Introduction

Abstract

The account that follows is about the formal schooling, along the approximate lines of that provided to children of the white (or European-American) majority, of the children of the native peoples of North America. It is not about the education that has always been provided in countless ways by Indian communities outside of classrooms, in families and the shared rituals of religious and community life. It is thus to a considerable extent a history “from outside,” focused on what public policies and private benevolence have sought to accomplish and on the changing assumptions of the white majority about the purposes and means of schooling Indian children.