Chattanooga’s Brainerd Mission School, opened in 1817, was one of the first of more than 408 federally-funded mission schools across the U.S. that boarded Native American children and taught them English and homemaking and agricultural skills.
The school closed with the federal removal of the Cherokee in 1838, and students and teachers alike left on the Trail of Tears. The site of the mission and school are now only marked by a tiny cemetery surrounded mostly by asphalt.
Mission schools across the nation, most opening between 1819 and the late 1800s, were part of a federal government system that stripped away Native American language and culture, according to the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report released in May by the U.S. Department of Interior. More than 500 children died in U.S. boarding schools in 37 states.
But the story at Brainerd Mission School, one of those listed in the report, was different. Cherokee historians said it stands apart from others in that it had such a short life and was sought out by tribal members.
The Brainerd Mission School was the only federally-funded school for Native Americans in Tennessee, established two years before Hamilton County was founded and 21 years before the Indian Removal Act spelled its end, according to the federal report and historical accounts and records.