1. Uniformed girls at Shoshone Episcopal Girls School, ca. 1885-1895 (Beatrice Crofts Collection)

The pastoral quality of this photo, with little girls in white pinifores gathered together as though for protection, illustrates the idea of the mission as a place of safety and refuge. As opposed to the Government and larger, off-reservation boarding schools, both Roberts’ and St. Michael’s Mission, tried to give their young students a sense of home as well as an education. This was especially important to orphans who were taken in:

I was one of them Because I lost my mother when I was about four and a half or five…my uncles, Robert and Albert, came and got me and my brother and I was sent to the mission to go to school….I spent most of my time up there…guess to me it was a kind of second home. Whenever they, (Rev. and Mrs. Roberts) went, I’d go with them. (Vida Haukaas)

Vida Haukaas’s mother was Eastern Shoshone from Wind River but the family was living at Fort Hall when her mother died. The mission shut down shortly after Vida graduated.

2. School children at Church of the Redeemer, Wind River Agency, ca. 1885-1890 (Beatrice Crofts Collection)

 

 

 

 

3. Chapel at Sacajawea Cemetery, ca. 1920-1935 (Wind River Archives at CWC)

This one room cabin was the first Wind River residence of the Episcopalian missionary and teacher. The Rev. John Roberts. it originally doubled as a classroom for both Shoshone and Arapahoe children and served as the reservation’s earliest boarding school.

John Roberts, a Welshman educated at Oxford, England, left a ministry with the lepers on the Bahama Islands of the East Indies for work in the American west. Traveling by train from his first post, in the Colorado mines, to Rawlins and then by stage to Wind River, Roberts arrived at what was then called the Shoshone and Bannock Indian Agency on February 2, l883. The stage barely made it through the fierce blizzard which took the life of Maggie Sherlock of Atlantic City, a young student who froze to death while attempting to return to her boarding school in Utah.

At Wind River, one of Rev. Roberts first tasks was to establish, in cooperation with U. S. Indian Agent Dr. J. Irvin, a school for Shoshone and Arapahoe children so that they, unlike Maggie, would not have to travel far from home to receive an education. Before the school was completed, Rev. Roberts held classes in his log home:

While waiting for the first government boarding school to be built, the Indian school boys shared Mr. Robert’s cabin. The only furnishing was a carpet on the floor, well padded with straw. This made a fairly good bed. but the fact that the smaller boys had spent the early evening on the bank of Trout Creek hunting and catching skunks, was not conducive to a good night’s rest. (From the unpublished memoirs of Rev. Roberts’ daughter, Elinore Markley. Courtesy Beatrice Crofts, Lander)

4. Trout Creek School Building, Wind River Agency, ca. 1885-1890 (Beatrice Crofts Collection)

The school’s original abode building was enlarged until it could accommodate 86 children. The bars on the windows were initially put in to protect children and staff from possible attacks by hostile tribes as much as to insure that students stayed safely in at night. A new government school, which became known as “Gravy High,” was completed in 1892 at the location of the present Fort Washakie (day) School. The Trout Creek building was then used as an Agency office until it and many other Agency buildings were destroyed by fire in 1906:

The school was being held in a new adobe building that year….located right back of where the Wind River church now stands. He did not like school from his first glimpse of it when he noticed that the smaller boys wore knee pants and black stockings and the little girls striped dresses. They looked so queer to him that he just stood there staring at him. Soon he saw what was wrong: they didn’t have long braids. They had their hair cut and it hung down almost to their eyes. They were wearing bangs which were stylish in those days though they didn’t look right to Noeyes. The little boy was lonesome and unhappy. (From an unpublished manuscript by Rupert Weeks. Courtesy Mildred Weeks and family)

5. Arapaho boys at Carlisle Indian School, “doing squaw work,” Date Unknown (St. Michael’s Mission, Wind River Archives at CWC)

The Wind River mission schools had only Shoshone and Arapahoe students but “Gravy High” like Carlisle and other larger off reservation schools also boarded students from other tribes. While these schools offered greater opportunities and a wider variety of classes and vocational training, they were far from home. Sometimes students stayed away for over ten years before returning home:

