What is the punishment for speaking Navajo at the Mission School?

The punishment of having one's mouth washed with soap for speaking Navajo at the Mission School is indicative of the harsh practices enforced to suppress the use of Native languages during the era of assimilation policies in the United States. These practices aimed to erase Indigenous identities and languages, and the implementation of such a severe punishment reflects the intent to instill compliance and discourage the use of native tongues in order to promote English as a dominant language.

In the context of the Mission School system, students were often punished harshly for using their native languages, as educators believed this would help them integrate into Euro-American culture more effectively. The act of washing out a child's mouth with soap serves as an extreme and physical manifestation of the schools' broader goals to control and assimilate Native American youth. This form of punishment exemplifies the traumatic experiences faced by many Native children during this period, conveying how seriously the authorities took the prohibition against speaking their native languages.