Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
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The phenomenon of an anti-education sentiment has been a particularly problematic one in Indian Country, especially among traditionalists-but it is not entirely irrational in the context of history.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) experiences with Western education are illustrated by an incident at the 1744 treaty negotiation at Lancaster, Penn., recounted by Benjamin Franklin:

[T]he Learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless....[T]he commissioners From Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college with a Fund for Educating Indian Youth, and that if the Chiefs of the Six Nations would send down a half dozen of their Sons to that College, the Government would take Care that they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the Learning of the white People.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy representative answered diplomatically but firmly:

But you who are wise must know, that different Nations have different Conceptions of things... Several of our Young People were formerly... instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods... spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. [sic]

This has been interpreted as an anti-education statement, but it should be considered within context. The Haudenosaunee representative was speaking to a pragmatic consideration. Young people with a colonial Williamsburg education were deemed unprepared to take their place in Haudenosaunee society. Some who achieved that kind of education were, however, destined to become leaders among the Haudenosaunee. The Mohawk warrior Joseph Brant, was one.

The opinion about education that most resonates in Haudenosaunee country comes from Ganiiodai'io', or Handsome Lake. He was born around 1730, and his teachings have been handed down orally >from generation to generation in a body of work known as the Gaiwiio, or Good Message. An authoritative work on this subject was gathered by ethnologist Arthur C. Parker and published in Parker on the Iroquois, which quotes Handsome Lake:

This concerns education. It is concerning studying in English schools.

Now let the Council appoint twelve people to study. Two from each nation of the six. So many white people are about you that you must study to know their ways.

So they said and he said.

An ethnologist's translation into English is not the best evidence of this kind of information, but it does provide some interesting clues. Some have asserted that Handsome Lake was vehemently opposed to the white man's education. Cayuga Chief Jake Thomas reports Handsome Lake's opinion on education in Teachings from the Longhouse as follows:

We feel that the white race will take away the culture, traditions, and language of the red race. When your people's children become educated in the way of white people, they will no longer speak their own language and will not understand their own culture. Your people will suffer great misery and will not be able to understand their elders anymore.

Your people will appoint twelve children to be educated by the white race. They will select two children from each of the Six Nations. We feel that when they become educated, not a single child will come back and stand at your side because they will no longer speak your language or have any knowledge of their culture.

Chief Thomas' book was published in 1994, nearly 200 years after Handsome Lake addressed this issue. Chief Thomas' words are inconsistent with what is known about the life of Handsome Lake. Handsome Lake's relationship with his nephew, (the son of his half-brother, the famous war chief Cornplanter) was educated at the white man's school at Philadelphia. The relationship between the prophet and the nephew is a complex one, not adequately remembered.

The passage in Parker does not praise education, but neither does it condemn it. It simply acknowledges that things had changed and that people would need to know about the white man's ways in order to be able to deal with them. Nothing that follows in Parker suggests the level of hostility found in the passage attributed to Chief Thomas. At no point does Handsome Lake suggest that people who become educated have somehow erred and should repent, nor is there any story about punishments for having gone to school in the Gaiwiio.

The times have changed. Trains no longer pull into Carlisle, Penn., with carloads of frightened Indian youngsters who will be abused and punished for speaking their language. But the boarding schools did an effective job of diminishing the Native in Indian children, and now only a small number of young people speak their native language or know their traditions. We thus have at least two reasons for the perpetuation of the anti-education sentiment among the Haudenosaunee: one stems from boarding-school trauma still fresh in our memories; the other from the misinterpretation of Handsome Lake and the fear that, with an education, we will lose our cultural strength. We must not let our fears or false edicts dictate our future. Undoing the boarding-school experience is not the same thing as shunning a mainstream education.

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The above article is an abstract of a feature published in the Winter 2000 issue of Native Americas Journal. Call (800) 9-NATIVE, or visit, for information on obtaining this feature article or to subscribe.

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