Exhibits > Trout Creek >
Trout Creek School Bldg.
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 (From an unpublished manuscript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)
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