19th century asylums for Native American youth

Abstract

In the history of European contact with the Native American, Christian missionary societies and the missionaries they sent among the native peoples have played a key role. From the first contact, the Europeans in North America attempted to bring European civilization and Christianity to a people they viewed as uncivilized. One of the most respected historians of the Protestant missions to the Native Americans, Robert Berkhofer (1963 176), noted that the early colonial efforts of missionaries were generally viewed as failures by the early 19th century. By the 1820s, however, there was a climate of optimism and enthusiasm for a new strategy of missionary work, the manual labor boarding school (MLBS) for Native American youth (Berkhofer 1963).