Stealing Little Moon, page 10
A letter written in 1952 shows the lack of care for a child’s safety. It is written by the Tekakwitha Indian Mission administrator to a couple in South Dakota. The administrator thanks the couple for their “donation of 10.00 for my little Indians.” For that price, the administrator will “send a little boy of six or older, or a little girl, whatever you prefer.” It ends with the chilling words, “I am not making any inquiries about you because it takes a good person to make an offer as you did.” Many such “good” people on the surface turned out to be far from that.
A thank-you note from Father John Pohlen for the $10 donation for the adoption of Dennis Isaac Seely by a couple in Illiniois.
Punishments passed from generation to generation. Children who had learned abusive ways at boarding school used them on their own children, as happened with John Campbell, Teri Gobin, and Denise K. Lajimodiere. Denise never attended a boarding school, but she remembers her mother using the same discipline that matrons used. If Denise and her sister were disobedient, her mother would send them to kneel in a corner as punishment. Denise was thankful that she never had to kneel on a broomstick, the punishment for so many children. Her father’s discipline was harsher. He would whip them with his belt. During her research on American Indian boarding schools and interviewing survivors, Denise came to understand why her parents parented her and her siblings the way they did. It’s because they had learned how from the unkind and often vicious nuns, priests, and other administrators who “parented” them. This gut-wrenching pattern was handed down through generations in countless American Indian families.
As with other improvements to boarding schools, the Meriam Report and John Collier’s tenure in the Bureau of Indian Affairs led to many schools being reprimanded or closed for harmful behavior toward children. Such treatment persisted as other schools remained open until 1980. For years, many survivors kept their stories locked away, deep inside themselves. They had been told they were worthless. They were dirty. They could not be educated. They felt shame. Even as they progressed and succeeded in life, those feelings remained. One day, the world would hear their stories.
At all schools everywhere, Indian students were indoctrinated in white ways. But, in a twist of fate, boarding schools helped revive and reinforce tribes. By bringing together children of many Indian Nations, the schools promoted cultural sharing that might not otherwise have happened. Children of strong tribal traditions willingly shared with children whose tribes had been driven to the edge of existence. Gradually, those endangered cultures were restored and strengthened. A Pan-Indian culture of solidarity and sharing developed across the nation. Today’s intertribal powwows are an example of that culture. They underscore the power of working together, while remaining unique.
Children everywhere found ways to honor and share their cultures, weaving their practices quietly into the white routine. Sometimes they even had fun. At South Dakota’s Holy Rosary Mission School in Pine Ridge, a group of Lakota girls collected discarded scraps of material from the sewing room and food and boxes from the kitchen. During playtime, they retreated to a corner of the playground and set up doll camps, with two-feet-tall tepees of sticks and muslin, wagons made of cereal boxes, and dolls with beaded eyes and hair cut from their own. A tiny dog and horse molded from discarded gumbo soup and dried in the sun would watch over the camp. Such Native-inspired behavior might have been squelched. But the town residents enjoyed watching through the fences, praising the school for the well-behaved and creative children they had “trained” so successfully. Children at Rainy Mountain Boarding School used their Native skills to snare a menagerie of possums and raccoons for a circus. Gathering materials from trash heaps, they fashioned drums and other musical instruments and a “sculpture” of a buffalo. Then they performed acrobatics and sideshows to amuse the teachers, demonstrating the athletics and other skills they’d learned.
Francis La Flesche of the Omaha Nation looked up to a band of boys called the Big Seven at Presbyterian Mission School in Bellevue, Nebraska, in the 1870s. They quietly but firmly guarded their heritage. One day a group of white visitors asked the boys if they knew any “Indian songs.” After a moment, one of the Big Seven belted out a few chords of a tribal victory song. Then the entire student body joined in with such force and emotion that the visitors went slack-jawed. The boys were secretly proud. After that, they had to attend daily classes to learn “civilized” white hymns and ballads. But, Francis recalled, for one brief moment they had the “thrill of connecting with the deep cultural stirrings” of their Omaha tradition. Francis La Flesche became a keeper of the Omaha tradition. In 1879, the Smithsonian Institution founded its Bureau of American Ethnology to hold the stories of all American Indians. Francis had become an anthropologist and was named the first American Indian staff member. His book, The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe, published in 1900, tells some hilarious, and tragically true, stories of his boarding school days.
At night in the dark dormitories, after matrons were fast asleep, the children would come alive. They’d plan pranks or ways to make it home for a tribal dance, or ways to leave forever. At Chilocco, they’d sneak to the woods to roast corn over campfires or hold all-night stomp dances. Inside the dorm, stories would keep children talking through the night. One Mescalero Apache boy from New Mexico recalled telling tales of the mythical troublemaker Coyote. Listeners “would break out laughing” at the end. Girls at Phoenix, in Arizona, learned to mimic the matrons they detested most. One they nicknamed Ho’ok after the legendary Pima witch. The imitator strung nails together to sound like jingling keys. Walking among the beds at night she’d wheeze in a nasally voice, “Girls! Girls!” Little ones screeched and scattered. The night ended in giggles.
