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Chicken House at the Government School
25. Chicken House at the Government School, Date
Unknown (BIA, Wind River Agency)
 The
chicken house, like many of the other out buildings at the Government
school, was built of adobe bricks made on the school grounds with
the help of students.
Chores at the boarding schools were often divided between the sexes;
girls gathered eggs, boys milked the cows, but all had laundry and
dining room details and were responsible for making their beds and
cleaning their rooms. Girls at the Government school darned the
boys socks but only the boys worked the laundry’s dangerous
mangle. The policy of separating the sexes varied from one administrator
to the next. Eva Enos remembers that at St. Michael’s there
was a time when boys and girls were forbidden to even speak to one
another, even during recess, and that she scarcely saw her brother,
though they were attending school at the same time. Marie Washakie
commented that at the Government School, “We had nothing to
do with the boys. I don’t know about them!”
I enjoyed what we learned down there, I think it was good....We
had this Good Citizen’s Cash Store. We took turns keeping
the store....And it helps. You do a little bit of that and selling
and keeping track of materials and what you take in, it really
helped. We worked in the kitchen [where] a lot of us learned to
make bread. The boys were being taught to raise gardens. They
were being taught to milk cows and to feed and water and take
care of the school herd. They had their own beef and they butchered,
and a lot of them learned to cut meat. All the vegetables and
things like beef chickens...it took care of all the students.
(Lillian Hereford)
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