This photograph, dated to about 1881, shows twelve Puyallup boys, some of the first students to arrive at the Forest Grove Indian Industrial School in 1880.
Courtesy Friends of Historic Forest Grove
On Feb. 25, 1880 — 145 years ago — Forest Grove Indian Industrial Training School began classes with 14 boys and four girls from the Puyallup Tribe.
When students first arrived in Forest Grove, the only building was a girls’ dormitory. Students had to construct the school themselves from the ground up.
The campus lasted just five years. By 1885, it relocated to Salem.
It is now known as the Chemawa Indian School and remains the oldest operating school of its kind.
An image from 1881 or 1882 shows the Indian Training School's original campus in Forest Grove.
Courtesy Pacific University Archives
Researching and recovering students’ stories
Pacific University archivist Eva Guggemos is writing a book on the Forest Grove school. She has spent years researching its history and documenting the students.
“The very first thing we did was write down the names of the students who were here,” Guggemos said. “We started with trying to find out whether the records were accurate.”
From 1880 to 1885, the school operated on grounds owned by Pacific University.
Guggemos’ research documented 310 students who attended during that time period. Children came from 30 different tribes, some from as far away as Alaska.
This image from the late 1880s shows Forest Grove Indian School student Alex Duncan of the Clatsop. He entered the school in 1884 at the age of 14.
Courtesy Pacific University Archives
The boarding school era
From 1819 right up until the 1970s, the federal government removed Native American children from their homes and forced them into boarding schools. It was part of a larger government policy of forcibly assimilating Native American people into the dominant white Christian society.
Children from tribes across the country spent years living in boarding schools where they were prohibited from speaking their Native languages or practicing traditional beliefs.
“When children came to the school in Forest Grove, their clothes from home were taken away,” Guggemos said. She said the boys were given military uniforms and the girls put in work dresses.
The boarding schools were designed to teach industrial skills along with academics. That meant the children did the cooking, sewing, and laundry and took care of the school’s farm and livestock.
Guggemos has posted her work on the Pacific University website. The site includes nearly all the documents found in the university archives related to the Forest Grove Indian School, including rare photographs.
Forest Grove Indian Industrial Training School students pose in this photograph from 1881.
Courtesy Pacific University Archive
Documenting the deaths
Guggemos has found evidence of at least 11 children dying in school custody while at Forest Grove, usually from tuberculosis, but she said the total number of student deaths is much higher.
“Many more were sent home sick and likely died soon after,” Guggemos said.
Martha Lot is thought to be the first child to die at the Forest Grove school. School superintendent Melville Wilkinson described Martha’s condition in a letter he wrote to her father, Chief Lot of the Lower Spokane Tribe, in 1881.
“When the sore on the side of her head healed up and stopped running, it went to her head, and that is what caused her death,” Wilkinson wrote, according to records in the Pacific University archive.
In 2021, then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to confront the country’s horrific practices toward Native American children and families. The initiative set out to locate federally run schools and burial sites, following a similar effort in Canada. Researchers had already been documenting the locations of schools and burial sites across the U.S. and at Chemawa.
In this screen grab from May 2024, Pacific University archivist Eva Guggemos explains the history of Native American student graves at Forest View Cemetery in Forest Grove.
LaRonn Katchia / OPB
Remembrance and reconciliation
Last spring, the Pacific University Student Alliance held the school’s inaugural Reconciliation Powwow to bring awareness to the history of the Forest Grove School and honor the students who attended.
“It’s really important to not only acknowledge that, but also it’s a celebration of Indigenous resistance,” Indigenous student Marlo Olson said.
The gathering included a prayer walk from Pacific University to the nearby Forest View Cemetery, where Guggemos' research indicates at least two students were buried.
“Martha [Lot] was buried there, but there is no grave marker,” Guggemos said. “Determining the exact location is very, very difficult.”
Despite that, Guggemos has been able to pinpoint the general location.
In the pouring rain last May, she joined the Indigenous Student Alliance and community members as they stood graveside to honor the children who were taken from their families to the Forest Grove school and never made it home.
Behind the scenes
This article is part of an ongoing special report into Native American boarding schools, following the journey of Klamath Tribes member Abby Hall as she digs into her family’s history.
The “Oregon Experience” team has spent the last several months with Abby, researching into her family’s history, talking to elders and trying to uncover the often disturbing stories of several generations of children sent away to grow up in boarding schools. Some never returned.
In this image, OPB camera operator LaRonn Katchia films Eva Guggemos at the Forest View Cemetery in Forest Grove, May 2024.
Arya Surowidjojo / OPB
The one-hour “Oregon Experience” documentary "Uncovering Boarding Schools: stories of resistance and resilience" is expected to be completed in the fall of 2025.
More from this series:
- Oregon tribal members reveal painful past from country’s boarding school policy as Biden issues apology
- One of Oregon’s first Indian boarding schools opened in 1874
Further reporting:
OPB reporters Rob Manning and Tony Schick conducted a five-part investigation into Chemawa Indian School, which found significant problems, from inadequate health and safety protections to financial mismanagement and patterns of retaliation against staff. Those stories, published in 2017, led to a congressional inquiry and a federal audit, which found the school didn’t account for its resources or have sufficient oversight.