Kill the Indian, Save the Child - One Hundred Years of Indian Boarding Schools

By Dr. Kay McGowan

October 2012

In 1819 Congress created a national program to instruct Native Americans in agriculture, reading, writing and arithmetic. By the late 1800s, the law was used to fund Indian boarding schools as part of a federal program to “civilize” Native children. The author details the economic, cultural and psychological damage wrought by the forced removal of children, stripping them of their identify and heritage.