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6 State officials played a key role in foiling those efforts. “[P]olice from a variety of jurisdictions” assisted in “captur[ing] and return[ing] runaway school children.” Historians Brief 11–12. For “the runaways,” school administrators believed “a whipping administered soundly and prayerfully, helps greatly towards bringing about the desired result.” BIA Report 55 (internal quotation marks omitted). As one Commissioner of Indian Affairs put it, while “[t]he first wild redskin placed in the school[s] chafes at the loss of freedom and longs to return to his wildwood home,” that resistance would fade “with each successive generation,” leaving a “greater desir[e] to be in touch with the dominant race.” Id., at 51–52 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Adding insult to injury, the United States stuck Tribes with a bill for these programs. At points, as much as 95% of the funding for Indian boarding schools came from “Indian trust fund monies” raised by selling Indian land. Id., at 44. To subsidize operations further, the boarding schools frequently required children not even 12 years old to work on the grounds. Id., at 62–63. Some rationalized this experience as a benefit to the children. Id., at 59–63. But in candor, Indian boarding schools “could not possibly be maintained … were it not for the fact that students [were] required to do … an amount of labor that ha[d] in the aggregate a very appreciable monetary value.” L. Meriam, Institute for Government Research, The Problem of Indian Administration 376 (1928) (Meriam Report).

To lower costs further and promote assimilation, some schools created an “outing system,” which sent Indian children to live “with white families” and perform “household and farm chores” for them. R. Trennert, From Carlisle to Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of the Indian Outing System, 1878–1930, 52 Pacific Hist. Rev. 267, 273 (1983). This program took many Indian children “even further from their homes, families, and cultures.” Fletcher & Singel 943. Advocates of the outing system hoped it would be “extended