Video
A Day in the Life: Artifacts from Pipestone Indian Boarding School, Pipestone, Minnesota
Transcript
Karen: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the NPS Archeology Program speaker series for 2015-2016. My name is Karen Mudar and I'm an archeologist in the Washington Archeology program office. This first part of the series consists of presentations by and for park archeologists, and the second part is a series that is devoted to a theme. This year, we're focusing on maritime archeology.
Today, I am happy to introduce an NPS archeologist, Laura Bender, who works at Buffalo National River. She is going to present A Day in the Life: Artifacts from Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Pipestone, Minnesota. Laura's going to go first before our second speaker, Kelsey Reese, who is going to present Agency of Access: Public Architecture in Mesa Verde National Park.
Laura's talk focuses on an analysis of artifacts and oral histories and school records for an Indian boarding school to create a more complex understanding of the social and administrative conditions of the school. This was a critical and painful episode in the recent history of Indian tribes and an emotionally charged topic to approach. I'm interested to hear Laura's findings and I'm sure that you are, too. The study also demonstrates that even within late 19th century and 20th century contexts in which you would think that there's a good historical record archeology can still contribute unique and sometimes contradictory data to that of the written record, so I'm interested to hear what kinds of contradictions and how archeology has contributed to our better understanding of the social and administrative situation at this boarding school.
Laura, thank you very much for being with us today.
Thank you for inviting me. As Karen mentioned, the social and political context surrounding the boarding school system was, and still is, very complex. Pipestone and Indian boarding schools in general don't exist in a vacuum. When looking at these artifacts from Pipestone a few questions came to mind. Can we use these objects to move beyond just material culture study and where does this project fit within the bigger picture. In the end, what does this all mean?
Jumping right in, to determine where Pipestone fits within the bigger picture, let's first try to identify what the bigger picture even looks like. An entire lecture series going back to when Europeans first set foot on North America could probably better explain what led up to the creation of Indian boarding schools, but since we don't have enough time for that, let's just settle with an overview of 19th century Indian policy.
After the Civil War, westward expansion basically increased exponentially. Clashes between the Native population and white settlers increased as well, and an Indian problem became more apparent among the eyes of American society. White settlers wanted valuable land occupied by Native American tribes and pressure increased in Washington to open up land previously earmarked for reservations.
Civic-minded members of society began pressuring legislators to find humane and just ways to deal with the problem by assimilating American Indians into Anglo-American society. This resulted in the passing of the General Allotment Act and the establishment of the Federal Indian Boarding School, all under the watchful eye of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The General Allotment Act of 1887, commonly referred to as the Dawes Act solved the land problem of opening up western lands to white settlers. Reservation land was divided into 160-acre plots and distributed among the Native population. Land left over, usually of better quality than those allotted to the Indians, were sold to settlers.
The reformers who pushed for the passage of the Allotment Act had an almost mystical faith in the power of private property to promote the assimilation of Indians into white society. In reality, limited access to farm equipment, poor land quality, and further restrictive legislation meant few Indian families were able to successfully make a living on their plot. Instead of successfully transitioning to a sustainable farming economy American Indians suffered more hardship.
Assimilationists continued believe that land ownership combined with American education would result in turning the Native population into responsible citizens. In 1903, Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner, William A. Jones said, "To educate the Indian in the ways of civilized life is to preserve him from extinction, not as an Indian, but as a human." The Federal boarding school system, part of that education, was pioneered by Captain Richard Henry Pratt at the Carlisle Indian Boarding School. Key components of his education included enforcing military like obedience, promoting Christian values and full immersion into a white society through an outing program. This outing program placed students into the homes of community members to act as farmhands and maids when not in school.
Pratt had first conceived of a boarding school for American Indians after his experiences working with Native prisoners in Florida. He saw that the success of General Samuel Armstrong was having with the African population in the Hampton Institute and wanted to do the same thing for the Native prisoners. He opened Carlisle Indian School in 1879. He proposed that educating Native children away from the influence of their parents would result in complete and full civilization of the American Indian.
By the standards of the time, Pratt's endeavors were, in fact, successful. His program with a few hiccups had managed to integrate Native American youth into white society. Because of this policy, every boarding school which was to follow, including Pipestone, was initially modeled under Pratt's methods.
In the beginning, the boarding school did in fact follow those methods closely. However, it quickly became apparent that American Indians were not a uniform population and even in varied environmental conditions in which the individual schools were located played a role in how the school had to adapt its policies to fit their campus and their students' needs. School became as uniquely administered as those who ran them. The atmosphere often depended greatly on the mindset of the superintendent in charge. As such, accounts from former students, teachers and administrators about life in the school varied greatly. That being said, a few generalizations can be made about the Indian boarding school system.