Queeachen was planning to go to Carlisle when school opened in the fall. He was a very promising student and some of his teachers had talked to him about the advantages he would have if he would go to this big eastern school. He finally decided that he would enjoy seeing and learning new things. His parents did not want him to go…Red deer still felt that some of the old ways of doing things might stand his son in good stead….A group of five boys from Wind River Reservation were accepted. They were taken to Rawlins in a horse drawn buggy driven by a government employee. The school children waved and called “good-by” to them as they started, but the good-bye that had been hard to say had been said at home. (From an unpublished manuscript by Rupert Weeks. Courtesy Mildred Weeks and family)

6. Indian family in Wagon at Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

Originally students had to board for the entire academic year. Some even had to stay on in order to maintain the school’s fields and tend stock during the summer months. Later parents could pick up their children for the weekends if they lived close enough, as long as they brought them back in time for chapel of Sundays. At first many families were divided as to whether or not they wanted their children at attend, especially since the children started so young, at age five or six, and had to stay away from home for such long periods of time. In an interview done in the 1950s by the late Rupert Weeks, Bobeqee, recalled:

They had policeman to tell the Indians to send their children to school. Some liked it, others did not….They took my daughter to Robert’s Mission School. They had been issuing grub to us….Now, if we didn’t take our children to school, they would take our ration tickets. Soon we were all scared into submission.

Nellie Washakie tells the following story about the time her husband, Dewey, first went to school.

He was nine years old…and they brought him in, they lived at Crowheart and old lady White Horse, well, she brought a whole bunch of kids down. They gave her $50 for each kid that she could get in her wagon and she brought this bunch of kids down….When she took them to the Government School, she told them, “These are my kids I brought down,” and she got $50 a piece out of them and they were just the neighbor kids that she had tied up in the wagon!

The earlier students, especially those that attended the Government school had by far the hardest time. Many were forcibly taken from parents and few knew any English. The large number of runaways during the early boarding school years was a real thorn in the side of the school administrations; they gave the lie to the official line about how well the schools were doing in their job of assimilating students to White society. A number of former students recalled the Indian police patrolling classrooms and even accompanying students to the outhouse to make sure they didn’t sneak off.

The ordeal of adjustment from traditional home life in the camps to the regimentation of school was hard for Shoshone and Arapahoe alike. Those who attended either the first Agency school under Rev. Roberts of the mission schools with their small numbers and more home-like atmosphere seemed to find it easier to adjust. Many of those interviewed had such bad memories of their early days at the Government School they preferred not to talk about them:

In them days, why they’d force you to go to school…If you didn’t go to school, why your mom and dad would go to jail. (If you spoke your language) they put you in the guard house for a day or something like that, bread and water like that, you know…I don’t want to mention it at all. (Ben Friday Sr., regarding his days at Government School)

The next fall, 1892, he started back to school, but this year the school was quite different. Instead of having two people—Rev. and Mrs. Roberts to look after the entire school there were now some seventeen employees. The children missed the kindness of the Rev. Roberts for the discipline was quite strict under the new management. (Government school. From an unpublished manuscript by the late Rupert Weeks, regarding the Government School)

Concerned with this tragically high mortality rate, Roberts asked the government for permission to allow the pupils to spend some time at home, at intervals, during the school year. As he wrote the Indian Department in 1901: “The heavy death rate of the pupils is undoubtedly due to the effect of civilization upon them. In school they have good care, wholesome food, well cooked. They have plenty of fresh air, outdoor exercise and play. Yet under these conditions, in school, they droop and die, while their brothers and sisters, in camp, live and thrive.”

After much delay, Roberts recommendation were followed and although the improvement in the children’s health was “marked and immediate,” he continued to feel the need for a church boarding school. Roberts believed that the girls should be educated first because they would return to their camps, establish homes of their own and teach the new generation. He later tried, unsuccessfully, to raise money to educate Shoshone boys as well.

7. Shoshone girls outside the Chapel of the Holy Sts. John, Date Unknown (Wind River Archives at CWC)

The fact that his is an early photograph of the mission is demonstrated by the absence of the shady apple and plum trees which now surround the mission’s chapel. Perhaps these students were among the first to enjoy the young trees. Later, students helped harvest the fruit during the fall, but many also recalled climbing the trees and slipping a secret supply of apples into their roomy black bloomers when Rev. Roberts wasn’t looking. Mission girls are still remembered as the “black bloomer gang.”

The chapel, which originally doubled as the main class room, was also the setting for the beautiful Christmas services which all who sent there remembered as the highlight of their school days. Many recalled getting up before dawn and processing slowly, with lighted candles, down the walkway of plum trees to the chapel, singing memorized hymns.

