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Indian family in Wagon at Gov't School
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.
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