On January 23, 1905, the Tulalip Boarding School opens on the Tulalip Reservation. Operated by the federal government, the school replaces a previous facility run by Catholic missionaries since 1857. The new school will govern education on the reservation with an iron fist until 1932 and be remembered for its callous treatment of children, including many who die under its supervision. Students are strictly forbidden to speak their Native languages and suffer severe punishments if they do. In 2021, the Tulalip Tribes designate September 30 as the annual "Orange Shirt Day" to honor victims and survivors of the Tulalip Boarding School.
Tulalip Mission School (1857-1901)
In 1854 and 1855, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens (1818-1862), employed by the United States, travelled around the western part of the territory with the duty to get local tribes to sign treaties relinquishing claims to traditional territories and relocate to predetermined reservations. In return, the tribes, incuding the Tulalip Tribes, would maintain their hunting, fishing, and gathering rights in their usual and accustomed areas. The United States also promised monetary compensation and an industrial and agricultural school within a year of the signing with the goal of assimilating tribal youth.
The federal government failed to produce on its end of the treaty agreement and never established a school or funding for one or provided any compensation. Catholic Missionaries took it upon themselves to create schools on reservations.
Father Eugene Chirouse (1821-1892) arrived in Tulalip (Snohomish County) in 1857 and established the first school on Priest Point with six boys and five girls. By 1861, a boys dormitory was built to accommodate 20 pupils. As attendance grew over the years, Chirouse was able to accept only boy students. He often travelled with his students, who performed in a band to raise money for school supplies, clothing for students, food, and medical care. In order to grow the school and continue to provide for his students, the Sisters of Charity of Providence arrived in Tulalip to start teaching girls. Father Chirouse wrote letters to the federal government asking for funding. Through his requests, the Tulalip Mission School was granted annual funding by the U.S. government, making it the first contract Indian school in the country.
With the increase of funding, a new school was built with additional buildings, dormitories for boys and girls, and orchards. The Mission School continued to grow, and by Father Chirouse’s departure in 1877, the Sisters of Charity of Providence maintained control.
Congress began to decrease funds in 1896 and eventually the Sisters could no longer operate the school. By 1901 it became a federal facility. The Mission school buildings were destroyed by fire in 1902, and for four years, Tulalip students were taught in various places around the reservation, including in the jailhouse. On January 23, 1905, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Treaty of Medicine Creek, the Tulalip Boarding School opened on Tulalip Bay.
Tulalip Boarding School (1905-1932)
After the school was in operation for two years, a boys and girls dormitory was completed in 1907, allowing the school to bring in students from farther away. For 10 months out of the year, kids as young as 4 from various reservations around Washington, Alaska, and elsewhere were forcibly taken from their homes and brought to the Tulalip Boarding School, having little to no contact with their families during the year. The school operated in a militaristic way, with bugle calls and bells dictating their schedules every hour. Pupils were forced to line up every morning for uniform inspection and drill calls, regardless of weather and often the health of the students. The student uniforms were made of stiff, scratchy wool that they wore year-round, making drill calls and forced outdoor activities grueling in the summer months.
While all students were taught the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, once they were in the third grade, their curriculum shifted from scholastic education to trade education. The boys curriculum was focused on laboring and agriculture, such as blacksmithing, carpentry, and farming. The boys were also responsible for providing food for the school and fixing buildings and roads around the campus, including Superintendent Charles Buchanan’s personal home. The girls curriculum was centered around the home; cooking, sewing, and laundry. The girls made uniforms, and acted as seamstresses for other students and staff while also working in the kitchen and in the hospital that was on the campus. In correspondence penned by Buchanan in 1912, he writes that the goal of the curriculum, "is not to produce scientists or specialists, but practical, efficient famers, apprentice mechanics who will develop into journeymen and master mechanics, and the future model housewives and mothers in the communities to which the Indian girl must return" (Buchanan, 1912).
Students were strictly forbidden to speak their Native languages and suffered severe punishments if they did so. They were physically and mentally abused for missing drill calls, bed and uniform checks, or even reading for their own leisure. Throughout the duration of the operation of the Tulalip Boarding School, many students lost their lives. While some deaths are unrecorded or the reasons unknown, many died due to illness. In the first quarter of the 1900s, pneumonia was common. Because of this, and the unhealthy and unhygienic conditions in the dormitories and dining hall, the Tulalip hospital was often at full capacity and the one doctor employed began sending children home if they were too sick for recovery. In 1917 alone, five students died.
One of those students was 15-year-old Ruth Shelton. Her younger sister, Harriette, wrote about this devastating time in her autobiography, Tulalip From My Heart. Harriette recalls how frail her sister looked when she was first falling ill with pneumonia and was still forced to participate in classes and exercise drills in the pouring rain. After being hospitalized for a couple of months, the doctor sent her home as her death became inevitable. As Ruth’s condition continued to worsen, the school granted Harriette permission to return home and spend the last few weeks of her sister’s life with her. She describes those final weeks: "Her dying went on for three weeks. The last two weeks were a dreadful nightmare. It took me 30 years to get over it" (Tulalip From My Heart ...). Just two weeks after her sister died, Harriette watched her cousin, 17-year-old Marguerite Jules, die of the same disease.
Her parents tried to keep Harriette out of school for a while following Ruth’s death. They took her to doctors to ensure she remained healthy as she was their last child at home and was suffering from tubercular glands herself. Looking back on the experience, she writes, "I was thirteen years old and thin because I came out of the Tulalip School. The only reason I lived was because of my sister dying, because then I got to go home" (Tulalip From My Heart ...). Harriette eventually returned to the Tulalip Boarding School, graduating in 1922.
Often, when students died, their families were not informed at the time and found out when their child didn’t return at the end of the 10-month school year.
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the United States government began to favor tribal self-governance and the boarding school was closed in 1932. If students had a way of traveling to nearby towns or could afford to be boarded, they attended public schools in Marysville and Everett. While their curriculum in public school was now the same as their non-Native peers, they were often neglected and bullied due to racism and other prejudices.
Due to the traumas suffered by boarding school pupils from the mental, emotional, and physical abuse, and watching their classmates die, students often returned home and would not participate within their families or speak their Native languages. This led to generational trauma and a loss of cultural knowledge for a time. Today, that trauma is still present in the descendants of survivors. Tribal members are working hard to revitalize the cultural practices that were stripped from those who attended the Tulalip Boarding School. They are working diligently to heal.
In 2021, the Tulalip Tribes passed a resolution declaring September 30 Orange Shirt Day as a way to pay remembrance and honor to those who were forced to attend boarding schools and a way to heal as a community. The the first annual Orange Shirt Day was held that day at the Dining Hall in Tulalip. The Dining Hall is the last surviving building from the government-run Tulalip Boarding School. The event consisted of prayers, singing, drumming, and looking at photographs of their ancestors who endured the school.
