On a mission: Catholic missionaries, land, and education among the Potawatomi Indians of Kansas, 1840 - 1861

Despite a significant amount of scholarship dedicated to the role education has played in the United States Government’s policy aims for American Indians, most of the historical policy analysis relating to American Indian education has focused on federally administered boarding schools in operation after 1875. This project will differ by focusing on an under-examined epoch of American Indian educational policy and history pertaining to religiously operated Indian schools prior to 1875. Using primary source work from archives, including journals, letters, and official school and Indian Affairs reports between 1839-1864, to reconstruct the history of policy implementation at the schoolhouse level by missionaries, this study will critically engage the Lockean inspired political philosophy and policy initiatives of government officials, and educative work of Catholic missionaries serving the Potawatomi in Kansas during the mid-nineteenth century. Decades before the establishment of federally operated boarding schools, American Indian communities were inundated with missionaries from competing religious denominations, and subsequently numerous mission schools were established. Unlike federal boarding schools, these schools typically served as an initial point of introduction to Western education for entire tribes. In the case of the Potawatomi, shortly after their removal from the Lake Michigan region to the unorganized territory of Kansas in the late 1830’s, Catholic missionaries worked diligently towards, and balanced, the educational aims of the church, nation, and tribe for over 20 years. They established the first school within the Osage River Sub-Agency and used their early monopoly to become “one of the most regularly conducted schools in the whole Indian territory.” Due to their contractual agreement with the federal government to service the Potawatomi, missionaries operated with an explicit policy understanding that the church could save the souls of the Indian through religion, if they followed the government’s mandate to save the lives of the Indian through a vocational curriculum. What resulted was a dual set of goals, Christianization and civilization/assimilation, that heavily influenced the curriculum and molded the quotidian educational experiences of Potawatomi students, and both goals came with gendered expectations, as boys were trained for labor and agricultural roles in the Lockean fashion, and girls were prepped for housewifery and domestic economy. By examining how religion and the federal government’s Indian policy influenced education at a well-established mission school, this research aims to strengthen the literature of American Catholic studies and American Indian education policy and history by contributing to an understudied period (pre-1875) of American Indian educational history.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Policy Studies

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Akande, Issac O

Contributors dc:contributor

• Anderson, James D
• Pak, Yoon
• Hoxie, Frederick E
• Gilbert, Matthew S

• American Indian Education
• Potawatomi
• Pottawatomie
• History of Missions
• Catholic Education
• Native American Education.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright by Issac O Akande II 2022

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115602

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115602