From 1890 until it closed in 1980, the Stewart Indian School in Carson City was the only off-reservation boarding school in Nevada for Native American children. Taken from Nevada and throughout the West, the children were forced to attend the institution through secondary school age. Students came from many tribes including the Nevada-based Washoe and Paiute tribes. Each interior panorama in this feature includes an audio remembrance from a Stewart alumnus or worker. Audio is used courtesy of the State of Nevada Indian Commission, whose website offers a more complete audio tour. Text is from that site, the National Park Service, and the Nevada State Museum.
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Group of boys in 1894. In 1888 the Nevada Legislature passed a bill that authorized the sale of bonds to purchase land for an Indian boarding school. Once purchased, the land was conveyed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs who established the boarding school to train and educate Indian children with the ultimate goal of assimilation. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
First graduating class in 1901. The campus began with a Victorian-style wood framed dormitory and school house. As enrollment increased, new buildings included shops for training, a hospital, and a recreation room. A Virginia and Truckee Railroad stop was established by 1906 to deliver supplies and facilitate transporting students to and from the school. By 1919, 400 students attended the school. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
Boys in the harness shop. Classes included reading, writing, and arithmetic but focused on vocational training in various trades, agriculture, and the service industry. Classes offered for boys included ranching and farming, mechanics, woodworking, painting, and carpentry. Students learned stone masonry from their teachers, including Hopi stone masons, and helped to construct more than 60 native stone buildings on the campus. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
Sewing Class. Stewart girls attended classes in baking, cooking, sewing, laundry, and practical nursing. Much of the school’s basic needs were supplied by students’ products or fulfilled by their newly acquired skills. Vocational training remained the school’s principal focus until a shift to academics occurred in the late 1960’s. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
Baptism performed at the school swimming pool. The Stewart Indian School was initially intended to assimilate the young people into mainstream American culture. Policies prohibiting speaking native languages and practicing native customs anguished both students and their parents. The Federal policy toward American Indians radically changed with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, after which self-determination and self-government were supported. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
Baseball Team with Coach, 1905. Organized sports began at Stewart Indian School in 1896. Teams competed under the school mascot, the Braves. The football team became Nevada State Champions in 1916. In the late 1920s Stewart became a member of the state interscholastic athletic league. In 1937 a new stone gymnasium was built. Team sports such as baseball and football provided friendly interchange between schools and communities
Nevada Day, 1940. Stewart Indian School Band Marching on Carson Street. In later years, the Bureau of Indian Affairs encouraged schools such as Stewart to let students speak their native languages and to promote classes in native cultures. Today, the State of Nevada Indian Commission annually hosts the Stewart Father’s Day Powwow, which presents traditional competition dancing, Stewart School alumni recognition, arts and crafts, special events and exhibits. Photograph courtesy Nevada State Museum.
Stone Barn Used in Stewart Argricultural Program. Prior to the expansion that began in 1919, the Stewart complex included only two dormitories, a barn, carpenter's shop, harness and tool house, and some other small out buildings. The majority of the surviving buildings were built between 1922 and the beginning of World War II.
Hopi Stonework. Frederick Snyder, who served as the school superintendent from 1919 to 1934, began the practice of using colored native stone (quarried along the Carson River) for campus buildings; much of the masonry used in the vernacular-style buildings is the work of student apprentices working under Hopi stonemasons. Click the image to see a close-up view.