History

Precious Blood School started its history as St. Boniface Indian School. St. Boniface Indian Industrial School was a Catholic Boarding school for Indian children. The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions and Heiress-turned-nun Mother Katharine Drexel founded the school in 1890, less than six decades after the end of the California Mission Era. Mother Katherine Drexel personally paid for the site and the school north of Banning, a site situated in the shadow of one sacred mountain and a view of another.

Every year, over one hundred students attended grades 1-8 at St. Boniface school. They learned reading, writing, Bible History, and basic arithmetic from the Sisters of St. Joseph, an order of teaching nuns who served missions throughout the Southwest. Priests at the school taught students the Catechism, and expected their charges to be confirmed Catholics upon graduating the school

The Superintendent-Priests who ran St. Boniface considered their work a continuation of the missionary work of Father Serra, and several themes present in the California Missions were also characteristic of St. Boniface. The Priests and teaching Nuns required students to attend Mass and Catechism, infused the students' lives with Catholic morality, and assigned every student a considerable workload to maintain the school. 

Father Florian Hahn, the first active Superintendent, was a dynamic Jesuit from Germany. He ran the St. Boniface school for over 23 years, fostering student activity in the school's band and offering spiritual guidance through the Christmas 1899 earthquake. He is still buried in the St. Boniface cemetery. 



The Priests ran St. Boniface as an Indian boarding school until 1952. However, by the 1930's, Franciscan Superintendent Father Gerard Brenekke admitted an increasing number of non-Indian children with a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. These new students were from broken homes, and in some cases ordered to St. Boniface by the courts. In addition to the new boarder makeup, the Franciscan priests increased their enrollment of day students due to the lack of a local parish school.