Mysterious death of a chief’s daughter in Oregon illustrates challenges of Native boarding school...

An old sepia-toned photo shows 11 Native American children in traditional dress, staring into a camera, as they paused near the end of a 400-mile journey across the Northwest.

Researchers say the picture was taken in July 1881 in Portland, as the children were being taken from Eastern Washington to Forest Grove, Oregon, to attend one of the U.S. government’s first Indian boarding schools.

By the time they posed for a second photo, the following March, their hair and clothes looked different. And one of them — a tall girl standing in the back of the first photo — was missing.