Pipestone Indian Boarding School

The Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Pipestone, Minnesota was established in 1892 and the first students arrived there shortly after the completion of the first building. Children from several states and tribes of the Midwest were students there, including those from the Dakota, Oneida, Pottawattomie, Arikara, Sac and Fox, and other tribes.

As with all Indian boarding schools, the typical schedule was for the students to spend half the day in classes and the other half day in vocational training.

The school was closed in 1953.

An index to the names of students who attended the Pipestone School is available online from the Central Plains Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration in Kansas City. Individual student case files, 1910-1964, are also available at that research facility, but are not online. Copies of the files may be ordered from them.

School census cards, 1942-1952; register of completion of classes and school enrollment, 1897-1948; social welfare student information cards, ca. 1938-1950; and other administrative files of the school, such as reports, correspondence, employees records, etc., are also available at the Central Plains Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration, and are not online.

The 1910 census of the students at the Pipestone School is also available online.

Microfilm copies of “Narrative and Statistical Reports” for Pipestone are included in National Archives Microcopy M1011, available in the National Archives system and in the collections of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, beginning with their film number 1724219.