BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AT THE KIOWA-COMANCHE AGENCY, 1893–1920

BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AT T H E ICIOWA- COMANCHE AGENCT, 1893-1 920

CLYDE ELLIS

On a clear, windy afternoon in August 1990,92-year-old Parker McKenzie pointed to the ramshackle remains of the Rainy Mountain Boarding School and said, “That was where I got my start.”’ The ruins lay in the center of what had once been the campus of a reservation boarding school where young Kiowa Indians like McKenzie embarked on what the government intended to be a transforming experience. In this remote corner of the sprawling Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation in southwest Oklahoma, government teachers struggled for three decades to make the vision of a new Indian race a reality by encouraging young Kiowas to become cul- turally indistinguishable from the whites who surrounded them.

Rainy Mountain School was part of a system of government boarding schools established on reservations across the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Convinced of the schools’ power to remold Indian youngsters, government officials made them the dominant institution of post-Civil War policy. In a controlled environment, safely isolated from the so-called barbarous life of the camp, Indian children could be systematically assimilated into the white culture. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan regarded the reservation boarding school as nothing less than “the object lesson . . . [and] gateway out from the reservation.”2 No other institution promised the changes offered by the boarding schools, for none could so effectively teach Indian children how to read and write, and how to live.3

Despite the role of education in the campaign to end the so-called “Indian Problem,” little work has been done on the reservation schools that lay at the heart of the program. What we do know about the schools tends to be bound up in larger

Clyde Ellis is assistant professor of history at Elori College, North Caroliiia.

‘Parker McKenzie to the author, 1 August 1990.

2Annual Report of the Cornmissioner of Indian affairs (hereafter ARCIA), 1881, 27.

3Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis: Cliristian Reforniers and the Indian, 1865-1900 (Norman, 1976), 301; David Wallace Adams, “Pundaniental Considerations: The Deep Meaning of Native American Schooling, 1880-1900,” Harvard I&xfional Review58 (1988): 1-28. AHCIA, 1881.27. Annual Report oftlie Secretary of the interior, 1880,7-8.

778 THE HISTORIAN

discussions of agency life, and often these discussions are not so much by Indians as they are about Indians. The difference is crucial, for the student perspective presents a rich portrait of life in a reservation boarding school and offers a revealing look at how young Indians learned, what they learned, and how their lives were affected. As Michael Coleman points out in his recent work on Indian schools, student accounts have a potency and resonance missing from official reports:

The school obviously was such a radically new experience that it imprinted itself deeply upon the minds of the narrators-they recalled the arrival with special vivid- ness. Further, most of them began life in oral cultures, where accurate recall and the faultless performance of ritual and other duties were seen as vital to survivaL4

In late 1892, Commissioner Morgan ordered Kiowa-Comanche Agent George Day to prepare for the opening of a new boarding school at Rainy Mountain. “Make a thorough canvass among the children of school age [six to sixteen] and suitable health who are tributary to the Rainy Mountain School,” Morgan wrote. “[Establish] a thorough understanding with the parents and effect such arrange- ments that you may get the children into the school without delay as soon as you are ready to receive them.”5 Kiowa parents generally were willing to enroll their children, for too few schools existed to accommodate the school-age population. Except for episodic illness, bad weather, or some unanticipated development, the school usually filled quickly to its official capacity of 150 students.

The reasons for putting children in school varied. Myrtle Ware enrolled at Rainy Mountain in 1898 because her family was poor. Ware recalled, “I can’t be taken care o f . . . [so, my aunt] took me up there to Rainy Mountain. She asked my dad, ‘I wanta put her up to school there, where I’ll go and see her,’ and I went up that way? Annie Bigman entered around 1904 for similar reasons. “Daddy started me to

‘Michael Coleman, Americalr Indian Childreti at School, 1850-1930 (Jackson, 1993), 197-98; Robert Trennert, ThePhoenixIndian School: Forcedhssimilatiori in Arizona, 1891-1935 (Norman, 1988). 112-49; David Wallace Adams, Education For Extinction: Americon Iridinns and the Boarding School Experience, 1895-1928 (Lawrence, 1995), 207-69; K. Tsianina Lomawaima, They Called I t Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln, 1994); Clyde Ellis, To Change Them Forever: Indinn Educntiori nt the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, 1893-1920 (Norman, 1996), 91-93.

