Flandreau Indian High School grew from a mission school established in 1872 by Presbyterian missionaries for Santee Sioux who had homesteaded near Flandreau, after the federal government appropriated $1,000 for the school. The first school was called Riggs Institute after the Rev. Mr. Alfred Riggs, a missionary teacher and friend of the Rev. Mr. John Williamson, who had led the Sioux to Flandreau. Bureau of Indian Affairs records show that on January 1, 1873, the Rev. Mr. P. A. Van Nuys was appointed teacher, and other early teachers included Hosea Locke and the Rev. Mr. John Eastman, an Indian minister of the First Presbyterian Church, erected in 1873 and still standing on Highway 13 north of Flandreau. In 1890 Congress appropriated $2,000 to buy 160 acres for an industrial school site near the village, and in 1891 the federal government purchased the land where the present school stands and established a boarding school for Indian youth. Some of the first buildings erected there remain in use. In 1895 the cost per pupil was $167 per year, or about 60 cents per day, and in 1930 it was $275 per year, or about $1.00 per day. At the time described, the federally supported school had more than twenty buildings and facilities, served 600 boarding students in a varied program, employed teachers certified by the South Dakota Department of Public Instruction, and held accreditation from the North Central Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges.