Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute

Chapter 1: From Perris Indian School to Sherman Institute

19 chapter 1 From Perris Indian School to Sherman Institute Clifford E. Trafzer and Leleua Loupe On July 18, 1901, a large crowd of “ladies and gentlemen” met near the corner of Magnolia Avenue and Jackson Street in Riverside, California. On that bright summer day, several dignitaries gathered to lay the cornerstone for a new Indian Industrial School to be named Sherman Institute—not after General William Tecumseh Sherman but for James Schoolcraft Sherman, chair of the committee on American Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives, the body that authorized funding for Sherman Institute.1 The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue became the twenty-fifth off-reservation federal boarding school in the United States operated by the federal government through the Office of Indian Affairs. During the ceremony, officials buried a time capsule “in a hallowed corner” of the first school building.2 The copper capsule contained many items, including a congratulatory letter from President William McKinley, a telegram from Carlisle Superintendent Richard Henry Pratt, photographs, a Bible, rules for the Indian School Service, and a speech read by Senator George C. Perkins that contained the essential elements of the government’s thinking with regard to the new school.3 In his speech Perkins proclaimed that the buildings “to be erected here will stand for the redemption of a race.”4 He explained that Sherman Institute would “enable the Indian, who can no longer exist in a wild state, . . . to meet the requirements of modern progress” and learn to “secure for himself the best there is in our civilization.”5 Perkins announced to his audience that the government planned to erect the school buildings “for the glory of God,” who was “our Father and the Father of all races of mankind.” In the tradition of missionary zeal and a belief in the nation’s manifest destiny, Perkins offered a justification for another school dedicated to assimilation, saying that God had “taught us the brotherhood of man, and . . . their responsibility for the care of others.” He claimed that non-Indians built the school on “behalf of the Indians whose best interests this school is intended to subserve.” Perkins and most of his audience exhibited characteristics of secular missionaries and true 20 The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue believers, on whose behalf they acted in the best interest of Indians for the betterment of mankind and “the Glory of the great God whom we all revere.” He then dedicated the “cornerstone of Sherman Institute.”6 Perkins emphasized his Christian belief in uplifting Indians by assimilating them into the civilization of the United States through formal education. In following this ideology, Perkins mirrored the voice of progressive reformers who believed that white America had an obligation to weaken or destroy American Indian cultures, languages, religions, music, foods, clothing, and all things Indian. At the same time, Perkins felt that government agents and teachers had the responsibility to replace Native ways with civilized Western culture and manners, clothing, Euro-American influenced music, industrial trades, a market economy, and the English language. In essence, the government established off-reservation boarding schools to replace Native American ways with those embraced by most white Americans, including Christian beliefs and values.7 By September 1, 1902, when Romaldo LaChusa, an Indian from Southern California, became the first Native American student enrolled at Romaldo LaChusa became the first student to enroll at Sherman Institute in 1902, and he was the first to graduate from eighth grade in 1903, preceding the first graduating class in 1904. He was Kumeyaay or Diegueño from the Mesa Grande Reservation in San Diego County, California. From Perris Indian School to Sherman Institute 21 Sherman Institute, the objectives of off-reservation boarding schools had already been firmly established by Captain Richard Henry Pratt of Carlisle Indian Industrial School.8 Between 1879 and 1902, Pratt and other reformers of American Indian affairs used formal education to transform Native children at on- and offreservation boarding schools. Reformers hoped to change young people and bring about their cultural conversion. This became their primary goal at the end of the nineteenth century. Once at Carlisle, Pratt and his associates worked to create a strictly regimented and disciplined atmosphere, with rules, policies, and punishments designed to “kill the Indian in him and save the man.”9 In a premeditated manner, Pratt and his followers established a system of limiting Indian culture by isolating Indian children from...