Chemawa Indian School (pronounced: "Chih-MAY-way", ) 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, 1880Lawney L. Reyes, White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to be Indian. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2002; p. 118. as an elementary school. Grades were added and dropped, and it became a fully accredited high school in 1927, when lower grades were dropped.
The second Indian boarding school to be established, Chemawa Indian School is the oldest continuously operating Native American boarding school in the United States. Its graduates number in the thousands. At its peak of enrollment in 1926, it had 1,000 students. New buildings were constructed in the 1970s on a campus near the original one, where at one time 70 buildings stood, including barns and other buildings related to the agricultural programs.
During the 2023–24 academic year, it continued to serve students in the ninth through twelfth grades. It has primarily served students of tribes from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Former names of the school include Forest Grove Indian Industrial Training School, United States Indian Training and Normal School, Salem Indian Industrial Training School, and Harrison Institute.Oregon Encyclopedia: Indian Boarding Schools
History Establishment
The Chemawa Indian School was a product of the ideas of the 1870s, when the American government sought to end its ongoing conflict with the Native American population through cultural assimilation."Chemawa History," Chemawa Indian School, chemawa.bie.edu/ Following the ideas of military officer Richard Henry Pratt and the perceived successful establishment of the Carlisle Indian School near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, funding was provided for a boarding school for American Indian children in the American Pacific Northwest.
In contrast to earlier belief that Native Americans were inherently "uncivilizable", Pratt argued for immersive education as a mechanism to assimilate and integrate the various pre-Columbian peoples into modern society. Schools established under Pratt's influence were deliberately located far from Indian reservations as a means of isolating students from traditional cultural folkways.Reyes, White Grizzly Bear's Legacy, pp. 117–118.
An initial site was developed on four acres of land near Forest Grove, Oregon with a budget of $5,000 appropriated. With Indian affairs part of the bailiwick of the War Department, US Army Lieutenant Melville Wilkinson, secretary to General Oliver Otis Howard, was tapped to lead the project. Wilkinson, with the help of eight Puyallup Indian youths, began construction on first campus buildings in 1880.
The first class enrolled at the Forest Grove Indian Industrial Training School consisted of 14 boys and 4 girls from Washington state, 17 of the Puyallup nation and one Nisqually boy. Curriculum was determined by gender, with boys taught painting, baking, drafting, machining, masonry, blacksmithing, shoemaking, and carpentry — artisan skills considered important for successful rural life.SuAnn M. Reddick and Eva Guggemos, "Chemawa Indian School," The Oregon Encyclopedia, www.oregonencyclopedia.org/ Girls were steered towards mastery of the "domestic arts".
According to an analysis of demographic records by Pacific University archivist Richard Read, during its five years of existence the Forest Grove Indian School came from more than 40 tribal groups, totaling 382 students.Richard Read, "Forest Grove Indian Training School: Tribal Representation," The Forest Grove Indian Training School Collection, Pacific University Archives DPLA. Of these, more than half came from the Puyallup (58), Nez Perce (50), Wasco (46), Spokane (20), Umatilla (20), and Klamath (19) tribes.
New location
Owing to poor drainage, an inadequate inventory of land for agricultural education, and spurred by the 1884 destruction by fire of the girls' dormitory, officials began to investigate an alternative site for the school elsewhere in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Three sites were proposed, including a 100-acre parcel of heavily timbered land near Newberg, a 23-acre site near Forest Grove, Oregon with 75 more acres of pasture land located a few miles away, and 171 acres of partially cleared timber land five miles north of Salem. The Salem site was selected owing to its proximity to state government and the location's favorable inventory of land.
Construction at the Salem site began in 1885. Initial temporary wooden buildings were later razed to make way for more permanent brick structures. On June 1, 1885, the Chemawa Indian School was opened with approximately half of the students moving to the new location and half staying behind in Forest Grove owing to lack of space at the new facility. On October 1, 1885, John Lee was named superintendent of the new "Salem Indian Training School". Construction of three new buildings was shortly completed at the Salem campus and after a winter of separation the remaining students from Forest Grove were moved to Salem.
The first graduating class completed the sixth grade in 1886. Courses were subsequently added expanding education through the tenth grade.
With an expanded land inventory, increased attention was paid to agricultural training, including dairy farming, animal husbandry, and crop farming, the byproduct of which provided food for later use.
The assimilationist mission
A circular letter sent to superintendents of off-reservation schools such as Chemawa by Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones in 1902 illuminates the assimilationist goals of the boarding schools. After receiving signed permission from parents, guardian, or next-of kin, "sound and healthy" children with "the requisite amount of Indian blood" were to be enrolled for a period of not less than three years — and if possible for terms of four or five years.'W.A. Jones to Superintendents or Nonreservation Schools," Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 5 (Oct. 24, 1902), p. 3.