It was decorated so pretty! It was so pretty and my Grandma use to say she could hear the kids singing and she would just imagine them coming down that pathway into the church. She said you could hear them singing three or four different hymns by the time they got there, just barely walking. (Pansy St. Clair)

8. Shoshone Episcopal Girls School or “Roberts Mission,” Date Unknown (Beatrice Crofts)

In 1887, Chief Washakie made a personal gift to John Roberts of 160 acres of land as the site for a permanent school for Shoshone girls. Washakie is often quoted as saying, “Our hope is in the children and young people.” We know from papers in Roberts’ handwriting that Washakie told him that he believed the children must be educated to live in the Indian’s changing world.

This view of the mission school. (1890-1949), shows the circular “teepee” to the far left, a wooden structure which Roberts built as playhouse to combat homesickness. Here, young Shoshone girls were allowed to speak their own language, encouraged to sing their native songs and to practice tradition arts such as beadwork.

9. Students and staff in front of Roberts’ Mission, ca. 1890 (Beatrice Crofts)

John Roberts worked closely with the Arapahoe clergyman, Sherman Coolidge, in both his education and missionary work. Roberts’ family also worked with him to make a success of the school, struggling continually from a lack of funds. Rev. Roberts laid out the schools irrigation ditches, planted the orchards, taught Bible studies and led evening prayers. His daughter Gwen was the principal teacher and his wife Laura helped in all aspects of the work while raising her own family of four. The child in the kilts is Roberts’ son Edward. In addition to holding services at the Fort and surrounding communities, as far as Thermopolis and Dubois, Rev. Roberts acted for a number of years as Superintendent of the Government School where he also held services for the students.

Robert’s mission, like all reservation schools, had to follow government policy in enforcing English as the primary language. Like the other reservation schools, the mission was almost entirely self-supporting, with a large garden and its own cattle and chickens. But there were significant differences. Students might line up in an orderly fashion for classes and chapel but the girls at Roberts’ Mission did not drill as they did at the Government School or even St. Michael’s and St. Steven’s. More significant, discipline was less strict and punishments less severe, factors which Pansey St. Clair remembers as the reason her father originally sent her to Robert’s Mission rather than to the Government School:

My Dad used to talk about it. It was really strict. “They went by the whip.” I think that’s what he said, that’s the way he put it. Some of the them [the parents] didn’t want to send their kids down to the boarding school. They would rather have them at the mission because they thought that they would be more adapted to their religious life. A little every day good old religion don’t hurt anybody….I’d say the government schools were kind of belligerent. They always wanted to fight each other. (Dolly Rowan)

While no English was permitted at all at the Government School and students might get whipped with rubber hoses if caught, girls at Roberts’ Mission were allowed to use their native tongue while playing together or when not in class and punishment was usually a matter of sitting on the bench or standing in the corner during recess:

When we went with Gwen, we didn’t talk too much the language (Indian). She said that we would always be in White society, which is true. We always had to speak English—you could talk she wouldn’t punish you, but you couldn’t talk to her. If I talked Indian to you, you might punish me, but they got over that. They decided it was their native tongue. Why not use it? (Dolly Rowan)

Mrs. Rowan recalls that she put her time “on the bench” to good use, by memorizing to multiplication tables.

The schools also differed in the work their students performed. Girls at Roberts’ mission learned to peel potatoes and to gather eggs. Older ones helped younger ones bath, And all learned to hem, darn, and embroider tea towels out of flour sacks. But while homemaking skills were emphasized, most of the cooking and heavy farmwork were done by hired help. The larger schools which enrolled both boys and girls emphasized vocational training and skills such as carpentry, farming or baking and student labor was essential to their economy. Despite these differences, life at the Mission was primitive and students—especially the older girls, worked hard.

My Dad used to talk about it. It was really strict. “They went by the whip.” I think that’s what he said, that’s the way he put it. Some of the them [the parents] didn’t want to send their kids down to the boarding school. They would rather have them at the mission because they thought that they would be more adapted to their religious life. A little every day good old religion don’t hurt anybody….I’d say the government schools were kind of belligerent. They always wanted to fight each other. (Dolly Rowan)

While no English was permitted at all at the Government School and students might get whipped with rubber hoses if caught, girls at Roberts’ Mission were allowed to use their native tongue while playing together or when not in class and punishment was usually a matter of sitting on the bench or standing in the corner during recess:

When we went with Gwen, we didn’t talk too much the language (Indian). She said that we would always be in White society, which is true. We always had to speak English—you could talk she wouldn’t punish you, but you couldn’t talk to her. If I talked Indian to you, you might punish me, but they got over that. They decided it was their native tongue. Why not use it? (Dolly Rowan)

Mrs. Rowan recalls that she put her time “on the bench” to good use, by memorizing to multiplication tables.

