Unique Snapshot of a Minnesota Indian School

[Native Americans]: [Education]: [Minnesota]:

[Vernacular Photograph Featuring the Students of the Pipestone Indian Training School at the Turn of the 20th Century].

[Pipestone, Mn. 1900]. Sepia-toned photograph, 4.75 x 6.75 inches, mounted on a gray sheet of paper, manuscript caption reading, "Indian school at Pipestone Minn 1900." Removed from an album. Photograph in excellent shape. Very good. Item #12717

A striking group photograph picturing a young teacher and fifty-five of his male Native American students posed in front of the imposing Boy's Residential Building at the Pipestone Indian Training School in 1900. The students appear to range from around five years of age to their mid-teens, all dressed in similar pants, white shirts, and dark jackets. According to Minnesota's Carleton College: "In the 1890s, the U.S. built the Pipestone Indian Training School on reserved quarry land and legal conflict soon followed. The Pipestone Indian Training School was one of many boarding schools that separated Native children from kin and land in order to assimilate them into American economy and society. These schools came about as attitudes towards the 'correct' treatment of Native people turned towards assimilation with the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Many Native people resisted boarding schools, but the Pipestone Indian School inspired particularly active resistance for two reasons. First, it was built illegally on Yankton Sioux reservation land. Second, during the school's tenure, management of the quarries fell largely to the white superintendent of the school instead of the Yankton people."

Price: $500