First, upon arrival at a boarding school, traditional clothing was replaced with modest versions of the Anglo-American fashion. Boys’ hair was cut and children's names were Americanized. Students were punished, sometimes severely, for speaking tribal languages. To the casual observer, there was no longer any distinction between Mandan, Chippewa, Sioux, Hopi, or Navajo. The students were taught English, basic math, religion and civics with the hope of turning them into upstanding Christian citizens.
As a result, those students that graduated returned to the reservation not quite a part of their tribe, having learned none of their own traditions. Additionally, despite the school's effort, students were rarely accepted into the American society surrounding the community. Students ended up between two roles with many choosing to set aside what they'd learned at the boarding school under the pressure of not fitting in back home.
Education was not the only focus at boarding schools. In an attempt to instill a student with a respect for manual labor, students spent as much as half of the day working to keep the schools running. Girls prepared meals and made clothes for their peers. Boys repaired broken farm equipment and cared for livestock. Additionally, the community surrounding boarding schools eventually realized that student labor under the outing program was an excellent source of cheap labor. The locals argued for increasing the amount of time students were allowed to work. At the Phoenix Indian school in Arizona, all pretense of education was eventually dropped. The school effectively became a staffing agency for the white community. Still, some students did well and many went to work on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and some returned as teachers or teacher's assistants.
By the 1920s, most schools had deviated greatly from Pratt's original system, and there was less emphasis on providing humane and just ways of dealing with the Indian problem. Superintendents struggled to maintain schools with less and less money and overcrowding was a major issue. Amid reports of labor exploitation and poor student health an investigation into the boarding school commission was commissioned. The results known as Meriam Report had a huge effect on boarding school policy.
It meant treating students more as underprivileged children than as a problem to be solved. The moratorium on tribal language was relaxed and Native teachers who had been trained in the boarding school system had a little bit more leeway in incorporating their own principles into the curriculum. The focus of the schools became less about pure assimilation as policy and more about figuring out a way to run an overcrowded school with little money.
In remembering his time at Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, Adam Fortunate Eagle told of a graduation ceremony he attended in which a peace pipe was actually passed from one grade to another. He felt that it sent a strong message for the Indian students to carry on traditions, culture and the vitality of their own people so they could pass it on to future generations.
With that in mind, let's to focus on Pipestone Indian boarding school. The school site is located in southwestern Minnesota near the town of Pipestone and directly adjacent to Pipestone National Monument. Minnesota West Community College currently occupies the former school campus, but nearly all of the original structures are gone. The school that remains is an outbuilding which may or may not have housed laundry facilities and the superintendent's house which is actually on the National Register. The surrounding land on which the students would've farmed and played is now either privately held or part of Pipestone Indian State Wildlife Management area which is under the Minnesota Department of National Resources.
Pipestone Indian boarding school operated between 1892 and 1953. The first class comprised of 6 students, at its peak nearly 400 children were enrolled yearly at the school. By 1952, the school's campus had grown to include a dairy, granary, horse barn, hog house, calf shed, commissary, ice house, playground, 2tennis courts, the superintendent's house, 6 cottages, 4apartments, garage space for 32 cars and 2 buses and multiple storage units. In addition to reading, writing, arithmetic, social studies and science, students were instructed in farming, dairying, poultry raising, printing, carpentry, engineering, plumbing, machinery, harness and shoe making, domestic sciences, nursing, rug and carpet weaving, music, athletics and religious instruction.
Of his time at Pipestone, superintendent J.W. Balmer said, "Perhaps the outstanding feature of our term at Pipestone was the fact that we tried to make the school a ‘home’ for the Indian boys and girls instead of an institution. Every employee was asked to be a father and mother to the boys and girls. This, I believe, was the biggest factor in making it a successful one." Though most stories from the earliest days of the school are largely lost, oral accounts from later students suggest that life at Pipestone was at times tough and teachers could be stern. It seems that the administrators had the best intentions at heart. They did the best they could to work within a system of constantly changing educational philosophy and uncertain budget. Student Adam Fortunate Eagle recalled that superintendent Balmer once told him he knows he could get them more to eat in the dining hall, but something he calls the Federal budget does not allow for more.
