"No Place to Go": The Thomas Indian School and the "Forgotten" Indian Children of New York

Abstract

In recent years, Indian boarding schools have received increased attention, and with good reason. Historians have singled them out as one of the most destructive agents of the heavy-handed and clumsy federal policy of forced assimilation that removed Indian children from their reservations, their language, and their culture.' However, these studies have overlooked the fact that children were removed from their parents' custody and care for reasons other than acculturation and with consequences that extended beyond the loss of their traditional ways of life. Families suffering from death, disease, divorce, and destitution often entrusted their children to boarding schools until conditions at home improved. Whether they were committed by authorities or their parents, Indian children often served lengthy and even indeterminate internments at the schools, during which time their families disintegrated under the pressures of poverty, disease, violence, and alcohol abuse. When they were finally released, they were either estranged from their parents or left with no place to go. Having been raised under the regimen and routine of institutional life and all but forgotten 93