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American Indian Boarding Schools: Rapid City Indian Boarding School

Rapid City Indian Boarding School

Rapid City Indian Boarding School

Several boarding schools were located throughout South Dakota, including Rapid City Indian Boarding School, open from 1898-1933. Children arrived from reservations across the Great Sioux Nation, including Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, and Rosebud, as well as from reservations and tribes in Montana and Wyoming. The children often faced long and harsh journeys to the school, and sometimes the dangerous conditions resulted in fatalities. Sadly, other children died at the boarding school from diseases or accidents. Developing records indicate that at least 50 children and infants passed away at Rapid City Indian Boarding School, but it is believed the actual number is significantly higher. School records were not kept of the children who had passed or where they had been buried.

Rapid City Indian Boarding School operated in half days. The children attended school in the mornings and then worked around the school in the afternoons. The purpose of this schedule was to educate children and provide them with work skills. The afternoon jobs included working in the kitchen, laundry room, boiler room, dormitories, and on the farm. Some of these skills were useful to the children, but the school exploited the children for free labor to maintain school operations.

Rapid City Indian Boarding School had a disciplinarian named Chauncey Yellow Robe, a Lakota graduate of Carlisle Indian School. His job was to maintain orders for the boys. Matrons supervised the girls. These key roles were allowed to punish children with beatings, or by placing them in cells or cages (a practice the BIA eventually prohibited). Children tried to escape the horrors of the boarding school, but were often captured by reservation police and sent back or died during their escape attempt.