American Indians at Chicago's Columbian Exposition

In contrast to this evolutionary narrative, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (supported missionaries and other Christian humanitarian reformers) consciously projected images of Native American people who were well on their way to productive citizenship.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs Building at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition

In other words, the BIA wanted to show Indians acting like white people.

The U.S. Government supported the creation of an exhibit of a model Indian school—complete with Native American students from boarding schools in Pennsylvania and Kansas (some of whom had been taken by force from their parents by agents of the BIA).

These students were the government’s “show Indians”—and they starred in a narrative of assimilation that would eventually lead toward programs of relocation and termination.

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	Department of Anthropology
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