A look back at the life and death of Vermont's Potawatomi medical students

A Vermont mystery emerged from a federal investigation last year of Indian boarding schools in the United States. Buried deep in the report is a brief mention of Castleton Academy, saying only the commissioner of Indian affairs noted in 1828, 1830 and 1831 that the school had been contracted for "Indian pupils" through the federal "Civilization Fund."

What was this about? Did Vermont once have an Indian boarding school in Castleton, forgotten in the mists of time? The implications were foreboding, given the track record of other Indian boarding schools in the United States, where hundreds of Indian children, stripped of their cultural identities, died from disease and abuse.

The Department of Interior report makes clear the real goal of the Indian boarding schools was a massive land grab. The report confirms "the United States directly targeted American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Children in the pursuit of a policy of cultural assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession."

A Burlington Free Press investigation found no historical evidence of an Indian boarding school in Vermont, but we did identify the Indian pupils referenced in the federal report. They were two Potawatomi boys named Saswa and Conauda, 17 years old and 15 years old respectively, who were sent to Vermont by Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary who established Carey Mission among the Potawatomi in 1822 on the St. Joseph River, near present-day Niles, Michigan.

McCoy wanted the boys to attend Castleton Medical College, the first private medical school in the nation. After the boys were trained as doctors, he wanted them to return to practice among the Potawatomi in the Great Lakes region.

The Free Press spent six months searching for historical documents that would reveal the fates of Saswa and Conauda. Along the way, we also gained much more insight into the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, who sent them to Vermont, as well as the bigger picture of the dispossession of the Potawatomi, who lost millions of acres of land across the Midwest and upper Midwest to white encroachment.

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This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Potawatomi medical students met a fatal end at Castleton school