Most important, children found ways to keep the language. It was their heritage, and it was sacred. At Rainy Mountain, two young students were able to pass love letters back and forth in Kiowa. To escape punishment if they were caught using their own language, they used the white man’s alphabet to spell out Kiowa phrases. The words did not make sense in English, but that didn’t matter. They had followed the rules. Those students later married. The love letters of Parker McKenzie and Nettie Odelty became the basis for the Kiowa written language today. Rainy Mountain Boarding School now lies in ruins, but the sacred mountain Sepyalda still towers silently above the rubble, perhaps a sign that the Kiowa heritage has outlived the white man’s influence.
In my grandmother’s and mother’s time at Chilocco, the students would complain about not getting enough to eat, especially the young boys. My brother Mike told me the small boys learned to spit in their milk so the big boys wouldn’t take it from them. Parish Williams, whom I called uncle, graduated from Chilocco in 1932. He once told me they would get so hungry that they would sneak out at night and go down to the creek. There they would cut long, straight willow limbs and sharpen one end. They would make their way to the root cellars below the storage space for the agricultural equipment. These root cellars were cut into the earth, lined with concrete, then covered with more earth. Only the door was exposed. Half a dozen of these caves stood side by side, in a row. Each contained a different kind of crop to keep warm in winter and cool in the summer. Before refrigeration, root cellars were how people stored food. It was the apples the boys wanted.
The doors were made of thick solid wood and were always locked. But all the doors had windows covered with metal bars. Guiding their long willow spears between those bars, the boys could spear apples. They would poke one apple at a time and bring it out through the window. They would gather as many apples as they could, then they’d make off to a secret place to enjoy them. Once the boys got their fill of apples, the remaining ones made great items to trade with the other boys. You didn’t need money. With apples you could buy someone’s time to shine your shoes, clean your room, and do other mundane tasks. As for a girl who wanted an apple, a boy might trade one for the girl’s company on a kind of “date.” It was called night-hawking. A boy would coordinate a rendezvous with a young lady to meet in a secret place. They’d spend the evening talking and hanging out. Many future marriages came out of night-hawking.
HUNGRY
Students at Indian boarding schools were always hungry. It did not help that they had to adjust to white man’s food. Even if they would eat it, there was never enough. The US government regulations in the Department of the Interior’s 1890 report read that “Good and healthful provisions must be supplied in abundance; and they must be well cooked …” But that was far from the reality.
One student at Chamberlain Indian School recalled breakfast. A box of cereal was set on the table and passed around. If you were the last to get it, nothing was left. The same went for the pitcher of milk. In other schools, food was set in the center of the table and the biggest students grabbed it first, leaving nothing for the younger, slower students. “I learned very quickly, if you wanted to eat you had to be fast,” wrote Curtis T. Carr, a student at Chilocco. Curtis finally discovered that he could be a waiter. With the other boys who waited dinner tables, he went early to the cafeteria. He was given dinner before anyone else. One little boy at Chilocco was simply helped by two older boys who felt sorry for him. The big boys stole bread from the bakery and honey from the beehives to feed him. Sadly, stealing was the solution for many starving kids. But being caught meant suffering the consequences. When Dennis Decoteau was a student at Wahpeton School in North Dakota, like many others, he was always hungry. One day he took a bottle of cherries from the cafeteria. The next thing he knew, he was kneeling on a broomstick. Then a priest ordered him to pull down his pants, and the priest beat him with a fiberglass fishing rod.
As we’ve seen, some positive changes started to take place at the boarding schools under John Collier’s direction at the IBA and the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act. By the time my elder sister Donna Jones began school at Chilocco in 1953, she could take advantage of those many positive changes. She majored in two vocational courses: journalism and home economics. Like our grandmother and mother before her, after she graduated in 1957 she got a job at Chilocco as an employee. Donna said Grandmother Elizabeth was her primary influence in attending Chilocco. But she also had another role model: Aunt Otilia, Velma’s younger sister. Known as Tillie to her friends and family, she had excelled at Chilocco and later served as a Bureau of Indian Affairs executive assistant at the school until it closed. Thanks especially to Collier’s IRA, by that time it was not forced attendance. Indian children of grade school or high school age went to Chilocco because they wanted to go. Many wanted to leave unhappy homes. Most went for the education they would receive. In reality, Chilocco lagged behind non-Indian public schools in academic education. But its vocational training meant students could get real employment after they graduated.
Otilia “Tillie” Hernandez during her Chilocco years.
The switch to vocational training was an important one made by L. E. Correll, who became superintendent of the school during Donna’s time there. While Correll supported new opportunities and the return of heritage for students, he had disagreed with the Meriam Report’s outlook on academic versus vocational courses. A graduate of Oklahoma State University, a school that focused on agricultural training, Correll saw the benefit of teaching students hands-on skills for finding good jobs. During his administration he instituted no fewer than forty-five vocational courses in agricultural training alone. That was somewhat of a record among the Indian schools. Every student who knew Correll had only good things to say about him. It was said that he knew each student by their name, even when the school enrollment reached one thousand. He made himself accessible to the students. He honestly wanted to know what they thought about their education. Even more, he stopped the harsh punishments. My sister had witnessed both periods, with and without the punishments. She said the school was much better without them. During this time, our aunt Tillie was there as well, working as an executive assistant. She set an example for young women, like her niece Donna, to strive for success and independence.
