Chemawa Indian School Boys at Drill

Title

Chemawa Indian School Boys at Drill

Description

A group portrait of the boys enrolled at Chemawa Indian School, very soon after the school relocated there from Forest Grove in 1885. The boys stand at attention, demonstrating a military drill for the camera. The student standing in front of the others may have been leading the drill. One student holds the United States flag aloft on the right. A woman stands in the doorway of the white building on the left. Trees, which had not yet been cleared from the campus, lie behind a fenced area in the background. The boys in this portrait were taken to the school from tribes across the Pacific Northwest as part of a government plan to force them to assimilate into white culture. For another photograph taken on the same day, see image WCMss261_001_176.

Identifier

WCMss261_001_157

Date

1885

Spatial Coverage

Salem, Oregon

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-OKLR/1.0/

Source

Native American Collection, 1842-1955 (WCMss.261), Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Walla Walla, WA.

Subject

Off-reservation boarding schools

Native American Studies

Chemawa Indian School

Type

Still Image