settler Colonial Nation" (2019), Native Americans had long been used as domestic servants and even slaves in white households. Native American children had been sent to white households for assimilation since the colonial era.
18th-century ministers in both New England and Virginia, for instance, brought Native American children into their homes to teach them their ways.
American Indian boarding schools that had no dormitories for female students assigned girls to live with local families. There they were also supposed to learn homemaking skills.
Carlisle Indian Industrial School outing program
In 1878, the US government decided to return a group of Native Americans held as prisoners in
Fort Marion
The Castillo de San Marcos (Spanish for "St. Mark's Castle") is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States; it is located on the western shore of Matanzas Bay in the city of St. Augustine, Florida.
It was designed by the Spanish ...
(Castillo de San Marcos) in St. Augustine, Florida to their reservations.
Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt persuaded the
Bureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and A ...
to give him custody of either fifteen or seventeen young men set to be released for education at
Hampton Institute
Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association aft ...
(Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia.
The first formal outings in the United States took place that year when Pratt decided that the Native Americans would benefit from spending the summer with white farmers.
In 1879, Pratt decided that the Native American students should leave the primarily Black Hampton Institute (Hampton University) for closer contact with white people.
With the permission of Secretary of the Interior
Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz (; March 2, 1829 – May 14, 1906) was a German revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He immigrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and became a prominent member of the new ...
, Pratt was allowed to open the first government-sponsored American Indian boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that year.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School's outing program started in 1880.
Twenty-four children participated, but most of the host families returned their assigned children to the school.
109 children participated in Carlisle's outing program the following year, and only six host families returned their assigned children to the school.
In 1885, nearly 250 children participated in the summer outing program at Carlisle, and more than 100 continued during the school year.
Over the next several years, Carlisle's outing program continued to grow rapidly, peaking at 947 participants in 1903.
Other outing programs
Between 1880 and 1886, the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened more than one hundred American Indian boarding schools modeled after Carlisle across the United States, primarily on reservations.
Congress passed a series of laws designed to encourage the development of outing programs in those new schools.
In 1889, a dozen boys at
Chemawa Indian School
Chemawa Indian School is a Native American boarding school in Salem, Oregon, United States. Named after the Chemawa band of the Kalapuya people of the Willamette Valley, it opened on February 25, 1880 as an elementary school. Grades were adde ...
in
Salem, Oregon
Salem ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County, Oregon, Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river ...
, were sent to work in nearby farms. This was the first formal outing program in the western United States.
By 1890, outing programs had started at Haskell Institute (Haskell Indian Nations University) in Kansas, Perris School (Sherman Indian High School) in California, Carson School (Stewart Indian School) in Nevada, and Fiske Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In 1893,
Phoenix Indian School
The Phoenix Indian School, or Phoenix Indian High School in its later years, was a Bureau of Indian Affairs-operated school in Encanto Village, in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona. It served lower grades also from 1891 to 1935, and then served as a ...
in
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...
, began its outing program. It eventually became the second-largest in the country, with hundreds of children participating.
Outing matrons
The placements of girls within the outing system were overseen by outing matrons, agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In addition to supervising girls and their assigned families, outing matrons courted wealthy families to host children and sought to identify unfit living situations. Still, outing matrons often failed to prevent or respond to abuse and neglect within the outing system.
Support for outing programs
In the United States, the primary objective of outing programs was to assimilate Native American children into white American society.
Supporters of outing programs hoped that the Native American children involved would be "civilized" and "uplifted" by immersion in white households.
Supporters of the programs also argued that the Native American children could be made "useful" through their training for menial positions.
Opposition to outing programs
Richard Henry Pratt believed that outing programs oriented toward assimilation were more ethical than outing programs oriented toward labor.
Pratt spent his retirement years criticizing work-oriented outing programs that were common in the western United States.
But abuses have been documented in both types of outing programs.
Major criticisms arose at the start of the outing system.
Some people feared that those who would choose to host Native American children would not be motivated by altruism, but would exploit and abuse them.
They assumed that only the less honorable would be willing to take Native American children to their homes.
They were particularly concerned that families in the western and southwestern United States less morally upright and would not provide a safe home environment for children in the outing system.
Others had concerns about the questionable educational benefits for children in many outing programs and their lack of supervision.
In 1926, the
Institute for Government Research (Brookings Institution) commissioned the
Meriam Report The Meriam Report (1928) (official title: ''The Problem of Indian Administration'') was commissioned by the Institute for Government Research (IGR, better known later as the Brookings Institution) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The IGR a ...
to provide a comprehensive study of the social and economic status of Native Americans.
