Abstract
In the late nineteenth century the United States Federal government established off-reservation boarding schools that sought to accomplish an internal colonialism of American Indian communities by forcefully assimilating them into mainstream American culture. The landscape of these institutions was a primary tool to achieve their assimilationist goals. This research examines the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School through archival, archaeological and oral history evidence. The landscape and material record of this school also indicate that students vigorously resisted the institution.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, D. W. (1995). Education for Extinction: American Indiana and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence.
Balabuch, A. R. (2010). To Run and Play: Resistance and Community at the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial School, 1892-1933. Bachelor’s Thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Blodgett, G. (1976). Frederick Law Olmsted: landscape architecture as conservative reform. The Journal of American History 62: 869–889.
Casanova, P. G. (1965). Internal colonialism and national development. Studies in Comparative International Development 1: 27–37.
Casella, E. C. (2009). On the enigma of incarceration: philosophical approaches to confinement in the modern era. In Beisaw, A. M., and Gibb, J. G. (eds.), The Archaeology of Institutional Life, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 17–32.
Cassella, E. C. (2007). The Archaeology of Institutional Confinement, University of Florida Press, Gainesville.
Central Michigan Times (1907). Death of 8 Year Old Boy, Daniel Strong from Tuberculosis and Announcement of 125 Cases of Measles at the School. June 21. Mount Pleasant.
Central Michigan Times (1909). Scarlet fever Outbreak At School. August 27. Mount Pleasant.
Child, B. J. (2000). Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Child, B. J. (2012). Holding our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community, Penguin, New York.
Fear-Segal, J. (2007). White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Ferris, N. (2009). The Archaeology of Native Lived Colonialism: Challenging History in the Great Lakes, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan (trans.) Vintage, New York.
Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Harris, C. M. (1977). Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture, Dover, New York.
Irwin, D. (1997). Neoclassicism, Phaidon, London.
Isabella County Enterprise (1893). Announcement of Landscape Contracting by Mrs. McCrea of Kalamazoo. May 12. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1895). Fire at a School Storehouse. January 11. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1897). Description of New Construction at School, Including New Steam Heating Plant. June 29. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1899a). Fire of the Main School Building. June 23. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1899b). Confession of Martha Shagonaby. July 7. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1903a). Announcement of Larger Bandstand Construction. July 24. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1903b). Discussion of New School Improvements, Including Water System. September 4. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1904). School Laundry Burned. Discussion of the Fire and Destruction of Laundry Building. March 11. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1905a). Construction of an Artificial Lake at School. September 8. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1905b). Announcement of New Construction at School, Including Steam Heating Plant Improvement. November 10. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1906). Announcement of Tea Entertainment to be Offered by School Girls to the Community. May 13. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1907). Description of the Landscaping and Pleasantries of the School Grounds. December 13. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1909). Fire at the School Bakery. December 10. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1910). Announcement of Military Pageant to be Performed by School Students. May 27. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County Enterprise (1917). Description of Military Drilling and Maneuvers Performed by School Students for the Mount Pleasant Community. June 1. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Isabella County News (1938). Discussion of the Boy’s Dormitory Being Razed for New Structure at Former School. August 18. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Johnson, P. (1991). School Days Remembered: The Mt. Pleasant Indian School Reunion Video, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant.
Lindauer, O. (1996). Historical Archaeology of the United States Industrial Indian School at Phoenix: Investigations of a Turn of the Century Trash Dump, Office of Cultural Resource Management, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.
Lindauer, O. (2009). Individual struggles and institutional goals: small voices from the Phoenix Indian School Tract Site. In Beisaw, A. M., and Gibb, J. G. (eds.), The Archaeology of Institutional Life, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 86–102.
Littlefield, A. (1983). Brief History of the Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial School, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant.
Littlefield, A. (1996). Indian education and the world of work in Michigan, 1893-1933. In Littlefield, A., and Knack, M. C. (eds.), Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistoric Perspectives, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, pp. 100–121.
McCullough, R., and McCullough, D. (2012). Results of Geophysical Survey at the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, McCullough Archaeological Services, Champaign.
Miller, H. A., and Seely, C. (1906). Faces and Places Familiar Mt, Courier Press, Mount Pleasant.
Mount Pleasant Times (1911). Indian Girls Can Sew and do Cooking. June 2. Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Paxton, K. A. (2006). Learning gender: female students at the Sherman Institute, 1907-1925. In Trafzer, C. E., Keller, J. A., and Sisquoc, L. (eds.), Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, pp. 174–186.
Reichert, S. (2011). Their Spirits Still Cry: Life in an Indian Boarding School, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.
Spencer-Wood, S. (2009). Feminist theory and the historical archaeology of institutions. In Beisaw, A. M., and Gibb, J. G. (eds.), The Archaeology of Institutional Life, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 33–48.
Spencer-Wood, S. (2010). A feminist framework for analyzing powered cultural landscapes in historical archaeology. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 14: 498–526.
Spencer-Wood, S. (2013). Commentary: how feminist theories increase our understanding of processes of gender transformation. In Spencer-Wood, S. (ed.), Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations: From Private to Public, Springer, New York, pp. 391–425.
Surface-Evans, S. L. (2012). Archaeological Investigations of the 1929 Dump Portion of the Former Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. City of Mount Pleasant, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and State Archaeologist, Lansing (under permit number AE2012-01).
Surface-Evans, S. L. (2014). Summary of Archaeological Investigations at the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School, 2012–2013. Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and State Archaeologist, Lansing (under permit number AE2012-01 and AE2013-03).
Taylor, D. E. (1999). Central Park as a model for social control: urban parks, social class and leisure behavior in nineteenth-century America. Journal of Leisure Research 31: 420–477.
Trafzer, C. E., Keller, J. A., and Sisquoc, L. (eds.) (2006). Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Voss, B. L., and Casella, E. C. (eds.) (2011). The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters and Sexual Effects, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Winterer, C. (2005). From royal to republican: the classical image in early America. Journal of American History 91: 1264–1290.
Zedner, L. (1991). Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian England, Clarendon, Oxford.
Acknowledgments
I express my profound gratitude to the MIIBS Committee, Tribal Council of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and staff of the Ziibiwing Center for Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways for their support of this research. I would also like to acknowledge the CMU College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for financial support. I am grateful for the constructive comments from colleagues, anonymous reviewers, and the special edition editors, Laura McAtackney and Russell Palmer, for helping me improve my message. Lastly, this research project would not have been possible without countless hours of excavation, analysis, and research conducted by dedicated CMU students.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Surface-Evans, S.L. A Landscape of Assimilation and Resistance: The Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. Int J Histor Archaeol 20, 574–588 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0362-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-016-0362-5