Brainpower & Brownbags “Discovering Annie Thomas Lillibridge – Her Journey from Acoma Pueblo to the South Dakota Prairie”

In January 1881, a Presbyterian missionary collected four Acoma Pueblo children to attend the new Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, PA.

Among them was eight year-old Annie, the speaker’s step-grandmother.  She was a model student at Carlisle and became an employee of the US Indian Service, but her short life ended in 1904 on the South Dakota prairie.

Dr. Lillibridge examines the conditions in New Mexico that resulted in her removal to Carlisle, and how the US government’s Indian assimilation policies influenced the course of her life.