W. Dirk Raat - Lost Worlds of 1863

All of these teaching techniques were codified in 1901 with the publication by the superintendent of Indian schools the Uniform Course of Study for the Indian Schools of the United States , a treatise that assumed Indian children were “too dull” to excel intellectually and could only be trained to be shoemakers or sewers of domestic clothing. The goal of the federal government was to create a docile, regimented group of Indians who would follow orders. 18

Repression came in a variety of ways. If a student spoke his native tongue, or refused to adopt “civilized” English names, he or she would have their mouth washed out with “a bar of yellow soap” or get a “kerosene shampoo” and receive corporal punishment. 19Homesick children would often become “runaways,” either attempting to go home, or more often, finding solitude in the empty spaces that could be found within the educational compound. Some girls even held peyote meetings in their dorm rooms. Again, if discovered these students would be hand delivered to the Guardhouse for punishment, or if a boy, would have to run the “belt line.” Sadistic dorm advisers would misuse their authority and inflict cruel punishment on their charges. 20

As in many other darker phases of life in the American West, rape and sexual abuse at the off-reservation boarding school was a common event. Students were intimidated by sexual predators. One student said that “After a nine-year-old girl was raped in her dormitory bed during the night, we girls would be so scared that we would jump into each other’s bed as soon as the lights went out.” She continued to note that “When we were older, we girls anguished each time we entered the classroom of a certain male teacher who stalked and molested girls.” 21

When the youngsters were given work assignments outside of the campus it was very likely that they would often have to confront unwanted sexual advances and molestation. 22While they might learn a useful vocational trade, they would also be a form of cheap labor and sexual and non-sexual entertainment for outsiders.

Another type of repression came from the missionaries and the Indian agents, as well as the teachers at the schools. This was the suppression of native religion and its replacement with Protestant, and sometimes Catholic, creeds. The reservations and schools were aided in this by the Indian Offenses Act of 1883. This bill forbade the practice of traditional rites such as praying with the pipe, as well as ceremonies such as vision quests, sweat lodge rituals, and the sun dance. Intended to civilize the Indians, the act compelled the Indians “to desist from the savage and barbarous practices that are calculated to bring them in savagery.” 23In other words, the assimilation policy of the United States as practiced in the boarding schools was to replace “paganism” with Christian civilization—the solution to the Indian problem.

But the ultimate form of repression was contagious diseases, especially tuberculosis, trachoma, measles, and influenza. The crowded conditions at the boarding schools without disinfectants and where hand towels, drinking cups, schoolbooks, and musical instrument mouthpieces passed freely among school children presented particular problems. As the Commissioner of Indian Affairs noted in 1916, after observing the brutal fact that Indian children in the boarding schools were being ravaged by disease, “We can not solve the Indian problem without Indians.” 24Cemeteries at Carlisle and elsewhere testified to the sorrowful outcomes for many at the boarding schools. As Lawrence Webster, a Suquamish student at Tulalip Indian School in Puget Sound said in 1908, “Death was the only way you could get home … . It had to be a sickness or death before they’d let you out of there very long.” 25

In the final analysis assimilation at best was incomplete. Some scholars would prefer the word “integration” to “assimilation” in that, certain cultural traits of the majority culture, e.g., English language or the sport of football, were added to the traditional characteristics of the minority or Indian culture. 26In seeking out their “private” spaces, many students spoke their native language and participated in tribal rituals, dances, and ceremonies. Sometimes these activities were disguised from the authorities by being performed at times that were American holidays or memorial occasions. If a student were thinking of his or her family or a traditional tribal event his or her thoughts would be formed in the native languages. Likewise, if the idea was part and parcel of the majority culture the speech would be in English.

Recent studies of the boarding school experience have demonstrated that in the early twentieth century Hopi students at the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California “turned the power” so as to create vocational and cultural opportunities for themselves from programs originally designed to destroy their identity. Through these ways the vanishing Indian refused to vanish, and by 1928 the Boarding School philosophy had changed to face the new realities of a people with a culture that would not die. Teachers such as Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School began to promote indigenous art, and the off-reservation Indian boarding school system eventually witnessed their students “turn the power” to make the schools work for themselves and their communities. 27

By way of conclusion a final case study should be examined. This is the example of Sarah Winnemucca (Thocmetony) and her attempts at Indian education. After having served as a teacher at the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation outsides of Reno, Nevada, Sarah in the spring of 1885 began to think about establishing her own Indian school. Her “model school” was initially supported with finances from Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, the Boston philanthropist who was a pioneer in the kindergarten movement. With financial help from Peabody and land available on her brother Natches’s ranch in Lovelock, east of Pyramid Lake and southwest of the current city of Winnemucca, Sarah established her school for “all the Paiute children in the neighborhood.” By the summer of 1886 her school, called the “Peabody Institute,” was flourishing. 28

The major difference between Sarah’s school and the reservation and off-reservation schools at the time was that it was an institution established by Paiutes for Paiutes. It was not simply a passive receptor of white values and prejudices. For example, the native language was used to learn to speak English, and then the Numic speech aided in learning how to read and write English. Unlike the government schools, students were not whipped for speaking their native tongue. No effort was made to separate the children from their parents. In fact, students were urged to use their language skills, arithmetic, and industrial training to educate their parents. By 1887 over 400 children had applied to Sarah’s boarding school. The school appeared to be thriving. 29

However, by late summer 1886 the “model school” was beginning to encounter financial problems. The charitable contributions from Boston benefactors started to dry up. Then Natches faced several monetary crises from mortgage costs to dishonest ranch hands. 30

Before closing her door for the last time in the summer of 1889, Sarah made appeals for financial support from both her Boston friends and the US government. Although the government had created “contract” schools with missionaries on and off the reservation, it was unwilling to fund any school “for Indians run by Indians.” The “model school” idea died, and Paiute children would have to wait another 38 years before they could enter the public schools. 31

After her school closed Sarah eventually went to Henry’s Lake in Idaho to live with her younger sister Elma, or as the locals called her, “Pokey.” Elma was nicknamed “Pokey” because she was married to John Smith, the name of the white man who befriended Pocahontas during the founding of Virginia. The nickname was for some a term of endearment, but for most Idaho whites it was a reminder for Elma of her “Indianness,” that is her inferiority. In any case, Sarah, who appeared in good health, suddenly died on October 16, 1891, at the approximate age of 47. Although a common understanding is that she died of tuberculosis, it is more likely she died from stomach poisoning, either accidental or as a result of homicide. If not accidental the likely perpetrator was her sister Elma who apparently was jealous of her older sister. Elma died in 1922. The two were buried in unmarked graves; after all they were only “housekeeper” squaws unworthy of Christian burials (see Figure 2.7). 32