Home |  PublicationsEncyclopedia |  Riverside Indian School

The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

Riverside Indian School, 1901
(16471, Virgil Robbins Collection, OHS).

RIVERSIDE INDIAN SCHOOL.

Located at Anadarko, the Riverside Indian School is the nation's oldest federally operated American Indian boarding school and is one of four such schools remaining. Organized in 1871 at the old Wichita Indian Agency commissary with Thomas C. Battey as principal, it became the Wichita-Caddo School in 1872. In 1878–79 the facility was relocated one mile west to its present location along the Washita River and was named Riverside Indian School.

For a half-century Riverside served Wichita, Caddo, and Delaware students, and in 1922 Kiowa enrolled there after Rainy Mountain Mission School closed. Navajos began attending in 1945. Riverside presently has students from dozens of Indian nations attending grades four through twelve. Admission requires a Certified Degree of Indian Blood. Riverside's board of education, administration, staff, and faculty are predominantly American Indian. The State of Oklahoma and the North Central Association of Secondary Schools and Elementary Schools accredit the school, which offers numerous specialized academic programs. Its athletic department is governed by the rules and regulations of the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Activity Association.

Riverside's history is a part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs federal boarding school system that originated with Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Indian boarding school-system curricula generally emphasized agriculture to 1910, vocational education to 1960, academics to 1990, and college preparation in the 1990s. Cultural programming was introduced in the 1960s. Approximately six hundred students were enrolled at Riverside during the early twenty-first century.

Pamela Koenig

Browse By Topic

American Indians
Education

Explore

Place
Other

Learn More

David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995).

100th Year: Riverside Indian School, Anadarko, Oklahoma (Anadarko, Okla.: N.p., 1971).

Ruby W. Shannon,"Friends" for the Indians: 100 Years of Education at Riverside Indian School, Anadarko, Oklahoma (Anadarko, Okla.: Riverside Indian School, 1971).

Citation

The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for articles:
Pamela Koenig, “Riverside Indian School,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=RI015.

Published January 15, 2010

Copyright and Terms of Use

No part of this site may be construed as in the public domain.

Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). This includes individual articles (copyright to OHS by author assignment) and corporately (as a complete body of work), including web design, graphics, searching functions, and listing/browsing methods. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law.

Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. Individual users must determine if their use of the Materials falls under United States copyright law's "Fair Use" guidelines and does not infringe on the proprietary rights of the Oklahoma Historical Society as the legal copyright holder of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and part or in whole.