“I Would Advise That It Be Kept from the Schools at All Cost”: The Influenza of 1918–1920 at Nonreservation Indian Boarding Schools

In this article, the authors investigate the 1918–20 influenza pandemic in the federal government’s nonreservation Indian boarding schools. Nonreservation boarding schools, which served approximately 6,200 Indigenous youths in 1919, provide a particularly fruitful terrain for analysis due to the detailed records, reports, and correspondence they shared with the Indian Office before, during, and after the pandemic. This rich source base offers a rare opportunity to analyze comparatively how these institutions handled the influenza crisis and how different factors resulted in different outcomes. The authors first describe the Indigenous education system at the time, then document and evaluate patterns of infection, mitigation efforts and medical aid, and responses by the superintendents and Indian Office to the overall experience. Drawing from this discussion, they also use quantitative analysis to investigate the roles of different factors in morbidity and mortality outcomes.