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Rh seize such children as were proper and take them away to school, willing or unwilling.” ARCIA 1886, at 199. When parents “hurried their children off to the mountains or hid them away in camp,” agents “chase[d] and capture[d] them like so many wild rabbits.” Ibid. Fathers were described as “sullen,” mothers “loud in their lamentations,” and the children “almost out of their wits with fright.” Ibid.

Upon the children’s arrival, the boarding schools would often seek to strip them of nearly every aspect of their identity. The schools would take away their Indian names and give them English ones. See BIA Report 53. The schools would cut their hair—a point of shame in many native communities, see J. Reyhner & J. Eder, American Indian Education 178 (2004)—and confiscate their traditional clothes. ARCIA 1886, at 199. Administrators delighted in the process, describing the “metamorphosis [a]s wonderful,” and professing that, in the main, “the little savage seems quite proud of his appearance.” Ibid. After intake, the schools frequently prohibited children from speaking their native language or engaging in customary cultural or religious practices. BIA Report 53. Nor could children freely associate with members of their own Tribe. Schools would organize dorms by the “[s]ize of cadets, and not their tribal relations,” so as to further “br[eak] up tribal associations.” ARCIA 1886, at 6.

Resistance could invite punishments that included “withholding food” and “whipping.” BIA Report 54 (internal quotation marks omitted). Older boys faced “court-martial,” with other Indian children serving as prosecutors and judges. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of Interior 188 (1881). Even compliant students faced “[r]ampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care.” BIA Report 56. Given these conditions, it is unsurprising that many children tried (often unsuccessfully) to flee. Id., at 55, n. 176 (recounting incidents).