Though the Dutton’s storyline is certainly filled with violence, the so-called Indian Schools in 1923 make for the show’s most harrowing scenes, and they are made all the more horrific by being based in fact.

These scenes depict the physical and emotional abuse inside a Catholic boarding school for Indigenous American youth in Montana.

They focus on Teonna who is beaten and brutalized for forgetting small details in her lessons, for speaking her Native language, and seemingly any excuse Sister

Mary can think of for attempting to dehumanize her. Teonna fights back against her oppressors, eliciting more violent reaction from those running what was referred to as Indian Schools at the time.

Unfortunately, 1923 paints a fairly historically accurate picture of what actually transpired inside these boarding schools. These horrific institutions were founded by Western settlers specifically to attempt to forcibly assimilate Indigenous communities displaced by the Westward Expansion of America. Indeed, the cast and characters of 1923 live within the darkest Yellowstone story yet, set in a time when cases of abuse in Catholic boarding schools were rampant across the United States as well as in Canada. The 1923 scenes focusing on this are disturbing but an important part of the overall story.

Father Renaud and Sister Mary’s horrible treatment of Teonna is based on historical accounts of so-called “American Indian boarding schools,” which first gained popularity in the mid-1800s. Only one of these schools was founded in Montana – the Fort Shaw Indian School. However, almost 200 more sprang up across almost 30 American states since the 1840s, with a higher concentration in states like Oklahoma, Minnesota, and South Dakota.

Their goal was to attempt to assimilate Indigenous youth into white Western culture by erasing their language and cultural identity, baptizing them into Christianity, and replacing their tribal names. This of course paved the way for the inhumane treatment of Indigenous American children across different generations. As explained by the actor who plays Sister Mary, Jennifer Ehle, in her 1923 Screen Rant interview, “Sister Mary is a person who believes, as the people who were running these residential schools actually did believe, that you had to ‘kill the Indian to save the man.’ You had to force assimilation; you had to remove all cultural identity from these children who had been removed forcibly from their families and were living in isolation.”

Though most of these boarding schools have either been closed or heavily reformed since the late 20th century, the culture of abuse fostered by these institutions has left permanent scars in the history of America’s Indigenous nations. While the scenes of abuse in 1923 are jarring, Aminah Nieves who plays Teonna says that it’s a tale that needs to be tackled: “Yeah, it’s hard. But being indigenous, it’s our duty to tell our stories and to tell them as strongly, quickly, and powerfully as we can. It’s what we’re born into, and we’re storytellers from the jump. You know what I’m saying? Continuing to tell our story as honestly as we can is very important.”

Is 1923 Based On A True Story?

1923 is mainly about how the Duttons carried the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch through Montana’s most depressed and harshest era, and though it’s entirely fictional, the setting borrows a lot from real American history. Apart from how children like Teonna were abused by nuns and priests in boarding schools, this includes the growth of ranching in Montana amid the Great Depression and the era of Prohibition, and even the effects of the Great War. Set during a crazy time when the federal government openly funded boarding schools to erase entire Indigenous cultures, season 2 of 1923 is bound to get even darker as the prequel dives even deeper into America’s history in the 1920s.

The cruel establishments known as the Indian Schools in 1923 are not only a haunting aspect of that series but also an important piece of context for the original Yellowstone series. Since the first episode of Yellowstone, Thomas Rainwater has been one of the main antagonists of John Dutton. He wants the Yellowstone ranch and is not shy about sharing his contempt for any of the white people who fight over the land that he maintains belongs to his people. Given that John Dutton is the protagonist, it is easy to see Thomas as a villain in the series, but it may be that he is closer to being the true hero of Yellowstone.