Lost Worlds of 1863. W. Dirk Raat

Indians.”²⁴ Cemeteries 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.²⁶ In 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

      Figure 2.7 Unmarked graves of Winnemucca sisters? No headstones; simply rocks in a circular pattern in foreground.

      Photo by W. Dirk Raat, Henry’s Lake gravesite, Island Park, Idaho (2019).