The schools also differed in the work their students performed. Girls at Roberts’ mission learned to peel potatoes and to gather eggs. Older ones helped younger ones bath, And all learned to hem, darn, and embroider tea towels out of flour sacks. But while homemaking skills were emphasized, most of the cooking and heavy farmwork were done by hired help. The larger schools which enrolled both boys and girls emphasized vocational training and skills such as carpentry, farming or baking and student labor was essential to their economy. Despite these differences, life at the Mission was primitive and students—especially the older girls, worked hard.

10. Girls at Roberts’ Mission playing with swings, Date Unknown (Intermountain Collection, Wind River Agency, courtesy of Eastern Shoshone Culture and Resource Center)

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For many children the hardest thing to get used to at boarding school was the routines—having to be at a certain place at a certain time and eat according to a schedule, whether you were hungry or not. In the early days boarding schools also represented first encounters with a number of new things and strange arrangements. “Everything was a lot different,” Pansey St. Clair recalled. “Everything from food, to clothing, to bedding, and going to church—all that was completely different.”

Some students were used to sleeping on the ground, on mattresses or beds of hides, blankets and brush. At schools, cots had to be made with hospital corners, right enough so a quarter would bounce on them. Butter and dairy products and vegetables like celery were also new to many, as were shoes:

We [had] always went barefoot. There were no shoes. Didn’t know what it was like to wear shoes. Oh, it about killed us off, but we live through it!

To church, we had funny little hats. They remind me of an old sage chicken. You had kind of gray little feathers sticking up there. We all dressed the same…. First thing you’re always kind of scared. You kind of don’t trust anybody. Then after you get used to it, I likes the mission. It was just like home. I was a wonderful place for the little Shoshone girls. It was more like home. You helped in the kitchen. I helped bake bread. We had little chores we had to do. I remember some of them had to empty that old potty!

11. John Roberts talking with Shoshone man, Date Unknown (BIA, Wind River Agency

He was strict but he made you want to learn. (Pansey St. Clair)

Rev. Roberts who learned Shoshone from the old people, was a central figure on the reservation in many ways. With a fairly constant stream of visitors, the mission served as something of a community center as well as a school. Dolly Rowan remembers Roberts inviting the girls into his home on special occasions.

It was so homey and nice….Our teacher, Gwennie, would get kind of rough if we wouldn’t mind, but he was nice. He was the most wonderful person that I’ve ever met. And we all went to church and lived happily ever after, I guess. I enjoyed it…it was wonderful when I look back on it. It was a second home to me.

12. School Girls at the Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

The policy of having older children help or supervise younger ones, indispensable to teachers and administrators who couldn’t communicate with new students who couldn’t speak English, but it was an unfortunate part of the system when considering the military quality of the discipline at the Government School. All too often it made it too easy for older children to abuse their position and power. Stories of bullying by older students were recorded in what for many were still angry and bitter memories:

She (a former class mate) was just the meanest human on earth when she was going to school there. She was one of the older girls that was over a number of small ones. We were just treated like slaves at times, and then at other times we were treated like we were in the army….I don’t think I learned a thing down there but mopping floors and washing dishes. And some of the little ones, you know, it was really hard on them cause the big ones, like…was just as mean as they could be. If they stepped out of line or fell down, she would raise the devil with them. And then the matron stood up for her—that’s what she was “supposed to be doing!” Just like an officer or something in the army! She’d yell at you, just like you was in the army….They (some of the early students) don’t like to talk about it you know, they want to forget all that. (Dorothy Peche)

The dorms were segregated, but some of the girls were kind of weird and would take the little ones and abuse them…by tying them to beds and pouring water in their shoes and stuff like that. And then they were very strict because they had a truant officer and were forever chasing kids. (Lillian Hereford)

