One of the abandoned buildings at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, a school for Native Americans that operated from 1884 to 1980 located approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma.
Chilocco Indian School was an agricultural school for Native Americans on reserved land in north-central Oklahoma from 1884 to 1980. It was approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and seven miles north of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near the Kansas border. The name "Chilocco" is apparently derived from the Creektci lako, which literally meant "big deer" but typically referred to a horse.[2][3]
In 1912, the Oklahoma Supreme Court heard a case over an election dispute involving whisky and whether the Chilocco reservation was part of Kay County and the state of Oklahoma or "Indian Territory".[4] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school land was not an Indian Reservation, that the school was an off-reservation entity, and that the word reservation had various meanings and the area was not reserved as Indian territory.[5]
Students working in the garden at Chilocco Indian School (1909)
Chilocco provided academic and vocational education to American Indian students from all tribes in the United States. Its objective, like other American Indian residential schools, was to integrate and assimilate American Indians into the mainstream of American life. Until the 1930s, the school relied on a highly structured and strict military regime.
Students "remember twenty-two bugle calls a day, Government-issue uniforms, scanty meals, inadequate health care, and a paucity of individual attention." The school was "home and haven to some, reformatory and prison to others." Instruction focused mostly on vocational training rather than academic subjects and students were required to perform manual and domestic labor known as "actual work."[9] Not only was education primarily vocational, it was often rudimentary in comparison to the education of white contemporaries. Native girls were being trained "not to labor in their homes but as employees of white women or the boarding schools that trained them. The Chilocco school aimed to teach Native girls subservience, and did not have a true stake in their education.[10]" Students were required to attend Christian religious services once a week."[11]
A 1928 report critical of the Indian boarding schools led to reforms in the 1930s. "Boys and girls could sit together in the dining rooms, more attention was invested in academic work, and drudgery work devoted to school upkeep was cut back."[9] The curriculum at the school focused on agricultural trades, including horseshoeing and blacksmithing, but also included building trades, printing, shoe repair, tailoring, leather work, and in later years plumbing, electrical work, welding, auto mechanics, food services and office education.
History
The 1909 Chilocco basketball team. Chilocco athletic teams often defeated University teams. The swastika was a common symbol used by American Indians until World War II.
The school opened in 1884 with 150 students from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Wichita, Comanche, and Pawnee tribes.[9] In 1894, the first graduating class consisted of 15 students. As the school expanded, additional structures were added in 1893, 1899, 1903, 1909, 1923, 1931 and 1932. In the 1960s, several of the older buildings were demolished to make room for a new dormitory and machine shop. The school's facilities at one time included more than 100 buildings, including a dining hall and hospital. Buildings were constructed from distinctive locally quarried yellow limestone. Students worked on the "rockpile" breaking large boulders into construction material.[11]
Enrollment declined during the 1920s and the elementary school was closed, but with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, enrollment increased because of growing poverty among Indians. As one graduate said, "It wasn't a matter of enjoying [Chilocco], it meant we were educated, clothed, fed, and had a roof over our head."[12]
Chief Joseph gave his hunting rifle to Chilocco in 1885. It was returned to the Nez Percé when the school was closed in 1980.
In 1949, a special program for Navajo youth began. Enrollment at Chilocco peaked at about 1,300 in the 1950s.[13] Thereafter, enrollment declined as many Indians had access to public schools and a boarding school was no longer essential to their education. In the 1970s, activists from American Indian organizations criticized abuses and, in 1972, the National Indian Youth Council staged a sit-in at the school. By the late 1970s only about 100 students still lived at the school.[11]
After closure
The Chilocco School closed on June 3, 1980 when the U.S. Congress ceased funding. In the school's 1980 yearbook, Superintendent C. C. Tillman wrote, "Chilocco is another in a long list of broken promises."[14] During its history nearly 18,000 students from 126 Indian tribes attended Chilocco. Chilocco granted high school diplomas to 5,542 students. Graduates included 688 Cherokees, 573 Choctaw, 545 Navajo, and 452 Creek divided between 2,741 females and 2,801 males.[15]
After closure, the school's land was granted to five local tribes as the Chilocco Development Authority; the Kaw Nation (.10 mineral interest), the Otoe-Missouria Tribe (.10 mineral interest), the Pawnee Nation (.10 mineral interest), the Ponca Nation (.10 mineral interest), and the Tonkawa Tribe (.10 mineral interest). The Cherokee Nation holds a .50 mineral interest. Between 1989 and 2001, the property was leased to Narconon, which operated a substance abuse rehabilitation center at the site.[16]
In 2000, the Council of Confederate Chilocco Tribes was created by the Chilocco Treaty between the United States and the Kaw Nation, Otoe-Missouria Tribe, Pawnee Nation, Ponca Nation, and the Tonkawa Tribe. The treaty gave these nations joint authority to oversee and manage the former campus.[17]
In 2011, Chilocco was closed to the public and used as a training and practice facility for federal law enforcement personnel.[11]
In October 2016, the Cherokees announced that they were leasing to PNE Wind more than 4,000 acres of Chilocco land for a wind energy project. Other portions were to continue to be leased as ranchland.[19]
In November 2017, the Department of Homeland Security published a statement in The Newkirk Herald warning local residents it was conducting tests at Chilocco Indian School. The statement advised "in January/February and again in June/July 2018, particles will be released onto buildings of the Chilocco campus. It is to determine how well biological agents will penetrate into single and multi-family homes." The department stated these chemicals are nontoxic and nonhazardous, but many in the community of Newkirk, Oklahoma expressed skepticism.[20] The Department of Homeland Security report on the test confirms the chemicals used were nontoxic. Permission to use Chilocco as the site of their test was granted by the Council of Confederate Chiloco Tribes.[17]
In 2021, after the discovery of hundreds of graves at Canadian residential schools the Chilocco Alumni Association called for ground penetrating radar equipment to survey outside of the cemetery for unmarked graves.[18]
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
Kay County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, its population was 43,700. Its county seat is Newkirk, and the largest city is Ponca City.
