Concho Indian Boarding School

Concho Indian Boarding School (also known as the Cheyenne-Arapaho Boarding School at Concho or Concho Indian School and home to the Concho Demonstration School) was a boarding school for members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and later opened to other Native American students. It existed from 1909 to 1983. It was located in central Oklahoma, approximately 1 mile south of Concho, Oklahoma and 4 miles north of El Reno, Oklahoma. The name of the town and school is the Spanish word for "shell" and was named for the Indian agent, Charles E. Shell.

Concho was developed to provide a means of integrating and assimilating American Indian children into mainstream society. It, like other federal boarding schools, was run on a strict military model. Students were wakened at 5 a.m., performed military drills and formations, ate breakfast and were in class by 6:00 each morning. Academics, including reading, writing, and arithmetic, were studied for half the day and the remainder of the day consisted of labor.

Trades and farming were taught to boys and girls were taught domestic labor and nursing. A large experimental farm was maintained, where the children were instructed in conservation and planting techniques. Boys milked cows and girls helped prepare all of the meals and sewed clothing. Discipline was strict and infractions, like speaking in their native language rather than English, were punished by things like breaking large rocks into smaller rocks or sawing wood. Each infraction required punishment of one hour of labor.

Initially, the school offered education to the 6th grade and students would have to transfer to Carlisle, Chilocco or Haskell Institute for secondary education. By around the 1920s, the school curriculum mirrored public education being offered throughout the country and included sports, music, art, and a full course of educational subjects. By the time the school closed in the early 1980s, it offered instruction for grades one - eight and was predominantly attended by orphans and students who had difficult home environments.

The first school was opened at the Darlington Agency on the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation in 1871 by the Hicksite (Liberal) Friends and Orthodox Quakers and was called the Cheyenne-Arapaho Boarding School. In 1872, the facility was built with federal funds, but run by the Quakers. Few Cheyenne children attended the school and as a means to entice them, a partition was erected to divide the classroom into separate areas for the Arapaho and Cheyenne students. In 1879 the facility was renamed the Arapaho Manual Labor and Boarding School and a new facility was built for the Cheyenne students located at Caddo Springs, which was called the Cheyenne Manual Labor and Boarding School. Within 5 years, it was reported that the children at the agency schools were responsible for raising 211 cattle and hogs and cultivating 130 acres of land.

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