Item No: #307317 Indian Training School, Forest Grove, Oregon: One of the Main Buildings, erected entirely by Indian Boys; Dormer Windows, Rustic and Painting on all.—Their work without aid. [Cabinet card]. Isaac Grundy Davidson, studio of.
Indian Training School, Forest Grove, Oregon: One of the Main Buildings, erected entirely by Indian Boys; Dormer Windows, Rustic and Painting on all.—Their work without aid. [Cabinet card]

Early Image of the Western Counterpart to the Carlisle Indian School

Indian Training School, Forest Grove, Oregon: One of the Main Buildings, erected entirely by Indian Boys; Dormer Windows, Rustic and Painting on all.—Their work without aid. [Cabinet card]

Notes: A cabinet card photograph of the US-government-run Native American boarding school in Forest Grove, Oregon, some 25 miles east of Portland. The image shows the two main buildings with the students gathered in the grassy square between. The boys, on the left, are all wearing military-style uniforms. The girls, much fewer in number on the right, wear dresses with white collars.

Davidson Photo, the largest studio in Oregon at the time, visited the school in 1881 or 1882 (some of their photographs were reproduced in Harper's Weekly in 1882). This is the school's first location, on the campus of Pacific University. When the school opened in 1880, the first students were tasked with building the facility, a feat described in the printed caption of this image.

The Forest Grove Indian Industrial and Training School, overseen by the military officer Lt. Melville C. Wilkinson, was one of only two off-reservation schools for Native Americans at the time. It was the West Coast counterpart of the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in Pennsylvania, and it was tasked with the same mission, eliminating the Native cultures and languages of the students. The students were also treated as a kind of slave labor. After building the facility shown in this photograph, the school moved south in 1884, to a farm near Salem. The students once again built the buildings, but this time they were also hired out, and the school used their wages to buy land and fund the construction (see the online Oregon Encyclopedia).

Boudoir format, 8-1/2 by 5-1/8 inches.

Edition + Condition: An image with good tonality and very light wear to the edges of the mount. The photo back is light green, with an oval I. G. Davidson, Photographer logo in the center. Back (verso) with some penciled notations.

Publication: Portland, OR: I. G. Davison, Photographer, (ca. 1882).

Item No: #307317

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