“A Very Serious and Perplexing Epidemic of Grippe”: The Influenza of 1918 at the Haskell Institute

Abstract:In the spring of 1918, students at the Haskell Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Lawrence, Kansas, began falling victim to a mysterious illness. Although disease outbreaks were common at the overcrowded and underfunded Indian school, this year was different: within a few months, more than a third of the student body was hospitalized, and at least seventeen students died. The students suffered from a virulent new strain of influenza, one that traveled the globe in the lungs of soldiers and civilians dislocated by the First World War and killed approximately fifty million people. This article traces the influenza pandemic at the Haskell Institute and examines its consequences for students, their families, and school officials. The story of the outbreak at Haskell provides a window into Indian boarding schools during the early twentieth century and demonstrates how Indian Office officials often prioritized the survival of their institutions over the well-being of the people they supposedly served. Students and their families did not passively accept the authority of federal officials, however. Instead, they made their own choices, even under the most difficult circumstances.