In 2010, Adam Fortune Eagle wrote a book about his time at Pipestone. His perspective along with the two comments from superintendent Balmer, constitute the majority of firsthand accounts of the school. The cultural resource staff at Pipestone National Monument has been working to collect more stories about the school from former students. As a part of that process, an archeological survey was conducted to gather artifacts that national monument staff could use in their interviews with former students. They look at some of the items collected will inspire recollections during the interviews. The artifacts discussed here will be ultimately used for that purpose.
The survey itself: two plots of land were the focus of the survey in May of 2014. The survey consisted of informal pedestrian transects. Features and artifacts were flagged for recordation via GPS and photography. Specimen numbers were assigned either to individual surface finds or groups of surface finds depending on the situation. Artifacts were collected if they were likely to be useful for the oral history project, had diagnostic value, or whenever a representative sample was deemed necessary to facilitate site documentation.
The first parcel of land belonged to rancher Francis Hazelton. His property yielded no surface artifacts, however, three possible quarries and six inscriptions were found, and you can see them on the map here. The inscriptions are in the pink and the possible quarries is in that kind of bluish color. These inscriptions were really interesting. They were carved in exposed rock outcrops along a small lake near the center of this parcel. They included names and dates and initials. Initials led the investigation into the inscriptions included several names that were found on Pipestone Indian Boarding School records as having been enrolled as students. In fact, the earliest dates to 1898, which is part of the early history of the school. Adam Fortunate Eagle recalls playing on at the lake when he had free time during his time in the late 30s and 40s.
The main portion of the survey, the part of Pipestone Indian State Wildlife Management area, and it's located just north of the national monument boundary and west of the former school campus. Pedestrian survey revealed a diffuse scatter of cultural materials. Shovel tests revealed material below ground surface in a fairly disturbed context. This scatter likely represents the trash midden, dateable material largely from the school's later years of operation.
A large number of ceramic fragments were found during the survey. The vast majority of these consisted of institutional dinnerware that were heavy duty and thick-bodied. Two different makers marks were identified among the dinnerware. First was a Shenango china mark from 1920s-1930s. Based in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Shenango had a contract that supplied dinnerware with the government. The other mark was from the D.E. McNicol Pottery Company from Clarksburg, West Virginia. In the 1930s, this company had switched to making institutional ware to survive financial instability. The mark found at Pipestone was used between the ‘30s and the ‘50s. Regardless of the source, the dinnerware was designed as durable, long lasting and decoration was simple, either plain or with a dark green band around the rim, and the design was something that could be easily replaced when broken.
More interestingly, perhaps, three fragments of two teacups were found within the trash midden which may be evidence of playtime activities, though it is entirely possible that these items were used during domestic science classes. The cup at the top is blue with white polka dots, and the cup at the bottom is white with a molded scallop decoration. The patterns of cups could not be definitely identified and dated. However, the teacup on the top of the slide is reminiscent of the ‘30s-‘50s aesthetic, while the cup at the bottom has a little bit more of a Victorian motif to it.
In 1915, 3 out of 10 Indian boarding school students were infected with trachoma and the Indian tuberculosis incidence rate was 4 times the non-Indian rate. The Indian measles, chickenpox, mumps, small pox and other contagious diseases were double and triple the national rate. Considering those numbers, it's no surprise that medicine bottles and other medical equipment were found among the artifacts at Pipestone. Maintaining student health was a constant battle for administrators and a large public image issue.
Included in the glassware were several intact condiment bottles. Hundreds of mason jar fragments were recorded, but not collected. Combined with the institutional dinnerware it seems like the school cafeteria created a large portion of the refuse that ended up in the scatter. A few possible soda bottle fragments were observed in the survey and no definitely identified alcohol bottles. Either students and staff had little access to these items or they were disposed in a separate location.
Perhaps the most interesting glass artifacts found during the survey were two bottle fragments. At first glance, they look like any other artifacts, pieces of broken glass, something you would find in the trash midden, but when you look at them closely the edges appear oddly reminiscent of being intentionally shaped. Given the amount of broken glass in the trash scatter, it is very hard to say with any certainty that these students were using glass to practice knapping. However, the artifacts open the door for some interesting discussions on agency among the student population. Even Adam Fortunate Eagle hints that students practiced traditional culture in secret, and his writing of the time when assimilation policy had been considerably relaxed, so if students had held on some traditional practice was this evidence of it? The May 2014 project yielded no answer to that question, but perhaps these two little glass fragments are a start.
