Quakers and Indigenous Boarding Schools (HC and SC)

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School is a major site of memory for many Native peoples, as well as a source of study for students and scholars around the globe. This website represents an effort to aid the research process by bringing together, in digital format, a variety of resources that are physically preserved in various locations around the country. Through these resources, we seek to increase knowledge and understanding of the school and its complex legacy, while also facilitating efforts to tell the stories of the many thousands of students who were sent there.

Beyond Penn's Treaty: Quakers and American Indian Relations provides access to linked and annotated versions of Quaker diaries, letters, and meeting records which record contact with American Indians, particularly the Seneca, beginning in the 1740s. These documents, held in Quaker & Special Collections at Haverford College and Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, are all from the Quaker perspective, and document their view of this unfolding relationship.