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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Samuel M. Cart, superintendent of the recently opened federal boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sat down at his desk in September 1891 to write the commissioner of Indian affairs regarding his recent recruiting tour through the pueblos under his jurisdiction. The recruiting trip was in preparation for the first full school year of Santa Fe Indian School's (SFIS's) existence. Though Cart had only recently arrived, his would-be pupils belonged to communities who had lived in the region for over millennia. The Pueblos among whom Cart had just traveled had established successful agricultural committees in the arid region and developed complex social and cultural means to order and influence the world that Cart's countryman now called the American Southwest. And for generations, they had educated their children in order that their communities would survive. Now Cart, and men and women like him, had traveled to the Southwest to convince the Pueblos (and other Native American groups) that their way of life was inferior, their social–cultural complex was immoral, and their methods for educating their children were insufficient.
1 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 11 September 1891; vol. 2, 263–67 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1473, roll 1); Bureau of Indian Affairs Records Created by the SFIS, 1890–1918, Record Group 75; National Archives and Records Administration – Rocky Mountain Region (Denver). Henceforth known as M1473. In this article, I use “Pueblo” when referring to people and “pueblo” when referring to the communities.Google Scholar
2 Readers should begin by consulting Dozier, Edward, The Pueblo Indians of North America (New York: Waveland Press, 1983) and Sando, Joe, Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo History (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishing, 1992). Dozier's book is more technical, while Sando's work is intended for a more popular audience. Also, Dozier writes as an anthropologist, while Sando writes as a historian; thus their questions and concerns differ. Alfonso Ortiz's The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969) is also helpful, though it focuses on the pueblo of San Juan as a case study.Google Scholar
3 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 11 September 1891; vol. 2, 263–67 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
4 Ibid.Google Scholar
5 Ibid.Google Scholar
6 Ibid.Google Scholar
7 Ibid.Google Scholar
8 Cathleen Cahill does an excellent job of showing how government personnel in the Indian Service shaped, supported, or resisted federal policy through their daily interactions with the Native American population. Policymakers and bureaucrats in the East had no guarantee that either the letter or the spirit of their instructions would be carried out in the field. Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).Google Scholar
9 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 11 September 1891; vol. 2, 263–67 (M1473, roll 1)Google Scholar
10 Ibid.Google Scholar
11 Ibid.Google Scholar
12 For a helpful introduction to Lummis, see the chapter entitled “Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Fight for the Multicultural Southwest” in Smith, Sherry L., Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 It is difficult to recreate the interactions between AIS and local Catholic influences with the surviving records, but what little does survive suggests a similar pattern to that of SFIS. The general pattern of relations with Catholic influences for SFIS moved from hostility and direct competition toward eventual cooperation, though the occasional confrontation still occurred. The limited AIS records seem to follow the same pattern.Google Scholar
14 McKinney, Lillie G., “History of Albuquerque Indian School,” New Mexico Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1945): 109–38, 123–24.Google Scholar
15 I focus more directly on Pueblo agency in their relationships with AIS and SFIS in my larger work: Gram, John, Education at the Edge of Empire: Negotiating Pueblo Identity in New Mexico's Indian Boarding Schools (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2015). Much of this article is drawn from the second chapter of that book.Google Scholar
16 The literature on federal Indian schools is too vast to mention in full here. Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995); K. Tsianina Lomawaima, They Called It Prairie Light (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995); and Trennert, Robert, The Phoenix Indian School (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988) remain seminal older works in the field. Some of the more important recent works include the following: Child, Brenda J., Boarding School Seasons (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000); Vuckovic, Myriam, Voices From Haskell: Indian Students Between Two Worlds, 1884–1928 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2008); Fear-Segal, Jacqueline, White Man's Club (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); and Gilbert, Matthew Sakiestewa, Education Beyond the Mesas (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). Each of the works previously mentioned deals with off-reservation boarding schools, the same category in which the two schools mentioned in this article fall. Those wishing to study in on-reservation boarding schools should still start with the following: McBeth, Sally, Ethnic Identity and the Boarding School Experience (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), as well as Ellis, Clyde, To Change Them Forever (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). In the words of Adrea Lawrence, the government-run day schools “remain a mystery to be uncovered.” Sadly, her Lessons From an Indian Day School (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2011) remains one of the few scholarly inquiries into the operations of these important institutions. Finally, those wishing to understand the Catholic experience with Indian education should still begin with the works of Francis Prucha, in particular American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976) and Churches and the Indian Schools (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1979).Google Scholar
