"Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act Fund of March 3, 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1869 the United States, in concert with and at the urging of several denominations of the Christian Church, adopted an Indian Boarding School Policy expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through the removal and reprogramming of American Indian and Alaska Native children to accomplish the systematic destruction of Native cultures and communities. The stated purpose of this policy was to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." Between 1869 and the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches. Though we don't know how many children were taken in total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled. The U.S. Native children that were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government." (
The Ouray Indian School in Randlett, Utah opened in 1883. Its purpose was to reeducate children from the Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) and White River Ute bands following their forced removal by the United States government from Colorado to the Uinta and Ouray Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah in 1880. Other names for the school included Leland; Ouray Boarding School; and the Uncompahgre Boarding School (National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, 2023). It was initially created as a day school. However, in 1883, William A. McKewan, the clerk in charge of the school, recommended it be transitioned to a boarding school to ensure attendance and "force [the Utes] to give up their barbarous practices, superstitions, and narrow prejudices, and walk in the paths, laid out for them." According to the Salt Lake Tribune's 2024 article "Assimilated", "The Ouray school followed the era's model of trying to eliminate the culture of Indigenous students. Superintendent Charles A. Walker later reported: 'We have used every effort to suppress the use of the Ute language among the children, with fair results.'" Seventeen student deaths were reported from 1896 to 1903, with causes of death reported as "poor health," tuberculosis, and measles. The Ouray Indian School was closed in 1905 and the students were transferred to the Uintah Boarding School in Whiterocks, Utah. A day school was later reopened on the site of the boarding school. The buildings have since been removed from the site (Tanner, Bitsóí, McCann, 2022).
Sources:
Tanner, C., Bitsóí , A. and McCann, S.
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Collection Name, Collection Number, Box Number, Folder Number. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah.
Purchased in 2013.
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The Ouray Indian School photograph collection consists of one box containing three black-and-white photographs depicting Ute people, likely members of the White River or Uncompahgre (Tabeguache) Ute bands, on the grounds of the Ouray Indian School at Randlett, Utah. Two photographs depict boys and girls posed for group photographs in school uniforms with school officials to the side. A third photograph depicts a Ute woman identified as Mary in traditional dress. The photographs date from April 1905.