Challenge and conflict to educate: the Brazos Agency Indian School

Indian education is an important, and occasionally neglected, aspect of our nation's educational history. Although the Spanish and Mexicans made concerted efforts to educate Native Americans in what is now considered the southwestern United States, the US story mostly involves boarding schools that were established in the late 1800s to indoctrinate Indian children in "the ways of the white man". In the mid-1800s, violence commonly broke out over territorial disputes as well as issues surrounding the expansion of white settlers into the west. Under these circumstances, the US government sponsored few educational efforts for Indians in the State of Texas, with the notable exception of those undertaken at a small fort in northern Texas. Moore and LeCompte examines the significance of the Brazos Agency Indian School in Texas. Established on a small agricultural reservation as a treaty provision with the Republic of Texas (and later with the United States), the institution was one of the only schools of its kinds to emerge in the 1850s. It was open for nearly a year before closing in the wake of the government's forced relocation of local Indians to present-day Oklahoma.