Thomas Morgan to George Day, 14 November 1892, Rainy Mountain School Records, Records of the Kiowa Agency, Record Group 75, National Archives, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City. Oklahoma (hereafter RMS, OHS).

6Myrtle Paudlety Ware interview, 1 1 November 1967, T-76,2, Doris Duke Oral History Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Library Archives, Norman, Oklahoma (hereafter DDOH).

BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AT THE KIOWA-COMANCHE AGENCY, 1893-1920 779

school when I was about four years old,” she stated. “He was sick then. He don’t want to take care of a little one so he pushed me to school.”’

Guy Quoetone attended J. J. Methvin’s Methodist Institute near Anadarko because of his father’s membership in the Methodist Church. Quoetone would have gone to one of the agency schools in Anadarko “if my father hadn’t already have joined the Methodist church. . . . [Wlhen we started to school he wanted me to go to that school [Methvin] James Haumpy’s parents sent him to Rainy Mountain in 1913 to be with “those other boys they was schooling out there.” Haumpy found little solace in the prospect; “I was a little boy. I don’t know how to talk English. They put me in school. Well, I ain’t used to it. And I cried and cried, I wanna go home.” But Haumpy also recalled that school was not entirely unpleasant. “I’d take my horses down there,” he said. “I seen pretty girls at that scho01.”~

Parker McKenzie said that by the time he entered Rainy Mountain in 1904, “most of the Kiowas already were impressed of the benefits of education and took advantage of schooling.” As far as McKenzie was concerned, “the Indian was already out of us by the time we went to school . . . missionaries had already been doing this.” McKenzie also commented that Rainy Mountain was so well known to the Kiowas by then that “no one had to inform them about the schools. They were on hand and saw them.” His parents, convinced of the advantages that schooling gave their children, enrolled Parker and his brother Daniel “to get us used to boarding school life.”’O

Important tribal leaders also supported the schools. When schools began to open on the reservation in the 1880s, headmen and chiefs often took the lead in encouraging Kiowas to enroll their children. Some of them understood the importance of education: others used it to gain favor with agents. In August 1905, for example, Big Tree, an influential Kiowa chief, responded to Agent James Randlett’s solicitation of the chief‘s help, “We are going to the Ghost Dance Friday and I will let the people know about the school and tell them to put these children in school.””

’Annie Bigman interview, 14 June 1971, M-I, 3, IIDOH; Sally McUeth, Ethnic ldcntity and the Boarding School Experience of West-Centml Oklnhornn Itrdinrrs (Washington, D. C., 1983), 108-1 I ; Lomawaima, They Called It Prairie Light, 35-40; Coleman, Aniericnti Indian Children nt School, 60-79.

‘Guy Quoetone interview, 23 March 1971,T-37,16, IIDOH.

gJames Haumpy interview, I 1 July 1967, T-81,6, DIIOH; Bruce David Forbes, “John Jasper Methvin: Methodist ‘Missionary to the Western Tribes‘ (Oklahoma),’’ in Chirrchrnen and The Westcrn brdinns, 1820-1920, ed. Clyde A. Milner and Floyd A. ONeil (Norman, Okla., 1985). 64-65.

loParker McKenzie to the author, 1 August 1990.

“Big Tree to James Randlett, 30 August 1905, KMS, OHS; Jim Whitewolf, Jim Whitewov The L i / . of a Kiowa-Apache Indian (New York, 1969), 83.

780 THE HISTO~UAN

Although Kiowa parents and leadership generally supported the schools, other issues sometimes affected enrollment. In September 1900, for example, Kiowa parents responded to allotment negotiations by keeping their children at home. Rainy Mountain Superintendent Cora Dunn reported only two dozen students at the end of the opening week and noted that “the Kiowas are in an ugly frame of mind over the terms of the allotment treaty, and are determined to be as annoying as possible.” Surveying the situation, she concluded that “some coercive measures will have to be used.” A group of parents remedied the situation by collecting and delivering a number of children to the school.’2

Parents usually discovered that they could not challenge the system very long, especially when annuities hung in the balance. In 1898 Commissioner William A. Jones announced that unless parents put their children into school he would cut off rations and annuities. “If that does not suffice I will send their children anyway,” he thundered. “Make it peremptory, and let them understand that I do not care and will not have any obstacles in the way of these children going.” Jones also supported “more vigorous measures,” including jailing children and parents who resisted. l 3

Once enrolled, Kiowa youngsters entered a new world where no lesson was too small to be learned, no detail too small to reinforce. The assimilation process began immediately with deliberate measures to change the physical appearance of the children. Guy Quoetone was still in his Kiowa clothing when his parents delivered him to the Methvin School. Staff members ushered him into a room where two men and a woman waited for him.