The school was to retain control over the child for the whole of that time, and "no promises must be made to any parents or others that the pupils enrolled will be returned home during vacation without special permission of this office, and full data must be submitted with your request showing the necessity for such return."
"White Indians" — that is, "children showing one-eighth or less Indian blood, whose parents do not live on an Indian reservations, whose home is among white people, where there are churches and schools, who are presumed to have adopted the white man's manners and customs, and are to all intents and purposes white people, are debarred from enrollment in the government non-reservation and reservation schools," Jones declared.
Period of growth
The Superintendent's "cottage" — actually a comfortable two-story home with a large front porch — was built in 1885.Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 4 (Oct. 17, 1902), p. 1. Wooden structures for living areas and workspaces were gradually replaced by larger and better permanent brick structures as government funding was approved.
The school's hospital was built in 1890, with a second story added in 1900.'"Chemawa's Hospital," Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 4 (Oct. 17, 1902), p. 8. The wooden structure was centrally located and surrounded by a lawn and flowers. Each ward of the hospital had a bath toilet, and washrooms, with spacious and airy porches all the way around.
Chemawa's permanent main school building was a steam-heated and fully electrified structure built in 1899 at a cost of $15,000.Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 3 (Oct. 10, 1902), p. 1. The brick building had 10 classrooms and an office, a book room, and a large assembly hall with a capacity of about 600.
A large two-story brick industrial trades building was constructed in 1902."The Industrial Trades' Building," vol. 6, no. 5 (Oct. 24, 1902), p. 1. Sections of the facility were dedicated to tailors and dressmakers, a carpentry shop, as well as areas for harnessmaking, shoemaking, and wagonmaking. A blacksmith shop, bakery, and a print shop were located elsewhere on the grounds.
The school also offered training and practical experience in farming, gardening, orchard work, and dairy farming. The school had 30 acres of orchard, of which 15 were committed to prunes, 5 acres of apples, cherries, and pears, and 10 acres of small fruit, including 4 acres blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and 6 acres of strawberries.
McBride Hall, the permanent girls' dormitory, was built in 1902 at a cost of $20,000. It was steam heated, fully electrified, and well ventilated. It was designed to accommodate 150 "large girls".Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 4 (Oct. 17, 1902), p. 3. "Small" and "medium" girls were housed in a separate facility.
A new "large boys home" was approved by congress in 1902 and $25,000 appropriated "for construction of a new brick dormitory suitable for the accommodation of two hundred and fifty boys.""Chemawa's Proposed New Large Boys' Home," Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 5 (Oct. 24, 1902), p. 7.
By 1922, the Chemawa campus had 70 buildings, mostly of wood-frame construction but others made of brick. Acquisition of adjacent land brought the total area held by the school to .
Athletics and cultural activities
Chemawa also had cultural activity organizations similar to most large schools of the era, including a 30-member choir and a 25-member band.Weekly Chemawa American, Dec. 6, 1901, pp. 1, 6. The band was not part of the regular school program of instruction but rather met for practice before or after school, four times a week. The school also conducted military drill and parade activities.
A school library provided reading material. Students could participate in sports of basketball, baseball, and football, competing against Anglo high schools and colleges of the region.
Demographics
According to 1900 census data, there were 220,544 Indians throughout the United States, with another 58,806 living integrated into broader society as ordinary taxpayers."Some Indian Statistics," Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 33 (May 8, 1903), p. 2. Included in these figures, there were a total of 4,196 Native American births in 1900. Chemawa had 453 students that same year.
By 1913 there were 690 students enrolled, including 175 Alaskan Inuit children.
In February 1915, a reporter for the Portland Oregonian visited Chemawa to document daily life at the school. He found 643 pupils (372 boys, 271 girls) at the time of his visit, with the school being operated by a staff of 51 — of whom 13 were themselves Native American.Addison Bennett, "Indians in Chemawa School are Like One Big Family: Descendents of Once Warlike Race Study and Play as Wards of the Government Under Kindly Yet Stern Leadership of H.E. Wadsworth," [Portland] Sunday Oregonian, v. 34, no. 9 (Feb. 28, 1915), sec. 2, p. 16 (34). This mix of Anglo and Native American employees at Chemawa was not unusual, with official statistics from a decade earlier indicating that more than a quarter of the 2,209 employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs' school service were Indian."In the Service," Chemawa American, vol. 6, no. 38 (June 12, 1903), p. 7.
The school was regarded at that time as one of the "Big Six" off-reservation Indian Training Schools operated by the federal government, joining the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania; the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas; the Phoenix Indian School in Arizona; the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in Oklahoma, and Perris Indian School in Riverside, California.