In 1928, the report concluded that the outing system had primarily become a scheme for hiring Native American children for odd jobs and domestic service, rather than providing them with any real training.
Also, the report noted that Native American children often earned unfair wages in low-level positions with little oversight.
Results of outing programs
In her article "Working on the Domestic Frontier: American Indian Domestic Servants in White Women's Households in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1920-1940," (2007), historian Margaret Jacobs argues that the outing system failed to assimilate Native American girls.
Jacobs explains that Native American girls in outing programs often challenged their assigned roles as servants and host families' attempts to "uplift" them, actively asserting their own independence.
She adds that many Native American girls in outing programs rejected the gender and sexual norms promoted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, instead maintaining the norms of their own communities, while also adopting the gender and sexual norms of urban youth culture.
Nonetheless, in "The Hidden Half: A History of Native American Women's Education," Deirdre Almeida argues that boarding schools and their outing programs contributed to the destruction of Native American women's traditional roles.
In addition, boarding schools and their outing programs limited Native American women's work skills so that, for many, becoming servants in white homes was the only choice of work they had when they returned from boarding schools to their reservations.
*
*
List of American Indian boarding schools with outing programs
*
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...
in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
*
Chemawa Indian School
Chemawa Indian School is a Native American boarding school in Salem, Oregon, United States. Named after the Chemawa band of the Kalapuya people of the Willamette Valley, it opened on February 25, 1880 as an elementary school. Grades were adde ...
in Salem, Oregon
*
Phoenix Indian School
The Phoenix Indian School, or Phoenix Indian High School in its later years, was a Bureau of Indian Affairs-operated school in Encanto Village, in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona. It served lower grades also from 1891 to 1935, and then served as a ...
in Phoenix, Arizona
*
Haskell Institute (Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence, Kansas
*
Perris School (Sherman Indian High School) in Riverside, California
*
Carson School (Stewart Indian School) in Carson City, Nevada
* Fiske Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico
See also
*
Indian Relocation Act of 1956
The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 (also known as Public Law 959 or the Adult Vocational Training Program) was a United States law intended to create a "a program of vocational training" for Native Americans in the United States. Critics charact ...
*
Richard Henry Pratt
Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt (December 6, 1840 – March 15, 1924) was an American military officer who founded and was longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He is associa ...
*
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...
*
Phoenix Indian School
The Phoenix Indian School, or Phoenix Indian High School in its later years, was a Bureau of Indian Affairs-operated school in Encanto Village, in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona. It served lower grades also from 1891 to 1935, and then served as a ...
*
American Indian boarding schools
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid 17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Na ...
*
Meriam Report The Meriam Report (1928) (official title: ''The Problem of Indian Administration'') was commissioned by the Institute for Government Research (IGR, better known later as the Brookings Institution) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The IGR a ...
*
American Indian boarding schools in Wisconsin
There were ten American Indian Boarding Schools in Wisconsin that operated in the 19th and 20th centuries. The goal of the schools was to culturally assimilate Native Americans to European–American culture. This was often accomplished by force a ...
*
Cultural assimilation of Native Americans
The cultural assimilation of Native Americans refers to a series of efforts by the United States to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream European–American culture between the years of 1790 and 1920.
George Washington and Henry Knox we ...
*
Contemporary Native American issues in the United States
Contemporary Native American issues in the United States are issues arising in the late 20th century and early 21st century which affect Native Americans in the United States. Many issues stem from the subjugation of Native Americans in society, ...
References
Further reading
*Haskins, V. K. (2012). Matrons and Maids: Regulating Indian Domestic Service in Tucson, 1914–1934. United States: University of Arizona Press.
*Sakiestewa Gilbert, M. (2010). Education Beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929. United Kingdom: University of Nebraska Press.
* The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. (2012). United States: Oregon State University Press.
*Trennert, R. A. (1988). The Phoenix Indian School: forced assimilation in Arizona, 1891-1935. United Kingdom: University of Oklahoma Press.
*Whalen, K. (2016). Native Students at Work: American Indian Labor and Sherman Institute's Outing Program, 1900-1945. United States: University of Washington Press.
External links
Berkeley Talks transcript: How Native women challenged a 1900s Bay Area assimilation program
*
ttps://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/indian-school-carlisle-native-quaker-cemetery-outing-20180502.html A search for native children who died on 'Outings' in Pa.The sad legacy of American Indian boarding schools in Minnesota and the U.S.
{{Schools
Native American boarding schools
Assimilation of indigenous peoples of North America
History of education in the United States
United States federal Indian policy
Cultural genocide
Violence against children