17 AIS was actually founded in 1881 by Presbyterians five years earlier, with the understanding that the federal government would eventually take over operations, which it did in 1886.Google Scholar
18 This was a holdover from the Grant Peace Policy under which the federal government contracted with religious groups to run mission schools to educate Indian children. As the federal government began running its own schools, it canceled almost all of these contracts. Eventually, St. Catherine lost its government funding, but survived due to the personal fortune of Katherine Drexel who joined the order of nuns that ran St. Catherine and used her wealth to keep it open. Between 1907 and 1932, St. Catherine enrollment remained in excess of 250 students on a yearly basis. My information on St. Catherine comes almost exclusively from the excellent dissertation by Collier, Brian, “St. Catherine Indian School, Santa Fe, 1887–2006: Catholic Indian Education in New Mexico” (PhD dissertation, Arizona State University, 2006).Google Scholar
19 See, for example, Cashman, Sean Dennis, America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 97–98; Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 57–58. Further complicating the debate of Catholic involvement in education was the fact that sometimes the Catholic instructors themselves were first-generation immigrants. See the work of Carroll, James, “Self-Direction, Activity, and Syncretism: Catholic Boarding Schools on the Northern Great Plains in Contact” U.S. Catholic Historian, 16, no. 2 Native American Catholics (Spring 1998): 78–89. Consult also his larger manuscript covering the same four mission schools examined in that article, Seeds of Faith: Catholic Indian Boarding Schools (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000).Google Scholar
20 This direct pitting of nearby schools against each other may have been practiced by other Indian groups, but it has not been well explored in the existing literature. Scott Riney rives one example of parents pitting the nearby reservation school against the Rapid City off-reservation school. Riney, Scott, The Rapid City Indian School, 1898–1933 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 32–34.Google Scholar
21 I say “minimal” Mexican attempts mostly because Mexico largely ignored its northern frontier during this period due to its preoccupation with political troubles in the center of the country. See Pueblo historian Sando, Joe, Pueblo Nations (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishing, 1992) for an excellent overview of Pueblo history through the present, including very helpful overviews of their experiences with both Spain and Mexico. In my opinion, Weber's, David The Spanish Frontier in North American (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) and The Mexican Frontier (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1982) remain the best introductory works to the Southwest region as a whole during these time periods. Though they fall beyond the scope of this study, it is also worth noting that the Pueblos faced other significant attempts at American assimilation during this period besides school, in particular the attempted suppression of Pueblo dances and the attempted passing of the Bursum Bill. Wenger, Tisa, We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) is an excellent introduction to the controversies surrounding Pueblo dances. Another excellent introduction to the controversy surrounding the Pueblo dances is Margaret Jacobs's “Making Savages of Us All: White Women, Pueblo Indians, and the Controversy Over Indian Dances in the 1920s,” in American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to Present, eds. Hoxie, Frederick E., Mancall, Peter C., and Merrell, James H. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 172–98. Consult Joe Sando, Pueblo Nations, 114–19, for a brief overview of the Bursum Bill.Google Scholar
22 Collier, “St. Catherine,” 55.Google Scholar
23 In fact, Catholics complained not only about the Protestant nature of federal boarding schools for Indian students, but of public education in general. Catholic leaders felt that even the supposedly secular public schools still harbored Protestant bias through such methods as anti-Catholic history textbooks and the use of the King James Version of the Bible, a thoroughly Protestant translation. Thomas, George, Peck, Lisa, and de Haan, Channin, “Reforming Education, Transforming Religion, 1876–1931,” in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life, ed. Smith, Christian (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 360.Google Scholar
24 Salpointe, J. B., archbishop of Santa Fe, “Catholic Church and the Indians of New Mexico,” Texas Monitor, Folder 4 (Newspaper clippings, 1883–1885); Bryan, Richard W. D. Family Papers, Center for Southwest Research, General Library, University of New Mexico. Henceforth known as Bryan Papers. Of course, Presbyterian support for the school ended when the government formally assumed control in 1886.Google Scholar
25 Pamphlet attached to Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1 May 1903; vol. 3,347 (M1473, roll 18).Google Scholar
26 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 10 September 1908; vol. 10, 92 (M1473, roll 21).Google Scholar
27 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 27 August 1892; vol. 3, 440–50 (M1473, roll 2).Google Scholar
28 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 18 August 1893; vol. 4, 317–24 (M1473, roll 3).Google Scholar
29 McKinney, “History of Albuquerque Indian School,” 124.Google Scholar
30 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 17 January 1908; vol. 9, 177 (M1473, roll 5).Google Scholar
31 The superintendents of AIS and SFIS did try to undermine the Catholic schools from time to time, though. For example, in a letter to Hoyt, Esther B., the teacher at the government day school at San Ildefonso, Crandall writes: “You may enroll any children in the pueblo under 12 years of age, even if members of St. Katherine Indian School.” Crandall to Hoyt, 20 September 1904; vol. 20, 319 (M1473, roll 8). If there was a consistent logic as to when Crandall or other superintendents would or would not enroll children from the Catholic schools, it is not evidence in their official correspondence.Google Scholar
