On Indian Schools and the Jews of Russia

In the 1870’s some bureaucrat did the math and discovered that it would be cheaper to turn Indians into regular Americans than to kill them. The result was Indian Boarding Schools, the first in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, later a dozen others across the country.

Even assuming a nobility of intention, the process of recruitment was appalling. Troops entered villages, rounded up terrified children, put them onto sealed trains and took them far from their weeping parents. Upon arrival at the school their hair was cut and their Indian clothes burnt, replaced by “American” clothing. This merely increased the separation trauma. At some point early in the process there was an arbitrary selection. Children were assigned a number, 1,2,3,4. All the ones became Methodist, the twos Baptist, the threes Presbyterian, I don’t remember what became of the fours, but my guess is, “not Jewish.”

The school day began at 5:00 with the donning of military attire, military marching, military inspections etc. In class the children were taught math, spelling, history, all of which is useful, and, yes, patriotism as well. In the afternoon the boys learned a manual skill, the girls received domestic and office training. Participation in sports was encouraged, songs were sung. “English only” was the rule, strictly enforced. Upon graduation the Indians had a trade, thought in English and were considered civilized. If they chose to they could return to the reservation, but there was nothing there for them anymore, other than their parents, who now lived in a foreign world, thought uncivilized by their own children. Success, in the eyes of the bureaucrat.

The obvious comparison is to Nazi treatment of Jews, at least in terms of “recruitment” and “selection.” One obvious difference, though, is that whereas American kidnappers thought they were doing the Indians a good (if unappreciated) turn, the Germans were out to annihilate not only a culture, but the physical existence of a people. Similar tactics were attempted in czarist Russia. Nicholas I (1825-1855) decreed that all Jews must wear Russian clothing and trim their beards in the Russian manner. Crueler, he initiated a policy whereby Jewish youths as young as age 12 were kidnapped and placed in army camps (cantons) where over the next six years peasant sergeants would try to force them to give up their religion. Later he recruited an American rabbi to set up a system of Jewish schools where children would be taught the Russian language, history, etc. When the young rabbi realized that the schools were to be a front for proselytizing Jews, he fled the country and the scheme came to naught.

But for all the trauma, for all the negative comparisons, we must still ask—was what Americans did to the Indians worse than life in an English public (boarding) school, designed for the upper classes? Same military grooming, same physical and mental abuse, same tearful early separation from parents and a life loved. The difference, of course, is that the English voluntarily sent their children knowing that for all the cruelty they would encounter, their sons would emerge as leaders of society. Individual Indians, stripped of their culture, were given a trade. A fair exchange? Maybe. Maybe not.

So, the historian in me knows that questions remain—Were the methods used as bad as the results were good? Were the Indians better off living in poverty and disease on the reservation or forcibly removed from their parents’ love and brought hundreds of miles from home to learn to be American. (I suppose that from their perspective it’s an unfair either/or. The best thing that could have happened was if Europeans had never come to America.) The pragmatist in me, the assimilated Jew that I am, says the Indians benefited despite the trauma of the experience. Having a trade (and later, after the era of compulsory “recruitment” taking college preparatory courses) is better than being an unskilled worker. The humanist in me (also the product of being an assimilated Jew) says that if the Indians were doing no harm (their principal crime was being in the way) they ought to have been left alone to live their culture as they had, undisturbed, for centuries. If I knew the correct response to this quandary, I’d give it to you, but I am sunk in my ignorance as to what are the divine intentions. No doubt many of my readers are not, and will inform me of the truth, which will set me free.