Timeline for abuse of tens of thousands of First Nation children in Roman Catholic Industrial Schools in Canada

From the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-silence/timeline/

Editors’ Note: This timeline contains descriptions of sexual abuse.

In 1867, the United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. U.S. Catholic missionaries begin pouring into the new state.

The missionaries arrive in St. Michael and build their first mission in 1899. A church is built a year later. The village is in a remote section of Alaska, almost 200 miles from the Arctic Circle, and is not accessible by roads.

In the early 1900s, an influenza and measles epidemic known as the “Great Sickness” wipes out more than 60 percent of Alaska’s Native population. After the epidemic, Jesuits make headway in converting Alaska Natives.