The Astonishment Is How Few Children Died In The Native American Schools

The past really was a vile place, you know?

Following on from those Canadian claims - the ones that ended up with no unmarked graves being found at all - we’ve some about the Native American boarding schools in the US:

At least 973 Native American children died in the US government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.

A thousand dead kids is not a good thing whatever anyone used to say about darn Indians. But we all do need to realise that a thousand dead kids was a normal thing.

The investigation commissioned by the US interior secretary, Deb Haaland, found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 US boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said.

OK, long period of time extending deep back into the past. Two hundred years back from today -ish levels of the past.

By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children – about 60,000 children – were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

Lots of children too. My only surprise here is how few of those children died.

So, OK, yes Whitey did want to deracinate (perhaps deculturalise is better) the Indians. No doubt the schools were not very good.

We might also run this the other way around - are you going to provide high school in every collection of teepees out there? In every village of 50 families? Well, no, you’re not. We don’t do that these days. Remote Scottish islands might well have a primary school but teenage education happens on the mainland. The basic idea of boarding schools isn’t a bad one. It’s what they were like that matters.

OK - but how many kids would we expect to die in such circumstances? Assume - just as a comparison, just to give us a baseline - that the death rate at such schools was the same as the child death rate in the society at large. A reasonable starting point, no?

OK, so the child death rate definitely fell substantially over that century and a half. And yet:

50% in a hunter gatherer society (which some to many Indians still were). 40 to 50% in European nations within the time span being talked about here, after 1800-ish.

Yes, about half of that was infant mortality, in that first year after birth. The other half - 25% of all children - was between infant and puberty - measured at about 15. And yes, the rate declines as age increases. Once the usual childhood diseases have been had and survived the rate does that dropping.

But not dropping to nothing:

“When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.” Who is Calvin Jr. and why is this death so dramatic? The nation is transfixed by the death of a sixteen year old son of a president in the White House. The son dies from a blister that brought on blood poisoning.

Played tennis, no socks, blister, dies. That’s in 1924. The son of the sitting President, treated at Walter Reed as well.

OK, and 60k kids in the system at one time? So, call that 10k a year passing through it. Over 150 years, 1.5 million kids? Sounds about right for the Native American population over that time period, no? You know, cumulatively?

Well, we can’t use the 25% death rate of kids because that’s far too high for kids that only start at these schools at age 11. But we do have to get some handle upon whether 1,000 out of 1.5 million is a high rate or a low rate. If we take that 25% rater then we’ve be expecting 375,000 to die. Which looks absurd but it is actually correct. Out of 1,5 million 1 year olds, back then, we would expect 375,000 to die before they were 15.

As I say, this isn’t the right rate to be using because the schools started later than that and death rates fall with child age. But it’s an outer boundary perhaps. In 2021 we expected 0.8 children to die per 1000 live births. Again, that’s not right - here because we’re adding infancy in as well. But halve it and we get 6,000 deaths. So, by current mortality rates (a very -ish, -ish, estimation) we’d expect something less than 6,000 deaths given, again, that the schools start at 11. But it’s going to be more than a handful - or we can go a little more accurate, youth deaths. Between 5 and 24, we expect 10 (for North America) per 1,000 5 year old kids. So, for 1,5 million kids that’s 15,000 deaths. Again, that’s too many because some decent portion of those will be 19 year olds getting drunk and being male etc.

But we’ve reasonable estimates of the death toll at current, modern, child death rates of a few thousand to 15,000. And if we use the more usual death rates of the time we can guess at anything up to 375,000.

And the complaint is that 1,000 died?

Yes, yes, agreed, the death of any one child is a tragedy. No, I don’t think the schools were great. Yes, I’m sure it’s possible to be more accurate with those expected numbers. But 1,000 child deaths in a major schools system over a century and a half? That sounds terribly low to me.

If anyone’s got access to the figures it would be interesting to know what the death rate at Eton was in the 19th century. Boarding school, drawing its pupils from the very wealthiest of the time. 1,000 deaths over the century would surprise even me - that would be three a term which sounds excessive even for Whackford Towers. But I’d be absolutely astonished if the rate were less than equal to 1,000 per 1.5 million pupils.

This is the thing to remember about the past - it was an absolutely vile place.