13. Girl at Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

[We made our] everday dresses…but our uniforms were the blue navy middy type. Then they issued you shoes and if they were too small, you wore them anyway, and if they were too big, you wore them anyway. You wore black stockings. If they fit, all right, and if they didn’t, then you wore them just the same, if they were too big or too small….They were trying to change the Indian to the White way of living…. We used to go with my Grandma and we’d dig, we’d go gather the sego bulbs and bitterroots and all those kinds of things for our food. And you just lost track of all that and you even forgot what the thing was, what you were looking for. You have to know what you are doing and you forget. Oh, there’s just a lot of things….Alice and I had these two great braids that hung down our backs, plum to the floor and they cut it off and that just, oh, that was something awful to us! It was just like cutting our throats, because you didn’t believe in wearing and weren’t brought up to have short hair. (Dorothy Peche)

14. Portrait of Boy at Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

I never spoke no English, all I spoke was the Indian language. Boy, I had to learn fast, ‘cause those instructors made sure we learn fast! You couldn’t talk your own language among each other, if they caught you, why, you were in for it again. You’d be facing the wall or kneeling down [on a broom]….If they think you needed it, then they’d let you have it. Some of those kids in there, they’d be in their rooms bawling their eyes out.

[They whipped us with] straps mostly. That’s the only way they could drive the lessons in….You had to learn whether you wanted to or not. That’s the way I learned to speak English….You had to learn every word in the [grammar] book. I gradually got away from that. I used to remember that it always sounded funny, you know, you used to speak funny, like one of those Oxford students. That’s exactly how they used to sound back in those old grammar school days. We called it “Gravy High” after we got older, because all they served, morning, day and night was gravy. And we called it Gravy High. Gravy in the morning, gravy in the noon, gravy in the evening. Is it any wonder that some of us picked up a lot of weight? (Val Norman)

15. Boy at Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

They had to go to school and they took them down there and cut all their braids off and gave them a bald head. The boys used to wear braids, a lot of them….The boys didn’t cut their hair. (Herman Weed)

 

 

16. School boy at home, Date Unknown (Kassel Weeks, Wind River Archives at CWC

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[Homesickness] was the hardest thing to fight. You used to suppress that feeling. You had to have had. If you showed any signs of it, well, you caught heck for it. In other words, they punished you if you’re too weak to admit it, “I’m not liking it.” You had to like it….[When things began to change] they weren’t still treated as they used to be but you still had that feeling hanging over you all the time, [that] somewhere, somebody is going to come and, you know, give you what for. That stayed with us a long time. It’s what you call suppression, suppressing yourself. Your American native tongue and all that other traditional stuff, well, most of us forgot it, our elders couldn’t teach us, they wouldn’t allow us to do that, they’d be pulled off of that. So that’s where most of our tradition went. It’s only when the BIA changed over into this other day school that they eased up….By that time it was too late. (Val Norman)

17. Boys at Hot Springs with disciplinarians or teachers, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

Trips to the Hot Springs were a regular part of life at both the Government School and St. Michael’s Mission School. The gentleman in cavalry britches standing here behind the boys fits the description of the Government School’s disciplinarians who dressed in a semi-military fashion and carried a riding crop. Discipline at “The Gravy School,” especially in the early years, was rough:

Many time you worked plenty for not obeying everybody. Even for the smallest infraction…they would stand you in the hallways. They stand you there for hours on end and if that wasn’t severe enough, they’d get a broom stick and…you kneel down, right under your knees and there you are! You have to squirm around and you can’t holler….Holler what? Hell, nobody’d help you, because the disciplinarian is very strict….The man who was in charge of it was a retired Army officer. (Val Norman)

18. Charlie Bell and Big Head Monroe with their children, Date Unknown (St. Michael’s Mission)

Early photographs of young children often show the changes that their culture was undergoing.

Well, they were trying to convert us, drop our language and speak straight English and everything we did, you know, from table manners to cleaning floors; and everything that we didn’t do at home, see, we learned that here…and I believe they did a good job. (Arnold Headly)

When he went to the dormitory and saw his high bed it looked dangerous to him. He started putting his bedding down on the floor….The disciplinarian—though Queechen did not know what to call him—came in and told him, crossly, what to do. He had no idea what the man was saying but knew from his voice that he was mad. (Rupert Weeks)

19. Students in uniform at Government School

The semi-military nature of the Government School—which characterized its discipline, evident in the marching, drill work and flag raising and other ceremonies—was typical of many Indian boarding school at the turn of the century. This aspect of school life had an unexpected payoff for many students who later joined the army:

