Pipestone Indian Industrial Training School

In the 1890s, the U.S. built the Pipestone Indian Training School on reserved quarry land and legal conflict soon followed.The Pipestone Indian Training School was one of many boarding schools that separated Native children from kin and land in order to assimilate them into American economy and society. These schools came about as attitudes towards the “correct” treatment of Native people turned towards assimilation with the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Many Native people resisted boarding schools, but the Pipestone Indian School inspired particularly active resistance for two reasons. First, it was built illegally on Yankton Sioux reservation land. Second, during the school’s tenure, management of the quarries fell largely to the white superintendent of the school instead of the Yankton people ...

The Pipestone Indian Training School (PITS, also called the Pipestone Indian School) was a Native American boarding school in Pipestone, Minnesota that was established in 1894, and closed in 1953. The school was operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as one of its 18 non-reservation boarding schools and last of such to be closed. The site of the school is adjacent to Pipestone National Monument, and is now used by the national monument and Minnesota West Community and Technical College.[1] The superintendent's house of the old boarding school is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places ...