Much of the metal identified from the midden was typical of historic farmstead debris. Strips of ferrous metal, unidentified pieces of machinery and countless smashed buckets, evidence of efforts to produce the food for the students and provide some school general maintenance. Three artifacts on the other hand are a little bit more interesting. At the top right is a uniform button that says US Indian Service. At the bottom left is the end piece of a rifle, and next to that is a blank round. They show how military philosophy influenced the world in which the students at Pipestone operated. In his book, Adam Fortunate Eagle writes about ROTC drills during World War II. Boys trained at the school until they old enough to enlist, and these artifacts speak to a long traditional of American Indian participation in the Armed Forces.
All but one of the leather artifacts collected during the survey were shoe remnants. These are evidence of a real problem that the school had in clothing its students. Students were constantly passing old shoes down to the younger students and most of the shoes were of poor quality to begin with and were in constant need of repair. A major task for boys would have been to maintain the shoes worn by students. Adam Fortunate Eagle describes several instances in which a repair attempt resulted in shoes too painful to even wear. They would use any nails or screws that they had access to to keep the soles attached. Girls would've provided a similar service in repairing and making school uniforms.
The boarding school era was a tumultuous time for American Indian youth even with strict assimilationist policies relaxed students faced whitewashing of their tribal traditions, fluctuating school conditions based on the whims of Federal budget makers and prejudice from white and non-whites alike. The artifacts at Pipestone follows fairly well the narrative found in academic histories of the Federal boarding school system. Ceramics, glass, metals and leather artifacts were largely utilitarian and in line with the institutional nature of the school. There is little evidence of the students themselves beyond those related to uniforms. Little glimpses of the students at play may be seen in those teacups and worked glass pieces, but it's unclear at this time.
Back to the questions I posed at the beginning of the presentation: How can the examination of artifacts help us better understand life at Pipestone? Where does this project fit within the bigger picture, and in the end, what does it all mean?
For a place where hundreds of children lived at any given time there is little evidence archaeologically - at least in this survey - at Pipestone of play. Yet Adam Fortunate Eagle recounts and mentions almost little of the school's curriculum or the work details. Instead, he talks about playing games with his peers and pulling pranks on the girls at the school. When compared to his account, it appears that the artifacts alone do not fully impart a day in the life at Pipestone for student life. The artifacts highlight the importance of oral histories in understanding the American Indian perspectives on the Federal boarding school system. After all, it really is their story to tell.
Ongoing efforts to record these stories are being made by the cultural resource staff at Pipestone, and perhaps while handling one of the artifacts found in the 2014 survey a former student will hold that little teacup and remember. Thank you.
Thank you, Laura, for that very interesting talk. Do we have any questions? I was really struck by how little archaeological evidence there was for children at the school. Is it something that you had anticipated?
I kind of thought that there would be more. There are a couple of reasons why that may have been the case that we didn't find much and it could be just that they were playing in a different area or this particular plot of land was mostly just where they dumped the kitchen and farm equipment. It's hard to tell without more work. Yeah, at least in this initial survey there really wasn't much. No marbles. No balls, nothing like that.
Do you know anything about the conditions under which the children arrived at the school? Were they allowed to bring anything from their homes?
It depends on the time frame. It was a little stricter in the beginning, but that did relax. A lot of the kids really didn't have much to bring to begin with. There was a thesis done by an education major in 1952 on the curriculum at Pipestone. A lot of what he uncovered was that these students were, at least in the 40s and 50s, because that's what he had access to record-wise, a lot of the students were very poor, and their parents were sending them just so that they could have a place to live.
By this point in time, the parents are cooperating with the BIA and sending their kids to school?
As a very, very last ditch effort, in many cases, yeah. One of the problems was that as the families were divided up into the plots of land they were disconnected from their social communities, and they didn't have the support that they needed to care for the children as they would've normally. Many parents felt that one of the options was to send their kids to the boarding schools in hopes that they would have a better life.
Were the boarding schools regional in the populations that they were drawing from?
That I can't really speak to as far as regional goes. I know that Adam, I think he could have gone to several different ones, and he had friends and family who went to Genoa in Nebraska. I don't know if there were particular restrictions regionally.
That's something that I don't know about either. I wondered if it would effect the artifact assemblages that you might find. Have you been able to compare these, your findings to any research at other schools? Is this a unique project?
At this point, I have not had the opportunity to do so. I don't know if this project in particular is unique. There is archaeology going on at other boarding schools, but I have just not had the opportunity to delve much deeper into it.
Are there any other questions? Laura, thank you very much for your talk. We really appreciate you taking the effort to give this today for us.
Description
Laura Bender, Buffalo National River
Duration
27 minutes, 57 seconds
Credit
NPS Video
Date Created
09/24/2015
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