The Phoenix Indian School

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The Phoenix Indian School holds the largest amount of significance for American and Native American history in Arizona. However, some may still argue that this is not true. The Phoenix Indian School was an off-reservation school used to assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society in the 1800s. It was opened in Phoenix in 1891 and was closed in 1935 and had focused on providing the children with vocational training. Assimilation is the process of taking an ethnic group and conforming it to live by a different life style. Assimilation was not only used in Phoenix, but it was also used widely across the nation. The Phoenix Indian School was the largest assimilation school of its time in the United States, and it therefore …show more content…

Pratt in the late 1800’s. Americans felt it was important to influence on Native Americans traditional white, Christian values. This was also important in Arizona, and it led to the opening of The Phoenix Indian School. Americans felt Native Americans were “a cruel lot of savages...for horrible butcheries of white settlers and unspeakable barbarities upon their enemies.” This was the image Native Americans were given in the 19th and in part of the 20th century, and it was a big part of the reason why assimilation was put into practice in Arizona. Americans wanted Indians to live as they did, and the only way to do this was through forced assimilation. To do this, Americans took many Native American children forcibly from their families and villages on their reservations and took them to off reservation boarding schools located in the midst of big white cities. In Arizona, this was especially enforced by the military and by the police. The first round of students taken by the Arizona police were largely from different tribes, as the white Americans felt that this was necessary to further the process of assimilation and to help the Native Americans live successfully in modern American society. The tribes had been confined to their reservations for decades and lived by separate traditions, ways, and beliefs and that would therefore make being …show more content…

This school was significant because it changed the way they lived for the rest of their lives. The boarding school’s mission was to help Native Americans adjust to American culture by influencing upon their children white lifestyles, or what was close to it. However, this did not seem to help Native Americans. Many of the children weren’t welcomed back home because some of them could no longer remember the life they used to lead and were therefore thought of as a shame to all Native Americans and their heritage. Many came back not knowing how to speak their native tongue, or even not knowing their tribes’ rituals. In some ways, the Americans did accomplish what they set out to do, they did change many Native Americans, but there were cases in which they didn’t. Some students disobeyed the rules and continued to speak their native tongue and practice rituals in secret in school. This was resistance inside the school, and resistance also happened outside of the school. However, if children were caught disobeying the rules they were punished. Some parents were angry that they weren’t allowed to see their kids when they wanted, so few would resist allowing their children to go back after breaks. Others would run away with their children and families, though this was a tough choice to

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