Chemawa Indian School Boys at Drill

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Description

A group portrait of the boys enrolled at Chemawa Indian School, very soon after the school relocated there from Forest Grove in 1885. The boys stand at attention, demonstrating a military drill for the camera. The student standing in front of the others may have been leading the drill. One student holds the United States flag aloft on the right. A woman stands in the doorway of the white building on the left. Trees, which had not yet been cleared from the campus, lie behind a fenced area in the background. The boys in this portrait were taken to the school from tribes across the Pacific Northwest as part of a government plan to force them to assimilate into white culture. For another photograph taken on the same day, see image WCMss261_001_176.