They shut the door and about that time I get excited and they got a chair. . . . They commence to hold me.. . . [Tlhis barber.. . he come from behind and cut one side of my braid off.. . . About that time I turned tiger! I commenced to fight and scratch and bite and jump up in the air! They had a time, all of them, holding me down. Cut the other side. Two men had me down there and that white lady tried to hold my head and then that barber cutting all the time. It was almost an hour before he finished cutting my hair. And you ought to see how I looked. I sure hate a haircut!I4

Along with haircuts and baths came uniforms. Annie Bigman recalled that Rainy Mountain girls wore grey uniforms that resembled sleeveless jumpers. A white

I2Cora Dunn to James Randlett, 5 September and 14 September 1900, RMS, OHS.

”William A. Jones to William T. Walker, 1 October 1898, RMS, OH% ARCIA, 1898,6-7.

I4Quoetone interview, T-637, 17, DDOH.


blouse, black shoes, and stockings completed the en~emble.’~ Sarah Long Horn remembered a military look to school clothing and that girls wore ribbons in their hair identifying them as members of company A, B, or C.I6 Lewis Toyebo’s clothes also reminded him of army outfits. “Our school uniforms were grey with red stripes,” Toyebo said, “and our play clothing were plain jeans. We were a sight on earth.”” Others were less sanguine. Juanita Yeahquo, for example, chafed at the memory of uniforms which she described as “awful clothes. . . . I guess we got prison clothes and didn’t know it.” She especially resented the large, heavy boots. l 7

Some students also received English names. Working from lists, administrators simply assigned names. There was little variety, and school rolls show an inordinate number of girls named Sarah, Mary, Elizabeth, and Bessie. Popular boys’ names included Robert, Henry, Albert, James, and Frank. Each student also received a per- manent number. Lewis Toyebo was number 41 from the day he entered in 1898 until he left in 1909. Myrtle Ware was number 19, “which I kept for so many years until I was dismissed from the school,”lR Parker McKenzie said that “like prison convicts we were mostly identified by our assigned numbers rather than by name, except in classrooms where we were ‘respected’ by our given English names.”I9

School life also meant an immediate end to childhood patterns of association. Strictly separated by sex and age, matrons hovered closely over their wards. “Keeping the sexes apart was routinely strict,” said Parker McKenzie. “We were under strict discipline, we were never free.” Children had separate living quarters, ate at separate tables, occupied different portions of the same classrooms, and were kept apart at chapel services. School officials allowed them to mix only at the school’s carefully chaperoned social functions, and even then it was not quite an open field. Students marched to and from such events “in military order-and separately, too,” recalled McKenzie.*O Sarah Long Horn remembered that the boys occasionally made daring forays into the girls’ dorm, but the odds of success were long, and punishment swift

I5Annie Bigman interview, T-57: 16, DDOH

I6Sarah Long Horn interview, 27 June 1967, T-62,9, DDOH.

”Juanita Yeahquo interview, 21 June 1968, M-2, DDOH.

IR‘‘Happy 90th Birthday Lewis Toyebo, February 28,1982:’ copy of commemorative birthday pmm- phlet in the author’s possession (hereafter “Lewis Xoyeho Birthday”).

I9Parker McKenzie to Randle Hurst, 23 October 1987 (in the author’s possession); Ware interview,T- 76,4, DDOH; Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and Lonnie I . Underhill.“Kenaming the American Indian, 1890- 1913,”American Studies 12 (1971): 33-45.

”McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987.

782 THE HISTORIAN

and sure. “They watch us real dose,” she said. “There’s got to be one teacher up in front and there’s got to be somebody else in the back that will watch the boys and the girls.”2’ Fred Bigman grumpily recalled, “we never did get to talk to any girls.”22

A high premium was placed on discipline, and the transformed, uniform appearance of the students contributed to an environment based on military models. McKenzie wrote, “I distinctly remember . . . how odd it was to line up like I imag- ined soldiers lined up.”23 Students queued up for every occasion and marched to meals, classes, and chapel services. Boys drilled every day before breakfast except Sunday. “It was not unusual for the little ones’ skins to appear blue from the cold. It was very sad to see six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds being compelled to learn the rudiments of soldiery as early as 6:OO a.m.”24 A former student at Riverside School in Anadarko said that boarding school

