A Vermont enigma emerged from a national probe past twelvemonth of Indian boarding schools successful the United States. Buried heavy successful the study is simply a little notation of Castleton Academy, saying lone the commissioner of Indian affairs noted successful 1828, 1830 and 1831 that the schoolhouse had been contracted for "Indian pupils" done the national "Civilization Fund."
What was this about? Did Vermont erstwhile person an Indian boarding schoolhouse successful Castleton, forgotten successful the mists of time? The implications were foreboding, fixed the way grounds of different Indian boarding schools successful the United States, wherever hundreds of Indian children, stripped of their taste identities, died from illness and abuse.
The Department of Interior study makes wide the existent extremity of the Indian boarding schools was a monolithic onshore grab. The study confirms "the United States straight targeted American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Children successful the pursuit of a argumentation of taste assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession."
A Burlington Free Press probe recovered nary humanities grounds of an Indian boarding schoolhouse successful Vermont, but we did place the Indian pupils referenced successful the national report. They were 2 Potawatomi boys named Saswa and Conauda, 17 years aged and 15 years aged respectively, who were sent to Vermont by Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary who established Carey Mission among the Potawatomi successful 1822 connected the St. Joseph River, adjacent present-day Niles, Michigan.
McCoy wanted the boys to be Castleton Medical College, the archetypal backstage aesculapian schoolhouse successful the nation. After the boys were trained arsenic doctors, helium wanted them to instrumentality to signifier among the Potawatomi successful the Great Lakes region.
The Free Press spent six months searching for humanities documents that would uncover the fates of Saswa and Conauda. Along the way, we besides gained overmuch much penetration into the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, who sent them to Vermont, arsenic good arsenic the bigger representation of the dispossession of the Potawatomi, who mislaid millions of acres of onshore crossed the Midwest and precocious Midwest to achromatic encroachment.
English (US)