Lot 322

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Description:

L.Q.C. Lamar On Education of Indian Children, 1887

Single page typed letter signed on Department of Interior Letterhead. Dated "June 16, 1887", and signed "L.Q.C. Lamar". 7.75" x 11", with several stain spots and slight damp ink spreading. Very good. From the famous Supreme Court collection of Scott Petersen

A wonderful piece discussing the "care and education of certain Indian children now at the Carlisle Indian School, Pa" .Lamar discusses the matter has been referred to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs "for compliance with the request of Mr. Perry provided there are funds sufficient and his Office is satisfied that the place is a proper one for the education of Indian children ..." Lamar also added "It is proper to add here that if the conditions are favorable to the placing of these children in teh hands of Mr. Perry for the purpose indicated, he will be required to conform with the general regulation of the Department on the subject, by entering into a contract with the Indian Office for the proper care, education and training of the children, prior to issuing of the order to the Superintendent of the Carlisle School for their delivery to him."

The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918.

The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first Indian boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast, who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association and the Women’s National Indian Association. 

The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to “assimilate” Indian tribes into the mainstream of the “American way of life,” a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people, make them accept white men’s beliefs and value systems. 

Boarding schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and ideologies that stood in the way of manifest destiny. Schools would quickly be able to assimilate Indian youth. The first priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added to open the possibility of discovering the “self-directing power of thought.” Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic society, institutions and the political structure would give the students citizenship training. The end goal was to eradicate all vestiges of Indian culture.


By the 1880s, the U.S. operated 60 schools for 6,200 Indian students, including reservation day schools and reservation boarding schools. The reservation day school had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent half a day teaching English and academics and half a day on industrial training. Regimentation was the order of the day and students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized values of white society.

The boarding schools hoped to produce students that were economically self-sufficient by teaching work skills and instilling values and beliefs of possessive individualism, meaning you care about yourself and what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership, which held that the land was for all people.

An important letter on what today is considered a highly controversial topic, signed by L.Q.C. Lamar. L.Q.C. Lamar served as United States Secretary of the Interior under President Grover Cleveland from March 6, 1885 to January 10, 1888. On December 6, 1887, President Cleveland nominated Lamar to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, filling the seat of the late William Burnham Woods.Lamar was confirmed on January 16, 1888, making him the first justice of Southern origin appointed after the Civil War.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.


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