The Tulalip Tribes are a confederation of several Coast Salish peoples including the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, Stillaguamish, and other allied tribes and bands. In the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, these groups ceded most of their land to the United States and reserved the Tulalip Indian Reservation for their permanent homeland. They also reserved rights for hunting, gathering, and fishing at all usual and accustomed places. The name Tulalip comes from the Coast Salish word "dxwlilap," meaning "small-mouth bay."

Catholic missionaries opened a boarding school on the Tulalip reservation in 1857. After a few years, the school began receiving funding from the federal government and in 1902 the government fully took over the school. That year, the original school buildings burned down, and a new school reopened in 1905. The school had a capacity of 200 students, who were as young as six. The photographer Ferdinand Brady had a government contract in the 1910s to photograph the people and activities around the Tulalip Indian School. The Tulalip school was one of many boarding schools for Indigenous children across the US. These schools were an attempt to "civilize" Indigenous peoples by forcing their children to assimilate to white-dominated Western society. One of the primary ways the schools undertook this goal was forcing students to speak English exclusively. Severe punishment, including physical punishment, was imposed when students spoke their native languages or otherwise resisted school authorities.

Every student at the boarding school spent at least half of his or her day working in some part of the operation. Boys rotated about every six weeks between jobs as carpenters, engineers, farmers or dairymen; girls were assigned to sewing, darning, laundry and kitchen work. As part of their regular work assignment, some of the young men chopped, split, and stacked hundreds of cords of wood to feed the steam boilers which supplied heat and power to the school buildings. Shown in this photo are Sebastian Williams (second from left), Woody Loughrey (fifth from left), and Clarence Shelton (third from right).

Caption on image: "Engineer boys T.I.S."

Caption information source: "History," Tulalip Tribes, retrieved from https://www.tulaliptribes-nsn.gov/WhoWeAre/History.
Caption information source: "Assimilation Through Education: Indian Boarding Schools in the Pacific Northwest," by Carolyn Marr, retrieved from https://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/marr.html.