page_title: Tomah, Wisconsin
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tomah, Wisconsin / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Downtown Tomah, looking south on Superior Avenue. City Hall and Public Safety Building are on the right. Two oldest banks are at the center.
context_page_description: Tomah is a city in Monroe County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 9,093 as of the 2010 census. The city is surrounded by the Town of Tomah and the Town of La Grange.
context_section_description: Tomah was founded by Robert E. Gillett in 1855 and incorporated as a city in 1883 but the charter was not issued until 1894. Tomah is named after Thomas Carron (ca. 1752–1817), a trader at Green Bay who had integrated into the Menominee tribe. The Menominees pronounced the name Tomah or Tomau and he became known as Chief Tomah. Tomah was adopted as the name for the settlement in Monroe County on the unsubstantiated belief that Chief Tomah had once held a tribal gathering in the area.
  In 1891, construction began in Tomah for a Native American residential school funded by the federal government. The Tomah Indian Industrial School opened in 1893 with six Ho-Chunk children as its first students and would become the most significant residential school in Wisconsin. The curriculum was designed to assimilate students into white American culture by replacing their indigenous education with Christian, English-language education. Children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to the school from as far away as North Dakota and Oklahoma. The school operated until 1941.
  
  Tomah has three landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places: the old Tomah Post Office at 903 Superior Avenue, the Tomah Public Library at 716 Superior Avenue, 
   and the Tomah Boy Scout Cabin at 415 E. Council St.
caption: Downtown Tomah, Wisconsin, looking south on Superior Avenue
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