Albert H. Kneale papers

Collection

Identifier: ACCN 2653

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Albert H. Kneale papers (1880-1943) consist of correspondence, reports, and photos. Noteworthy items include reports submitted to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and an Indian Rights Association letter to President Franklin Roosevelt.

Dates

1880-1943

Creator

Kneale, Albert H., 1872-1954 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.

Conditions Governing Use

The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.

Biographical / Historical

Albert H. Kneale was born on 4 September 1872. After completing his third year as the principal of the Byron Center Union School in western New York, Kneale took a federal government civil service examination in 1899. The position which he sought was that of a Indian Affairs teacher. Subsequently, Kneale was appointed as a teacher on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation located in southwestern South Dakota. Within two years of residing in the Wounded Knee area, Kneale moved to central Oklahoma where he was employed at the Cheyenne and Arapaho boarding school.

At the beginning of 1903 Kneale was transferred to the Wind River, Wyoming boarding school where he was installed as the school's principal. Kneale, in early 1908, was moved to southern Montana as principal of the Crow reservation boarding school, a job which he held for six months. For the ensuing five years Kneale labored as the U.S. Indian Superintendent and Special Disbursing Agent on the Winnebago and Omaha reservations in eastern Nebraska.

An administrative promotion occurred in 1913 when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs assigned him to the position of Supervisor at Large which required Kneale to visit Native American reservations throughout the Bureau's territory. In the autumn of 1914 he was notified that his next assignment would be to administer to the Utes residing on a reservation in northeastern Utah. The Bureau then sent him to the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico where there was a Navajo reservation.

The final post to which Kneale was appointed at the end of 1929 was that of the superintendency of the Pima reservation situated in southern Arizona. After six years of residing on the Pima reservation, Kneale decided to retire from the governmental employment and in 1935 completed thirty-six years of service in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Albert H. Kneale died on 17 July 1954.

Kneale's professional career represents the efforts of the United States government to assimilate Indigenous youth into mainstream American culture by eradicating their people and culture.