. . .was really a military regime. . . . We marched everywhere, to the dining hall, to classes; everything we did was in military fashion. We were taught to make our beds in military fashion, you know, with square corners and sheets and blankets tucked in a special way. . . . On Sundays we had an inspection . . .just like the mi l i tar~?~

Those who stepped out of bounds were quickly disciplined. “Everything you do, you get punished,” recalled one student. “You’d get tired and get punished.”26 Correction ranged from stern lectures to draconian whippings. By far the most common sin was speaking Kiowa; getting caught meant extra drill duty, carrying stepladders on the shoulders for several hours, restriction from the school’s social events, or soapy teeth brushing. One Rainy Mountain student remembered being forced to hold quinine tablets in her mouth. Sometimes punishment was intended to humiliate. Rainy Mountain boys caught speaking Kiowa wore sandwich boards that read “I like girls.” At other schools boys wore dresses. Rainy Mountain girls sometimes stood face-first in corners until they spoke English.27

*‘Long Horn interview, T-62, 10, DDOH.

’*Fred Bigman interview, T-50,24, DDOH.

*)McKenzie to the author, 1 August 1990.

24McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987.

25McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 102-3.


27Long Horn interview, T-62, 10, DDOH; Mclleth, Etlinic Identify, 105; Ellis, To Change Then2 Forever, 105-11.


Efforts to suppress the Kiowa language rarely succeeded, however. Most of the children carried on conversations in Kiowa “when the matron ain’t listening,” said Myrtle Ware?g Despite punishment, McKenzie said, Kiowa “remained the dominant language away from the campus, particularly with the younger boys.”29 Kiowa was also used in the majority of Indian homes where children went for holiday vis- its and summer vacations.30

The most serious offense short of violence or sexual misconduct was running away. Runaways were often treated harshly and made examples to the other students. Captured and returned, runaways were usually whipped by male employees. These sessions were genuinely feared because they occasionally ran out of control. In 1891, for example, a teacher at the Kiowa School in Anadarko whipped two boys so savagely that they and a companion ran away and froze to death in a winter storm.3’ Annie Bigman recalled that “when they whip ‘em some would half kill them.”32 Commonly administered punishments also included paddlings, standing on tip-toe with arms outstretched, or walking with a ball and chain. Some schools locked children in darkened closets or forced boys to shave their heads and wear girl’s clothing.

In extreme cases Rainy Mountain students were arrested and subjected to the vile conditions of the Fort Sill stockade. In May 1895 Superintendent Cora Dunn wrote to the agent about “a case of most willful disobedience from this school.” The solu- tion, she observed,“is about thirty days in the guard house at the Agency.” Dunn left the final decision to the agent, but noted that the young man in question came from a family “that needs a good lesson.”33 Cases like this were rare, however, and most disciplinary problems were handled at the school.

Still, boys and girls alike tried to leave. Some were lonely, others were scared, and a few simply did not wish to stay in school. A Wichita girl who attended Riverside School in the second decade of this century said:

I don’t exactly know why, but I was all the time running away. There were two older girls who at the end of the week would say, “let’s go home.” And since I was the little

interview, T-76, 10, DDOH


MMcBeth, Ethnic Identity, 134-135.

’‘William T. Hagan, United States-Comanche Relations: The Reservotion Years (Norman, Okla., 1990), 196.

’*A. Bigman interview, T-57,18-19, DDOH.

”Dunn to Hugh Baldwin, 27 May 1895, HMS, OHS.

784 THE HISTORIAN

kid, I’d always say,“Okay.” . . . [M]y folks would just bring us back the next day. I don’t ever remember getting punished for that.34

James Haumpy ran away, he said, because the older boys were always trying to pick a fight with him.“I don’t fight,” he said,“you know how it is.” But when he discovered that the girls did not particularly like him, that was too much to take. “Young and got to go to school,” he said, “and some girls they don’t like you. That’s why I wanna go home.”35

Discipline might bring order, but the classroom was the real laboratory of change. There, said policymakers, Kiowa children would be molded into citizens free from the temptations of a wild life on the plains. At least that was the plan. The standard sixth-grade boarding school education rested mainly on the acquisition of vocational skills-farming and industrial arts for the boys, domestic training for the girls. To these were added lessons in the rudiments of history, grammar, arithmetic, civics, the English language, and the Christian religion. A boarding school education was intended to be a stepping stone from the reservation to an independent and self-sufficient life. It promised nothing more than that.36

Most experts agreed on the need to recognize limits. “The Indian needs a practical education,” opined the Most Reverend John Ireland in 1902. “It is well for him to know that he must live as a white man, and consequently he must learn to work.”