Newkirk is a city and county seat of Kay County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,172 at the 2020 census.
Pawnee is a city and county seat of Pawnee County, Oklahoma, United States. The town is northeast of Stillwater at the junction of U.S. Route 64 and State Highway 18.
The Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma in the United States. It was a 60-mile-wide (97 km) parcel of land south of the Oklahoma–Kansas border between 96 and 100°W. The Cherokee Outlet was created in 1836. The United States forced the Cherokee Nation of Indians to cede to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for a reservation and an "outlet" in Indian Territory. At the time of its creation, the Cherokee Outlet was about 225 miles (360 km) long. The cities of Enid, Woodward, Ponca City, and Perry were later founded within the boundaries of what had been the Cherokee Outlet.
The Otoe are a Native American people of the Midwestern United States. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and closely related to that of the related Iowa, Missouria, and Ho-Chunk tribes.
Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States that define Native American status by fractions of Native American ancestry. These laws were enacted by the federal government and state governments as a way to establish legally defined racial population groups. By contrast, many tribes do not include blood quantum as part of their own enrollment criteria.
A series of efforts were made by the United States to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream European–American culture between the years of 1790 and 1920. George Washington and Henry Knox were first to propose, in the American context, the cultural assimilation of Native Americans. They formulated a policy to encourage the so-called "civilizing process". With increased waves of immigration from Europe, there was growing public support for education to encourage a standard set of cultural values and practices to be held in common by the majority of citizens. Education was viewed as the primary method in the acculturation process for minorities.
Sequoyah High School is a Native American boarding school serving students in grades 7 through 12, who are members of a federally recognized Native American tribe. The school is located in Park Hill, Oklahoma, with a Tahlequah post office address, and is a Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) grant school operated by the Cherokee Nation.
Several Native American tribes within the United States register motor vehicles and issue license plates to those vehicles.
American Indian boarding schools, also known more recently as American Indian residential schools, were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of "civilizing" or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture. In the process, these schools denigrated Native American culture and made children give up their languages and religion. At the same time the schools provided a basic Western education. These boarding schools were first established by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The missionaries were often approved by the federal government to start both missions and schools on reservations, especially in the lightly populated areas of the West. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries especially, the government paid religious orders to provide basic education to Native American children on reservations, and later established its own schools on reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) also founded additional off-reservation boarding schools based on the assimilation model. These sometimes drew children from a variety of tribes. In addition, religious orders established off-reservation schools.
Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area is a statistical entity identified and delineated by federally recognized American Indian tribes in Oklahoma as part of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 Census and ongoing American Community Survey. Many of these areas are also designated Tribal Jurisdictional Areas, areas within which tribes will provide government services and assert other forms of government authority. They differ from standard reservations, such as the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, in that allotment was broken up and as a consequence their residents are a mix of native and non-native people, with only tribal members subject to the tribal government. At least five of these areas, those of the so-called five civilized tribes of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole, which cover 43% of the area of the state, are recognized as reservations by federal treaty, and thus not subject to state law or jurisdiction for tribal members.
The Cherokee Commission, was a three-person bi-partisan body created by President Benjamin Harrison to operate under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, as empowered by Section 14 of the Indian Appropriations Act of March 2, 1889. Section 15 of the same Act empowered the President to open land for settlement. The Commission's purpose was to legally acquire land occupied by the Cherokee Nation and other tribes in the Oklahoma Territory for non-indigenous homestead acreage.
The Pawnee Agency and Boarding School District lies east of the city of Pawnee in Pawnee County, Oklahoma. Other names are: Pawnee Indian Agency, Pawnee Indian School and Pawnee Indian Boarding School. The District occupies approximately 29 acres (12 ha) of the Pawnee Tribal Reserve, a 726 acres (294 ha) tract that is owned by the Pawnee tribe. Black Bear Creek divides the District from the town. The Pawnee Agency was established as a post office on May 4, 1876.
Concho Indian Boarding School was a boarding school for members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. It initially served grades 1–6, and later extended classes through grade 8. Admission was later opened to other Native American students.
Della Warrior is the first and only woman to date to serve as chairperson and chief executive officer for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. She later served as the president of the Institute of American Indian Arts, finding a permanent home for the institution as well as helping to raise more than one hundred million dollars for the institution over 12 years. Warrior was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 2007.
K. Tsianina Lomawaima is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous Studies, anthropology, history, and political science. She is a professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She specializes in the interaction between sovereign Native nations and U.S. federalism, the status of Native people as U.S. citizens, and federal Indian policy particularly in the area of education. Her historical focus is the early 20th century.
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