It was just routine to me then, that’s why I was so good at the close order drill and the D.I.’s The [drill instructors) asked me, “Why are you so good at it?” Here are all these other recruits, they are just marching all over the field, running into each other and here I was standing there and they told me. “Go sit down. You know more about it than they do here.” So, here I set, watching them. I was the only one of them that had that kind of instruction, and I didn’t have no trouble with it. (Val Norman)

Girls, too, found their training useful in the service:

That Coach Wilson, he taught us how to drill and everything, we were all well versed in the commands. It came in handy. I never knew I’d use it, but see, I spent two years in the army as a WAC and that really helped! ( Margaret Headly)

When a lot of Indian boys went into the service, a lot of them didn’t have problems because they knew all those formations, a lot of them didn’t even stay privates very long. (Caroline Goggles)

Chris Goggles who marched at St. Michael’s every morning recalled that his school also hired disciplinarians from WWI. By the time Chris got to the Government School, the drills had ended. But looking back, his most vivid memory of St. Michael’s was of lining up each morning for the daily dose of cod liver oil.

Cod liver oil! That’s the reason why they had all these formations. See, you’d stand out there in formation and they’d come by there and they’d give you a teaspoon and then you’d go right in there to breakfast!

20. Government School dining hall, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

Gravy in the morning with a boiled egg and a piece of bread, oatmeal. Noontime you got maybe boiled meat. Ahh! I used to get so tired of boiled meat. Everyday, everyday, boiled meat, boiled meat, boiled meat. And maybe a potato once in a while. Had gravy for breakfast and if you were lucky, you’d get out of eatin’ gravy for supper. You know that was good! But you’d usually end up with gravy. (Eva Enos)

21. Boys’ dormitory probably at St. Michael’s Mission, Date Unknown (St. Michael’s Mission, Wind River Archives at CWC)

Everything was army issue like army cots…the sheets and army blankets, everything was army issue. (Val Norman)

We all learned how to march. We used to go out early in the morning, get our exercise or march for about fifteen minutes….I was one of the last few that used to wear those little army trousers, you know, we used to twist them leggings around the legs…They were khaki and they made you itch! (Arnold Headley)

22. Sewing Class at Government School, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

With fashion plates pinned to the wall as examples, girls found that earning to sew was an important part of the schools program. Students at St. Michael’s and Roberts’ Missions remember doing cross stitch and embroidery, mending and darning socks, but those at the Government School also made their own clothes and such practical items as pillow cases—complete with French seams!

The sewing room—that’s where we learned to do what they called fancy work, them different kind of stitches. It’s just the same part of what’s going on.. some girls going in the morning, some girls going in the afternoon. And those switched around so that we learned how to do this and that….We made those simple-made dresses, like I said, we wear for our everyday dresses made out of hickory and gingham and percale. And we make pillow cases too, we put French seams in that. We had six or seven of them sewing machines, some White Rotary or Singer. (Lucy Bonatsie)

23. Girls in the Government School kitchen, 1896 (Wind River Historical Center/Dubois Museum)

There was no way they could stop me [going to school]. Grandma was trying to. She didn’t want me to go. 

The cop said, “There is a lot of kids, she probably knows most of them.” 

I heard that and I was willing to go. I didn’t mind it, I didn’t mind nothing. Well, I was glad to be there. We changed details every thirty days. They put me in the kitchen, I helped in the kitchen for thirty days. Worked half a day and then half a day to school. We done about everything: worked in the laundry for thirty days. worked in the sewing room for thirty days, worked in the bakery for thirty days, worked in the dining room for thirty days, worked in the dormitory for thirty days, in our wash house—I don’t know how many sinks we had. There were about three or four hundred kids, we had to keep that clean. (Marie Washakie)

My folks used to take us over there in a wagon, they’d take us over there, we wouldn’t have any supper, all that would be put out was hard bread and milk. So, you just went over there and helped yourself to bread and butter and milk, that’s what we had for Sunday supper. A lot of kids didn’t get to eat at home, or didn’t have any food at home, so they just kind of relied on that. (Carolyn Goggles referring to St. Michael’s)