Teach the boys a trade of some kind, and teach them farming, which is, of course, the most important of all.. . . Teach the girls.. . . cooking, teach them neatness, teach them responsibility.. . . [Tleach them how to serve a nice appetizing meal for the family; do this and I tell you you have solved the whole question of Indian civili~ation.~’

A 1914 report from Superintendent James McGregor described a typical day at Rainy Mountain. Drilling and cleaning began at 6:OO a.m., and morning roll call came at 6:45. Breakfast followed from 7:OO to 7:30, after which students performed routine chores. Morning classes met from 8:OO to 5:OO with a one-hour lunch break

%McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 86-87,

35Haumpy interview, T-81,6, DDOH.

%K. Tsianina Lomawaima,“Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority Over Mind and Body,” American Ethnologist 20 (May 1993), 236-37; Frederick Hoxie, A Finn1 Promise: The Campaign to AssimilatetbeIndians, 1880-1920 (NewYork, 1989), 189-21 1.

”ARCIA, 1902,420-2 1; Ellis, To Chnnge ’171ern I:orewr, I I I - 16.


Rainy Mountain Indian School, ca. 1915. Dining hall, kitchen, bakery, and girls’ dorm. Parker McKenzie Coll.

“I was head teacher at the govt. Indian school almost a year. (Kiowa girls)” December 1910. Photo by Mamye Blakely.

786 THE HISTONAN

Kiowa Indians playing marbles. Mrs. John R. Williams Coll.

Rainy Mountain Indian School’s bakers’class, ca. 1914-1915. Sister Nellie on lower right; she died August 1917. Parker McKenzie Coll.


Rainy Mountain Indian School principal, Mr. McGregor (left), and Mr. Wolf (right), with track team. Post card printed between 1910 and 1918.

at noon. Supper was served at 6:IO. There were numerous evening socials as well as lectures on topics ranging from the humane treatment of animals to patriotism. Evening roll call came at 215 for small pupils, 8:OO for the older ones. At 9:OO it was lights out. Weekends brought a respite of sorts. Saturday mornings were devoted to work from 8:OO to 11:00, but afternoons were free. On alternate weekends chaperoned groups could go to nearby Gotebo or to Boake’s Trading Post. The Sabbath meant Sunday school from 1O:OO a.m. to noon, recreation and free time for much of the afternoon, and church service from 5:OO to 6:15. Church attendance was mandatory; one Kiowa girl recalled that “you went to church; there was no not going.”38

Between 1894 and 1910 there were two divisions of classes, kindergarten through third grade and fourth through sixth grade. After 1910 the academic program was divided into three parts: kindergarten through second grade, third and fourth grades, and fifth and sixth grades. And in 1916 a redesigned curriculum designated schools as either pre-vocational or vocational; reservation boarding schools charac- terized the former, off-reservation boarding schools the latter. As a pre-vocational school Rainy Mountain offered a wide variety of training classes suitable for the age

%Rainy Mountain School Calendar, 1913-1914, KMS, OHS; McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 100

788 THE HISTORIAN

and experience of its students. First, second, and third graders concentrated on lessons in music, manners, health, arithmetic, and some limited vocational skills described by the Indian Office as “industrial work.” Instruction in reading, grammar, and spelling rounded out the academic day. Beginning with the fourth grade academic skills were scaled back in favor of more intensive vocational instruction. Academic training in the fourth grade, for example, consisted of 145 minutes a day of instruction in reading, history, geography, and other topics; vocational work, however, took up 240 minutes.39

It sounded fine in theory, but in reality, poor facilities and a lack of teachers meant that Rainy Mountain rarely offered a complete curriculum. In September 1915 an inspector reported that due to “the lack of facilities and of sufficient . . . employees, little in the way of systematic instruction can be given.”40 Moreover, the chronic lack of teachers meant that classes were enormously overcrowded. In December 1912 attendance stood at 146, but the school employed only two academic teachers plus an industrial teacher. Forty-seven percent of the student body (67 pupils) were in the first grade, and 28 percent (41 pupils) were second and third graders. Thus, 110 of 146 students attended grades one through three with one full- time teacher. In September 1913 the situation was largely the same. With 108 students on campus (soon to top off at 166), 85 pupils were assigned to the first grade with one full-time teacher, a situation described by the agent as “somewhat difficult.” Even when Rainy Mountain got teachers, it could not retain them. Between 1895 and 1902 it had no fewer than fifteen different teachers, and another dozen came and went between 1915 and 1917.41

