Choctaw Academy

The Choctaw Academy was a federally subsidized American Indian boarding school started in 1818 in Scott County, Kentucky. Its initial purpose was to educate and assimilate Choctaw boys when the U.S. government was in a phase of being heavily involved with Native affairs. The early school, located on the property of U.S. Representative Richard Mentor Johnson, struggled with limited funding and quickly failed due to lack of funding. The academy picked up some movement through a Mississippi treaty where the Choctaw Nation set aside funds for education and the school was reopened around 1825. Chief Peter Pitchlynn and other leaders of the Choctaw had worked with U.S. Representative Richard Mentor Johnson (D-Kentucky) to request that part of the treaty money be used on schools.

The school is grouped with the Baptist evangelistic movement due to a small school opened by Thomas Henderson, a Baptist minister, which acted as such a place for Choctaw children. However, The Choctaw Academy eventually grew beyond that title and became a great education center for Indian children across many tribes. Later, the U.S. War Department took greater control of the school to make it better fit their needs of assimilating Natives, and a substantial three-story stone building was constructed to support growing enrollment and government involvement At its height and under new federal leadership, Rep. Johnson, the school took in over 100 students of many tribes outside of the Choctaw also including the Creek, Chickasaw, Miami, and Potawatomi.^[1]