St. Joseph Indian Normal School

St. Joseph's Indian Normal School is a former school for American Indians in Rensselaer, Indiana. The school building is now known as Drexell Hall and part of the St. Joseph College campus. Boarding schools were believed to be the best way to assimilate them into the white culture.[2] The school lasted from 1888 to 1896 and was funded by the U.S. government and Catholic missionaries. It was believed that this was the best way to "civilize" Native Americans and the western territories.[2] Established by the Catholic Indian Missions with funding from Katharine Drexel, the school taught 60 Indian children. The Society of Precious Blood operated the school during its years of operation. The students were all boys.[3] When the Indian School was closed, the building was named Drexel Hall. It is one of the first structures of St. Joseph's College.[2]

St. Joseph Indian Normal School
LocationSt. Joseph's College Campus off U.S. Route 231, Rensselaer, Indiana
Coordinates40°55′17″N 87°9′4″W
Arealess than one acre
Built1888
NRHP reference No.73000018[1]
Added to NRHPJune 19, 1973

The Indian school was essentially a red brick structure with the ground floor surrounded with a sandstone wall. It was built in a square, 80 feet (24 m) on each side. The square courtyard in the center, it being around 30 feet (9.1 m) on each side. Each wing had four floors with the east wing only three floors high. The roof was red tiles. The main entrance was on the west. It was owned by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in Washington, D.C.[4]

It was a boarding school for Indian boys with space for 70 boys, their classrooms, playroom, dormitory, kitchen, a small chapel, rooms for the superintendent and a teacher or two and for around six Sisters (nuns) who ran the kitchen.[4] An inspector's report said there were 29 rooms in all. Although the building served as an Indian school for only eight years (1888-1896), it was not changed or altered until 1937 when it was re-modeled to serve as a residence hall for Saint Joseph's College. Only the bell tower was removed along with the shutters from the windows. On the inside, it was altered.[4] The courtyard was made smaller to allow an extra row of rooms. The building, called Drexel Hall, currently serves as a student residence on the Saint Joseph's College campus.[4]

Significance
  1. It represents a time when the country hoped to solve the Indian question by off-reservation schools. Here Indian pupils would be assimilated into white man's culture. The boys would then convert their own people when they returned home.
  2. It was designed in imitation of the Carlisle Indian school of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, founded nine years earlier.
  3. It was a "contract" school, i.e., one of the many private schools once supported by an annual federal per pupil subsidy to promote Indian education, therefore a relic of an era of state-church partnership now largely forgotten.
  4. It was the only Catholic off-reservation school of this type.
  5. It was one of only two such Indian schools in the state of Indiana, the other being White's Manual Labor Institute at Wabash, Indiana, also a "contract school" of the Society of Friends.[4]

Bibliography
  • Four articles in the Rensselaer Republican: May 11, May 18, May 25 and June 1, 1971, marking the 75th anniversary of the closing of the Indian school.
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See also

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. St. Joseph's Indian Normal School
  3. Indiana Historic Marker, located on U.S. 231. Indiana Historical Society
  4. "Indiana State Historic Architectural and Archaeological Research Database (SHAARD)" (Searchable database). Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. Retrieved 2016-04-01. Note: This includes Dominic B. Gerlach (n.d.). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: St. Joseph Indian Normal School" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-04-01. and Accompanying photographs.
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