Academic progress in Rainy Mountain’s crowded conditions was glacial. Parker McKenzie remembered many boys well into their teens who had advanced only to the second or third grade despite five or six years of i n s t r ~ c t i o n . ~ ~ A 1915 insyec- tion report revealed that 10 percent of the school’s first and second graders had been at Rainy Mountain for as long as seven years. One of the chief problems was the language ba1-rier.4~ Teachers insisted that English be used exclusively, which cre- ated an especially grueling transition for very young pupils, many of whom were so

39ARCIA, 1916,9-23.

40Quarterly Report for Indian Schools, December 1912, RMS, OHS.

“Cat0 Sells to Ernest Stecker, 15 February 15,1913, RMS, OHS; Dunn to Stecker, Septeniber 1,1901, W S , OHS; C. V. Stinchecum to Sells, 5 January 1917, Kiowa Agency Classified Files, 1907-1909, Record Group 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

42McKenzie to the author, 1 August 1990.

43C. F. Hauke to Stecker, 10 March 1915, RMS, OHS; McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987.

BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AT THE KIOWA-COMANCHE AGENCY, 1 8 9 3 - 1 9 2 0 789

frightened that according to McKenzie they “just clammed up.” McKenzie remembered his own introduction to the English language and chuckled at his confusion. To demonstrate the use of articles his teacher placed a boy’s hat on a stool and said that it could be “a” hat, or “the” hat. “Some of us were puzzled,” said McKenzie, “because she was seeing two hats where we only saw one. . . . How she managed to get it across to us still mystifies me.”44 Bigman said that learning English was one of the most difficult tasks he faced. “Boy, I had a hard time,” he said. “When they start talking English I don’t know what they are talking about.” Once, when called to the board for spelling and grammar exercises, he panicked.

[Tlhat teacher told me to come up to the blackboard, write something on it. I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t know what she said. So I ask a guy.. . what’d she say. . . . ‘She said for you to run out.’ Boy I jumped up and grabbed my cap and away I went. I went plumb back to our boy’s building.

Bigman eventually progressed “to where I got to learn to talk English pretty good. Wasn’t extra good.” Looking back on the experience, he said, ‘‘I had a hard time. . . . Oh, it was painful.”45

Students occasionally received unexpected language lessons. One young boy’s first exposure to English came from the school’s farmer. As he watched the man har- nessing uncooperative animals, the youngster heard the farmer scowl “stand still,” a command emphasized with several obscenities. Asked to share his beginning knowledge of English in class later that day, the youngster enthusiastically repeated “Stand still, you-son-of-a-bitch!” The teacher, apparently, was not amused.46

Because many students took several years to attain even minimal English fluency, academic training remained remedial at best. When asked if she remembered any of the classes she took in school, Sarah Long Horn said no. She commented at length, however, on her vocational training. “That’s where I got all my work, my neatness and my sewing, most of my cooking, things like that, because we stay there and do all that work.”47 Myrtle Ware’s memory of the classroom was that her teacher taught them “how to write and sing and read and spell. . . . At a certain time you go to

44 McKenzie to the author, 1 August 1990.

45F. Bigman interview, T-50,24, DDOH.

&Eric Lassiter interview, Greensboro, NC, 16 March 1993.

“Long Horn interview, T-62,8-9, DDOH.

790 THE HISTO~UAN

school, you know, so many hours, and then you’re out to work so many hours, She spent much of her time working in the laundry, where she was eventu-

ally hired as an assistant matron. William Lone Wolf, said “mostly they teach us how to work. . . I learn to work there.”49 Students from the reservation’s other schools made similar comments. “We were taught practical things such as sewing and cooking, laundry and how to care for a family,” said one student. “All the things we learned were things we needed to know for our immediate living.”50 Others regret- ted not getting more academic training. “It didn’t take me long to realize how far behind I was,” noted a former Fort Sill student. “I had a little math and science . . . compared to those who attended public s~hool.”~’ One Riverside student lamented the lack of academic instruction; another Fort Sill student said, “I don’t think it was good because it was really academically inferior to the public school.”52