L. E. Correll.
But my sister never had trouble at Chilocco. She followed the rules and she was bright. She earned straight A’s the entire time. Even after she graduated and took a job at the school, she continued studying, taking advantage of the rich curriculum. Donna worked for Correll in his office. It was a job she really enjoyed—and she was paid for it! It seems obvious to expect to get paid for work, but it was the first job at Chilocco for which a student was paid. Correll soon instituted salaries for all the working students, a new experience for them. Donna was able to buy clothing for the office and for special occasions. And she saved money for her future. She loved studying current events in her journalism classes as well as interviewing people and learning about their lives. But girls were never encouraged to pursue careers such as journalism. It was home economics she had to take more seriously.
It was typical that Chilocco would prepare the young girls for a married life after school, as did nearly all schools across America during this time. Donna was expected to make use of homemaking skills as a wife and mother. Home economics classes included sewing, cooking, baking, entertaining, and health. At one point, Donna had a home ec course called Cottage Living. It was an all-inclusive course on living as a wife and mother after graduation. On one part of the campus was a group of small houses. The female students would be assigned to a cottage, then they’d set it up as a home. They’d even live there for a few weeks. Some Chilocco employees would bring their children for the girls to take care of during the day. Instructors would arrive in the morning and teach them to cook, clean, and care for the little ones. The lessons served Donna well. She married soon after she left Chilocco, and she raised a family. Later, she used her journalism training and became a poet as well as an artist in the Ponca community.
Donna Jones during her Chilocco years.
Although Donna’s story at Chilocco is a personal success story, in other ways it is sad for the bigger Ponca story. It shows that the boarding school program worked just as the government intended. Donna and her Chilocco community had learned to follow white ways. They spoke primarily English. Still, Donna never lost the strength of her Ponca spirit. She continued passing down Ponca stories to her children. She remained deeply committed to her family and her community. Until she passed away in 2023, she remained a respected member of the Ponca tribe, bringing knowledge and wisdom to us all.
STRONG WOMEN
“A woman’s place is in the home” was the rule in white American society in the early 1900s. White women were seen as delicate flowers who needed stronger people to make a living for them. Those people included men, as well as African American and American Indian women. A male speaker at the 1893 National Congress of Mothers announced that these “other” women could endure “effort, exposure, and hardship.” American Indian boarding schools bought into that idea. They prepared female students to be servants who could work in white people’s homes and respect their authority. If a white girl wanted to break the mold, she could go to school to become a teacher, nurse, or businesswoman. An American Indian girl had a narrower choice. Her school was in the laundry room, the kitchen, and the sewing room. Most female graduates later used their skills to raise families or to work as domestic help. Others sought greater opportunity.
In the late 1800s, Susan La Flesche Picotte’s father enrolled her in the white-run Quaker mission school on her Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, and she later taught there. A natural healer, she often nursed people back to health, including a white anthropologist working with her tribe named Alice Fletcher. Alice encouraged Susan to attend medical school, and Susan went east to Virginia’s Hampton Institute and the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Susan soon became the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree. On her reservation she later opened the first Native American hospital without government help. Named Walthill Hospital, it is known today as Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital.
Later, my own mother became a brilliant entrepreneur who started a restaurant and used her language skills to help her Ponca community. My sister Donna was a successful artist whose paintings have been exhibited country-wide. Still later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Cherokee member Wilma Mankiller continued opening doors for Native women. As a young girl, she and her family lived through a traumatic government relocation from Oklahoma to San Francisco. There, Wilma struggled in a local white high school. But she followed her parents’ advice to never let anyone define her, that she must define herself. Wilma became an activist for her people and rose to become the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. For her extraordinary advancements in education, jobs, and health care for her people, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. These women and others like them inspire young American Indian women today to reach for the stars.
Velma Pensoneau Jones (left) with longtime friend Wilma Mankiller (right).
While Donna’s story is mostly a happy one, her road was not completely smooth. As with most other Indian families, situations at home made them sad or worried or sent them into depression. Some students had parents who were alcoholics or living in extreme poverty. Some had younger siblings who lived with abusive relatives. The family harmony that had existed among tribes for thousands of years was shattered within a century as white people stole our lands and pushed us from our homes. American history books praise the opportunities the West offered white pioneers. But the books don’t tell how our Indian families and communities were destroyed. We no longer had control over our lives or our futures or the pride of making our living from the bounty of nature. We were crowded into small reservations, pushed into white men’s houses and schools. We were told to live by white men’s rules. We were forced to work in their factories and businesses. The result was crushing. We could not be ourselves. We could not flourish. Reservations became areas of profound poverty. Many lost their sense of purpose. Tempers were short. Arguments were frequent. Young people with bright futures lost their way. Many died of illness or from fighting among themselves. Every household felt it. Our household felt the loss of our brother Warren Jones.
