off-reservation boarding schools

Examines the purpose and daily routine of the Indian schools, focusing on the eighty-four Sioux boys and girls who left their tribe in 1879 to become students at Carlisle Indian School, the first institution opened by the federal government for the education of Native American children.

In the diary account of her life at a government-run Pennsylvania boarding school in 1880, a twelve-year-old Sioux Indian girl reveals a great need to find a way to help her people.