Exhibits > Trout Creek >
Church of the Redeemer
2. School children at Church of the Redeemer,
Wind River Agency, ca. 1885-1890 (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.
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