Tomah Indian Industrial School (Tomah, Wis.)

The Tomah Indian School was authorized as a nonreservation boarding school in 1891 and opened in 1893. The Tomah Indian School was given agency duties in 1911 for the Hocak (Winnebago) Indians of Wisconsin. Agency duties were transferred to the Grand Rapids Agency in 1916, but in 1927 that agency-level jurisdiction was consolidated with the Tomah School, which regained its agency status. Between 1932 and 1935, the Tomah School took over responsiblity for the Oneida, Stockbridge, and Munsee Indians from the Keshena Agency and for the Ottawa and Potawatomi and the Saginaw, Swan Creek, and Black River Chippewa, previously connectd with the Mount Pleasant School. In 1935 the Tomah Indian School closed, and in 1949 the Tomah Agency was incorporated into the Great Lakes Consolidated Agency.

The Tomah Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1893, was an off-reservation, government boarding school in Wisconsin located along a main railroad that connected Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. It provided education for children from the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, who were referred to at the time as the “Winnebago" by white settlers. The boarding school was the vision of white policy makers and administrators. As the first school of its kind to exist in Wisconsin, it was esteemed for its literary education and religious influences. Most students were members of the Ho-Chunk Nation, but the school also served Ojibwe, Oneida and Menominee students from reservations in Wisconsin.[14] Guidelines for how the school was to be run were largely based on Euro-American culture and aimed at "Americanizing" the students.Over 2,000 students were admitted during the operating years of the Tomah Indian Industrial School. The school was known for diminishing the Native American children's cultural background and making them more Americanized. The school had goals that were reflective of the educational goals of white administrators and policy makers of the time. Examples of how these goals were achieved included religious conversions, celebrations of U.S. federal holidays, attending regular church services, learning patriotic and folk music, giving different names to the children, and learning English. The school was well-liked by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Tomah Indian Industrial School was seen as a model for how other schools at the time could develop.[15]