Indian Dormitory Art Museum - Henry Schoolcraft, Indian Agent

Henry Schoolcraft, Indian Agent

The Indian Dormitory is a surviving fragment of the assimilationist vision of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the U.S. government official supervising Native American affairs and based at Mackinac Island. Schoolcraft noticed in the early 19th century that the culture of most Native Americans centered on the hunting and gathering of food, activities which were less productive in terms of food production than agriculture.

Schoolcraft believed that Native Americans could be persuaded to cede much of their hunting lands to the U.S. federal government, and that the government could reinvest some of the proceeds to be earned from reselling these lands to teach farming techniques to the "Indians." Other income from land sales could be used to support Native American families during the transitional period.

As the Indian Agent in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and later on Mackinac Island, Schoolcraft had seen that many of the Native Americans who traveled by foot or canoe to visit his agency were limited by necessity to portable, temporary shelters they could easily build. These did not seem adequate from the European-American point of view.