The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1933

The Rapid City Indian School was one of twenty-eight off-reservation boarding schools built and operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to prepare American Indian children for assimilation into white society. From 1898 to 1933 the "School of the Hills" housed Northern Plains Indian children--including Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, and Flathead--from elementary through middle grades.

Scott Riney uses letters, archival materials, and oral histories to provide a candid view of daily life at the school as seen by students, parents, and school employees.

"The Rapid City Indian School, 1898-1933" offers a new perspective on the complexities of American Indian interactions with a BIA boarding school. It shows how parents and students made the best of their limited educational choices--using the school to pursue their own educational goals--and how the school linked urban Indians to both the services and the controls of reservation life.