Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series on “forgotten” ancestors who may not be fully recognized today for their achievements.
Raymond Wilson
Special to ICT
A Native activist, educator, minister and author, Henry Roe Cloud, Ho-Chunk, spent his lifetime working for better educational opportunities for Indigenous people.
He held prominent positions in the Office of Indian Affairs and the Brookings Institution, and became superintendent of Haskell Institute in Kansas, which later became Haskell Indian Nations University.
Cloud was serving as regional representative to the Grande Ronde and Siletz Indian agencies in Oregon when he died of a heart attack in 1950 at age 65.
He was born on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska on Dec. 28, 1884. His Winnebago parents named him Wo-Na-Xi-Lay-Hunka, meaning War Chief.
At age seven, he attended a government school in Genoa, Nebraska, and later another school in Macy, Nebraska, where he was given the name Henry Cloud and adopted Christianity.
In 1897, Cloud attended Santee Normal School in Nebraska, training to become a blacksmith and printer, and graduating in 1902. He next attended Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts, on a work/study program, played on the baseball and football teams, and graduated as class salutatorian in 1906.
Cloud was accepted as the first Native to attend Yale University in 1906, and became acquainted with Reverend Walter C. and Mary Roe. The couple, who had lost their son, were deeply impressed with Cloud, and later the Roes and Cloud informally adopted each other. He then became Henry Roe Cloud.
At Yale, Cloud obtained his bachelor’s degree in psychology and philosophy in 1910 and later his master’s degree in anthropology in 1914. A popular student at the university, his lectures and writing stressed that the teaching of Native students should not focus only on vocational courses but instead provide a well-rounded curriculum so Natives could achieve success in the dominant culture.
From 1910-1911, he took sociology courses at Oberlin College in Ohio. At Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, he earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1913. In 1932, Cloud received a doctorate of divinity from Emporia College in Kansas.
Cloud’s work as a Native activist began while he was still a student at Yale. He supported the efforts to release the Apaches at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, who had fought with Geronimo, and had a meeting with the Apache leader. He attended and spoke at the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, and became one of the founders of the Society of American Indians, serving as an officer or member of different committees for several years. He continued to stress the need for educational reforms to help Natives compete in the broader society; criticized General Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, for his views on Native education; and was among those Society of American Indians members who opposed peyote.
In 1915, Cloud founded the Roe Indian Institute as a college preparatory for Native males in Wichita, Kansas. In 1916, he married Elizabeth Bender Cloud, Ojibwe, a prominent educator and reformer who played a major role at the school. Renamed the American Indian Institute in 1921, the school began admitting Native females in 1932, but closed in 1939 because of financial difficulties.
Cloud agreed to serve on the federal Committee of One Hundred, created in 1923, to study the so-called “Indian Problem” and make recommendations. Because little action was taken on the needs for reform, the Brookings Institution, at the request of the federal government, agreed to do a more exhaustive study of Native conditions in 1926.
Lewis Meriam oversaw the study. His staff included Cloud as the only Native member, and they visited reservations, agencies, and Native communities for several months. They issued a report in 1928, officially called “The Problem of Indian Administration,” but popularly known as the Meriam Report. It addressed the urgent need to improve Native conditions. Cloud was one of the main authors of the report, which included such educational reforms as federal assistance to Native students, more emphasis on the education of Native females, and a recommendation that the Bureau of Indian Affairs hire Native graduates.
The Hoover Administration began implementing some of those reforms in 1929. The BIA hired Cloud in 1931, and in 1933, he became superintendent of Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, which was then the largest BIA high school in the United States. His new school policies included offering Native history and art courses, giving Native names to school buildings, encouraging former Haskell students to enroll in courses at the University of Kansas, and stressing that Haskell students be proud of their heritage.
Cloud was an ardent supporter of the Indian New Deal and Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier, and worked hard to convince Native nations to accept the new legislation. In 1935, The Indian Council Fire presented Cloud with its third Distinguished Indian Award for his many contributions to Native reforms. Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Santee author, received the first award, and Maria Martinez, a Pueblo potter, received the second.
For the remainder of his life Cloud, worked for the BIA, serving as supervisor of Indian education, as superintendent of the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon and then the Grande Ronde and Siletz Reservation. He supported Native fishing rights and helped secure federal funds owed to his people.
His numerous writings include “Henry Cloud and Tennent Church,” in The Word Carrier, May-June, 1905 edition; “Missions to the American Indians,” The Yale Courant, 1909; “Some Social and Economic Aspects of the Reservation,” The Quarterly Journal of The Society of American Indians, April-June 1913; “From Wigwam to Pulpit,” Missionary Review of the World, May 1915; “New Work for Indian Young People,” Women and Missions 4, September 1927; “Haskell and Her New Frontiers,” The Indian Leader 37, June 1934; and “Conditions Among the Indians,” Women and Missions 12, April 1935.
He died from a heart attack on Feb. 9, 1950. Yale University celebrated the centennial anniversary of his graduation in 2010 and created a book series, The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity, in his honor.
*Correction: Henry Roe Cloud was the first Native American to attend Yale University. Native Hawaian Noa Webster Aluli was the first Native person to attend Yale. Aluli, born Dec. 1, 1880, to John Thomas and Sara I. (Kepokai) Aluli in Wailuku, Maui, completed his L.L.M at Yale Law School in 1905.
Sources: Yale University Archives; Renya K. Ramirez, Standing Up to Colonial Power: The Lives of Henry Roe and Elizabeth Bender Cloud (2018); Joel Pfister, The Yale Man: The Education of Henry Roe Cloud, (2009); and David W. Messer, Henry Roe Cloud: A Biography, (2010).