24. St. Stephen’s Mission School, Date Unknown (Wind River Archives at CWC)

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The mission was self-supporting. I helped raise a garden. And I went home and got the lard—we got our own lard. We made our own bread. Make our own bread…my sisters would make bread. Our own milk. Dairy herd and our own beef cattle….And hams, we had our hams and bacon. We were self supporting. We had a cellar—we built a cellar for our potatoes. Vegetables—we put vegetables in sand, carrots, to keep them fresh. Sold to Lander. Peanuts and every kind of flower, sweet peas and corn, squash, watermelon. Sisters canned corn, rhubarb. We didn’t go to town to buy anything. But whatever we need…everything was done right there at the school. Our own milk, our own eggs, we had a lot of turkey, too. We raised chickens…all that stuff I learned how to do at school….Some of them went down to the barn and worked with horses, some with cattle, some with the cows, some with pigs, some with chickens. St. Stephen’s was self-supporting, it was all organized at that time. (Paul Moss)

All I learned, just farm labor…that’s all I learned, stacked hay, cut hay….If I’d learned some kind of trade, I’d been somewhere. (Tommy Brown)

25. Chicken House at the Government School, Date Unknown (BIA, Wind River Agency)

The chicken house, like many of the other out buildings at the Government school, was built of adobe bricks made on the school grounds with the help of students.

Chores at the boarding schools were often divided between the sexes; girls gathered eggs, boys milked the cows, but all had laundry and dining room details and were responsible for making their beds and cleaning their rooms. Girls at the Government school darned the boys socks but only the boys worked the laundry’s dangerous mangle. The policy of separating the sexes varied from one administrator to the next. Eva Enos remembers that at St. Michael’s there was a time when boys and girls were forbidden to even speak to one another, even during recess, and that she scarcely saw her brother, though they were attending school at the same time. Marie Washakie commented that at the Government School, “We had nothing to do with the boys. I don’t know about them!”

I enjoyed what we learned down there, I think it was good….We had this Good Citizen’s Cash Store. We took turns keeping the store….And it helps. You do a little bit of that and selling and keeping track of materials and what you take in, it really helped. We worked in the kitchen [where] a lot of us learned to make bread. The boys were being taught to raise gardens. They were being taught to milk cows and to feed and water and take care of the school herd. They had their own beef and they butchered, and a lot of them learned to cut meat. All the vegetables and things like beef chickens…it took care of all the students. (Lillian Hereford)

26. Millie Guina and friend at Government School, ca. 1930s (Millie Guina, Wind River Archives at CWC)

The Government School had Sioux, Cheyenne, Cree and students from other tribes as well as Wind River. Although many felt its atmosphere definitely improved during the 30s and 40s, the Government School still could not compete with the better facilities and larger teaching staff offered by the larger off-reservation schools which many wanted to attend. Eva Enos, who went both to St. Michael’s and the Government School, also spend several years at the Rapic City Indian School in South Dakota:

There were both Indians and Whites, whatever, that was a pretty good school, way it was run. There was a lot of different tribes there…. You learn their ways, and they learn your ways, every tribe is different you know…. It was more modern…. When I got married I started raising a family. I had a big family; course I know, I’d know how to cook for ‘em, like that, take care of ‘em. And a lot of girls too, they’d pick up nursing in that school. I was there three years before they closed it, turned it into a TB sanitarium…. There was just nothing here [at Wind River], I mean, you know, it was just a school. Didn’t have much activities. Well, it was so different. So different in the classroom too. We only had one teacher, he was a kinda grumpy guy down here;…seemed to me he didn’t take much interest in what he was teaching.

Mrs. Enos recalled that in addition to offering better classes and opportunities to go into professions such as nursing, Rapid City also offered more movies, basketball, footraces, and not only square dances and waltzes but the Charleston!

It was a boarding school and there were kids from different states that would just go there, like Wisconsin and Minnesota and Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming…. It was interesting because there were a lot of students that came from the other reservations…. They had home economics and they knew how to sew and cook. We didn’t have that experience. I learned how to sew from my mother, cause we used to watch her sew. But to actually sit down and cut a pattern, I didn’t know how to do that. (Bea Snyder, who attended Government School and Flandrau )

27. Picnic at the Government School, Date Unknown (Wind River Archives at CWC)

I liked it there [at the Government School] ‘cause there were a lot of kids to play with, ‘cause there was quite a few of us there…otherwise there was just us three. (Jossie Calhoun)

And after you got used to it, then you didn’t want to be home….They gave you different things at school. Different every week. (Suzette Wagon)

We had to be there and after you got used to it, it was all right. It was just like home. I would rather have been down there, because [at home] you didn’t have anything to do. You didn’t have to buy clothing. Like in the winter time when you need overshoes, they would furnish brand new ones. Overshoes, stockings, caps, longjohns, gloves. They furnished everything, that was real nice. [That made it easier on families because] they didn’t have to spend anything on us. (Herman Weed)

28. Girls at the Government School with matron and clergyman, Date Unknown (Wind River Archives at CWC)

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The Rules for Indian Schools which the Office of Indian Affairs began to issue in the 1890’s directed that Indian pupils be required to attend church services. Students at government as well as mission schools returned from weekend leave in time for chapel on Sundays. In the early days of the Government School Rev. Roberts acted as Chaplain, later Catholic as well as Episcopal services were held.