Thankfully there was more to school life than the vocational training that dom- inated students’ lives. A wide variety of extra-curricular activities, including reading circles, cooking clubs, lectures, bible study, and sports, offered welcome relief from the school routine. Most holidays were celebrated to encourage patriotism, and the Indian Office regularly issued guidelines reminding the schools to observe apyro- priate holidays. Christmas was especially important, for it included a week‘s vaca- tion, during which children were allowed to go home. There was also an annual Christmas dinner, complete with turkey (or pork when the budget was tight) and small gifts. Halloween, New Year’s Day, and Easter (“which was the only time 1 ever saw eggs,” said Parker McKenzie) were also ~e lebra ted .~~

The school band was an especially popular diversion. Cora Dunn started the band in the late 1890s because she believed music played an integral role in the introduction of Angloamerican culture at Indian schools. In her opinion, no other aspect of the curriculum was as effective in the intellectual and moral elevation of the pupils. “I attend personally to the instruction of the music pupils,” she wrote,

“Ware interview, T-76,3,5, DDOH.

‘%Villiam Lone Wolf interview, T-42,8, DIIOH.

McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 92.

511bid, 93.

52McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 93; Clyde Ellis, “‘A Remedy For Barbarism’: Indian Schools, the Civilizing Program, and the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation, 187 I - 1915,” American fndian Culture and Research Journal 18 (1994): 85-120.

53Parker McKenzie interview, Mountain View, Oklahoma, 1 August 1990; Morgan to Indian Agents and Superintendents of Indian Schools, 22 October 1891, KMS, OHS; Adams, Education For Ixfinction, 191 -206.


“and find them more enthusiastic and responsive in this than in any other branch of study? The band proved a huge success. “The proficiency of the Rainy Mountain band is a matter of pride and no school influence has contributed more to the advancement of the pupils,” she wrote in 1907.55 Indeed, students eagerly participated and showed impressive talent. McKenzie said that Dunn produced “won- derful school bands from fourteen to twenty-year olds who learned to play the masterpieces even before some mastered the fourth grade.”56

Rainy Mountain also sponsored athletic teams for both sexes. Like the band, they were a source of school pride and offered a welcome occasion to get away from campus. Cora Dunn supported sports and always included athletic equipment in her annual budget requests. Baseball games against neighboring reservation schools and local teams began as early as 1902. “The boys are taking great interest in playing ball this year,” she reported that year, “and have arranged match games with the ball clubs of the surrounding towns.”57 Girls also participated and around 1910 began their own basketball team.58

The school’s failure to eradicate the Kiowa language occasionally paid interest- ing dividends at athletic events. One Kiowa who attended the predominantly Comanche Fort Sill School in the 1930s remembered lingering around the line of scrimmage when his team played the predominantly Kiowa Riverside School team. After eavesdropping on the plays being called in Kiowa in the Riverside huddle he would translate them into English for his teammates. Sixty years later he still slapped his knee at the thought of fooling the Riverside team. For once, he said, “it was okay to talk Kiowa.”59

Finally, a rich and closely guarded unofficial life kept students busy. Although school administrators tried to regulate all student activity, the children inevitably found ways to get around the controls. On one level the activities simply maintained a level of autonomy. James Silverhorn said that in the evening “the boys used to all

% u n n to D. W. Browning, 19 December 1895. RMS, OHS.

55Dunn to John Blackrnon, April 25, 1907, KMS, OHS.

%McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987; McKenzie interview, 1 August 1990.

57Dunn to Randlett, April 23, 1902, RMS, OHS.

58“Lewis Toyebo Birthday.”

59Harry Tofpi interview, Shawnee, Okla., 6 August 1990.

792 THE HISTOKIAN

go up on the hill-up on Rainy Mountain and stay up there until supper time. Just to take a walk.”@ Likewise, clandestine conversations in Kiowa preserved an important measure of identity. Other activities combined mischievousness with a deter- mination to be independent. Parker McKenzie recalled late night kitchen raids when students would break into the dining hall after “gravy day,” fill their hats with gravy and biscuits and then sneak back to their rooms for a feast. On mornings when there was a heavy frost or rare snow fall, older boys sometimes “borrowed” the fire escape ladders and dashed to the top of Rainy Mountain for a ride down that was as exciting as it was dangerous?’

