Like many Native children of the late nineteenth century, she encountered educational systems shaped by assimilation.

The federal government and missionary organizations increasingly believed Native children should be separated from traditional cultural influences and trained in English, Christianity, domestic labor, agriculture, or industrial trades.

Some schools were brutal institutions of coercion.

Children could be punished for speaking their languages, separated from family for long periods, given new names, and forced into rigid schedules intended to erase Native identity.

Susan’s educational path was not identical to every boarding-school experience, but it unfolded within that larger movement.

She attended mission and agency schools before eventually traveling east to Hampton Institute in Virginia.

Hampton had been founded after the Civil War to educate formerly enslaved Black students.

Later, it began accepting Native students as part of the broader national experiment in assimilationist education.

For white reformers, Hampton was a place where Native young people could be trained in the values and skills they believed would make them “civilized.”

For Native students, the reality could be far more complicated.