29. Government School shop class prepares to lay concrete, 1936 (BIA, Wind River Agency)

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My dad worked down there [at the Government School] for a while and we lived in a great big brick house, not ordinary bricks but kind of adobe….Those were some of the things the boys learned to do (Lillian Hereford)

30. Erecting new quarters for Government School dairyman, 1936 (BIA, Wind River Agency)

They made that real obvious. In this whole world everything is not handed to you and you have to go out and earn a living. (Bill Thunder)

 

 

31. Campus Day at the Government School, 1936 (BIA, Wind River Agency)

Many remembered basketball and other sports as highlights of their school years. Older students who transferred to off-reservations schools willingly made the top grades required to travel with a team; excelling in sports, then as now, was one way to get out and see the world.

If you didn’t make the grade, well you didn’t make the trip. And that’s what I mean, here [Wind River) from the sticks you know. I wanted to be able to go see other towns, like Kansas City. I went through Lawrence and St. Joseph…at least there was an outing there. We didn’t have money to go on our own, we had to earn our trip. So I had to do extra studying in order to keep up….And we had people who would help us anytime we asked for it….You didn’t have that here [Wind River]. It was just tough luck if I didn’t pay attention. (Arnold Headly, who attended St. Michael’s, Government School, and Haskell)

32. 4-H fair at the Government School, ca. 1930s (BIA, Wind River Agency)

They used to have a great big fair. Fairs are what they used to have. They never had pow-wows in them days. They used to have big fairs. They used to have big gatherings for the Arapahoe and Shoshones. They have garden fairs. They had like wheat and hay and gardens, boy they used to raise good gardens! I was in 4-H at that time, too, myself. That whole school area use to be plumb full of people because that was their biggest day of their life, cause they held it in the gym there. That had a platform on there and the people were out there and they used to eat and they had a barbecue and had ice cream social and things like that. (Suzette Wagon)

33. WPA costume class at the Government School, ca. 1930s (BIA, Wind River Agency)

Did you ever feel like you were missing things at home?

No, not much because I was having a good time learning…of course my parents wanted me to learn, that’s why they sent me down there, because that’s the best thing to do is to learn. (Angeline Wagon, who was at Government School it was converted into a day school)

34. Children pose at Government Day School, ca. 1940s (Wind River Archives at CWC)

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I think the kids now have more opportunity to go to school. In our day there wasn’t anything for us to use to go to school, like money….To take care of your home and to raise your family, that’s what I recall. Even working at school, I worked in the hospital [in South Dakota] and enjoyed it, I would have liked to have gone on with it but there was no opportunity here to study nursing (Winnie St. Clair)

The programs that they have now days, like these young kids going off to school, they have a lot more opportunity to go learn something like careers. At that time, if you went through the eighth grade, well, that was it. We were out. We couldn’t afford our tuition or anything like that. Now days, the kids can go off to school or college. They have the money set aside for that. Back in those days, we didn’t have it. I tell my grand kids, “Get your education while you can.” (Ina Weed)

35. Students at Flandreau School Store, Date Unknown (Kassel Weeks, Wind River Archives at CWC)

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Larger off reservation boarding schools such as Flandreau, South Dakota, provided greater opportunities for older pupils that those at home. Many appreciated the wider choices in career training available to them at these schools, the more modern atmosphere with current films and dances, expanded sport and work/study programs which allowed them to earn spending money while pursuing their education.

My Dad said, “You have to go.” He got our minds set to go, you know, to be somewhere else, that’s what he taught my brothers and myself. We weren’t always going to be around you know, here. We were going to go out and learn. Well, it was embedded in our minds that way, that’s why I never really was too lonesome. (Margaret Headly)

36. Drum and Bugle Corps at Government School, 1936 (BIA, Wind River Agency)

Asked if he had ever been off the reservation before he volunteered for the army, former Government School student Chris Goggles said, “Oh, yeah! I was with the drum and bugle corps with the reservation, first of its kind!”