When Rainy Mountain closed in 1920, it left a contradictory legacy of simulta- neous success and failure. Cutting Kiowa students’ hair, dressing them in uniforms, and teaching them to farm or bake did not erase their cultural identity. Administrators underestimated the ability of Indian people to adapt to changing cultural patterns; instead of destroying Kiowa culture, schools like Rainy Mountain paved the way for a new sense of identity that fit as comfortably as possible into the social and economic realities of the twentieth century. Rainy Mountain produced students who learned English but retained Kiowa, combined non-Indian values with their own, and took jobs in the white community without becoming wholly part of it. There was a middle ground, and Kiowa students often found it. As one Fort Sill graduate put it,“I know who I am: I am a Kiowa. No school could ever take that away from me.”62

Yet despite its numerous limitations, Rainy Mountain’s programs enabled most students to make their way in the world outside the campus. It was not a perfect education, and it was not what the students had been promised, but it helped ease the transition from the life their parents had known to the one they faced.“If it had- n’t been for Rainy Mountain School, I probably would not be typing this account,” wrote Parker McKenzie. “Despite the hardships we encountered there, they were

60James Silverhorn interview, 28 September 1967, T- 146,4, DDOH.

“McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987; Lomawainia, They Called It Prairie Light, 95-96,98, 128-29.

62SiIverhorn interview, T-146,1, DDOH; E Bignian interview, T-50,1, DDOH; Eric Lassiter, “ ‘They Left US These Songs.. .That’s All We Got Left Now’: The Significance of Music in the Kiowa Gourd Dance and its Relation to Native American Continuity,” in Native Americati Values: Survival arid Renewal, ed. Thomas Shirer and Susan M. Branstner (Sault Ste. Marie, 1993). 378-79; McBeth, “Indian Schools and Ethnic Identity: An Example From the Southern Plains Tribes of Oklahoma,” Plains Anthropologist 28 (Spring 1983): 120; Michael Coleman, “The Symbiotic Embrace: American Indians, White Educators and the School, 1820s- 1920s.” Hislory o/Educafiori 25 (1996): 1-18,


well worth the time. . , . It provided us the opportunity for an education, though rudimentary for most of us.”63 And McKenzie, who spent nearly 40 years as a Bureau of Indian Affairs employee, never gave up his Kiowa identity. He originated and perfected a written system for the Kiowa language and became a prominent tribal historian.

Other students carried similar memories away from the school. “But I really did, I really did like that school,” said Sarah Long Horn. “I’m always thankful that I went to that school because that’s lots of things that I had . . . learned from that place.”64 On his 90th birthday Lewis Toyebo told his descendants that he had “fond memories [ of Rainy Mountain]. . . . I now see the Kiowa people have made rapid progress from the tipi to the halls of higher education. . . . That was the wish and prayer of our ancestors who have gone on.” Most important of all, Toyebo and others knew that while Rainy Mountain Kiowa gave Kiowa children a rudimentary academic education, it was not at the cost of what made them Kiowa.”

Standing in the road that runs past Rainy Mountain, it is impossible to recognize the remains of the campus. Save for the tumbledown remains of a few buildings, the school that an inspector once called the pride of the Indian Service is gone. But there is more to this place than the windswept emptiness of the Southern Plains; the mountain is there, an enduring landmark for generations of Kiowas. In the words of N. Scott Momaday, Rainy Mountain represents a vital thread in Kiowa culture- “a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit, which endures.”66 To this day it remains a powerful force in the Kiowa community. Most living Kiowas had relatives who went to the school, roamed its campus, were molded by its forces. People regularly visit the mountain to cut sage and cedar, and to take a curious peek at the school’s remains.

For many people the trip is akin to a pilgrimage. Visitors invariably talk about the school and what it must have been like for the grandmothers, great-uncles, cousins, or parents who went there. They speak with reverence about those people and what happened a century ago in a lonely corner of a vast reservation. The Kiowa people have never forgotten that place; they venerate its memory, and they celebrate the survival of their people in the midst of a troubling time.

6’McKenzie to Hurst, 23 October 1987.

MLong Horn interview, T-62,14, DDOH.

65‘‘Lewis Toyebo Birthday.

&N. Scott Momaday, The Way To Rainy Mounmiri (Albuquerque, 1993), 4.

Italy in the Fourteenth Century

Documents

BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AT THE KIOWA-COMANCHE AGENCY, 1893–1920