32 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 28 July 1890; vol. 1, 113–14 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
33 Cart to Rev. Robert Goltman, 5 September 1891; vol. 2, 256 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
34 Of course, the extent to which these communities were “Catholic” and what Catholicism meant to these communities is a topic well beyond the bounds of this article. Interestingly, even some of the superintendents struggled to understand to what extent their Pueblo students were Catholic. For example, writing to the commissioner of Indian affairs in 1907, Superintendent Crandall (SFIS) noted that “Out of the 117 girls [in attendance here] 101 are Catholic – I mean nominally Catholic, many of them are not properly confirmed in the church nor never are for that matter, but they are recognized as Catholics.” Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 4 May 1907; vol. 8, 148 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
35 This system of weekly instruction remained unchanged through the period under study here.Google Scholar
36 Dozier, Edward, “Spanish-Catholic Influences on Rio Grande Pueblo Religion,” American Anthropologist 60, no. 3 (1958): 441–48. Cited in Frank, Ross, From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750–1820 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 January 1902; vol. 2, 234 (M1473, roll 17).Google Scholar
38 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 17 January 1908; vol. 9, 177 (M1473, roll 20).Google Scholar
39 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 7 August 1908; vol. 10, 50 (M1473, roll 21).Google Scholar
40 Wenger, Tisa, We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 55.Google Scholar
41 DeHuff to the Mother Superior, St. Catherine, 1 March 1919; Folder 387; Santa Fe Indian School, 1890–1935, Record Group 75; National Archives and Records Administration – Rocky Mountain Region (Denver). Henceforth referred to as SFIS 41.Google Scholar
42 Diaries of John David DeHuff; Elizabeth Willis DeHuff Family Papers, Center for Southwest Research, General Library, University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
43 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 January 1902; vol. 2, 234 (M1473, roll 17).Google Scholar
44 Crandall to Reverend Barnabas Meyers, 25 November 1907; vol. 28, 73 (M1473, roll 12).Google Scholar
45 Trennert, Robert A., Jr., Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891–1935 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 36.Google Scholar
46 Ibid., 39–40.Google Scholar
47 Ibid., 64.Google Scholar
48 Crandall to CW Goodman, 21 November 1908; vol. 30, p. 161 (M1473, roll 13).Google Scholar
49 Vuckovic, Voices From Haskell, 33.Google Scholar
50 Crandall to Pedro Cajete, 25 July 1904; vol. 20, p. 100 (M1473, roll 8). Cajete was actually from Santa Clara Pueblo, perhaps adding insult to injury for Crandall. See Lawrence, Lessons From an Indian Day School, 185–86.Google Scholar
51 Trennert, Phoenix Indian School, 97.Google Scholar
52 Crandall to McChesney, 11 October 1911; vol. 36, p. 382 (M1473, roll 16).Google Scholar
53 For example, see Lawrence, Lessons From an Indian Boarding School, 162–163 for a discussion of such a conflict between Clara True (teacher at Santa Clara day school) and Clinton J. Crandall of SFIS.Google Scholar
54 This University of New Mexico is not the same as the state school that now holds that name. The two institutions are not related in any way. The state forced the first University of New Mexico to relinquish this name in order to use it for the state school. Collier, “St. Catherine Indian School,” 70.Google Scholar
55 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 26 August 1891; vol. 2, p. 244 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
56 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 October 1891: vol. 2, 364–65 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
57 Cart to Robert G. Marmon, 31 October 1891; vol. 3, 375–76 (M1473, roll 2).Google Scholar
58 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 21 October 1891; vol. 2, 263–67 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
59 Ibid.Google Scholar
60 Ibid.Google Scholar
61 Ibid.Google Scholar
62 Ibid.Google Scholar
63 Ibid.Google Scholar
64 Ibid.Google Scholar
65 Jones to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 15 July 1895; vol. 6, 141–44 (M1473, roll 3).Google Scholar
66 Jones to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1 July 1896; vol. 6, p. 393 (M1473, roll 3).Google Scholar
67 Jones to McKoin, 8 November 1894; vol. 38, p. 395 (M1473, roll 16).Google Scholar
68 From Perry to Farris, Special Supervisor in Charge, Southern Pueblo Agency, 23 September 1924; Folder 806.3; AIS 29.Google Scholar
69 Blair to Towers, Southern Pueblo Agency, 17 August 1934; Folder 823; AIS 29.Google Scholar
70 Hyer, Sally, “Remembering Santa Fe Indian School,” (PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1994), 126–27.Google Scholar
71 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 2 January 1891; vol. 1, 334–35 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
72 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 August 1891; vol. 2, p. 246 (M1473, roll 1).Google Scholar
73 Cart to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 10 September 1892; vol. 3, p. 480 (M1473, roll 2).Google Scholar
74 Harrison to Creager, 14 September 1893; vol. 5, p. 193 (M1473, roll 3).Google Scholar
75 Crandall to Mother Superior, St. Catherine Indian School, 27 October 1910; vol. 34; p. 254 (M1473, roll 15).Google Scholar
76 Jones to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 7 July 1898; vol. 8, 228–29 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
77 Jones to Superintendent of Haskell Institute, 26 February 1898; vol. 8, p. 75 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
78 Cart to Creager, 14 October 1892; vol. 5, p. 13 (M1473, roll 3).Google Scholar
79 Jones to Allen, 9 September 1897; vol. 7, p. 331 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
80 Jones to Allen, 16 September 1897; vol. 7, 339–40 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
81 Crandall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 August 1902; vol. 3, p. 66 (M1473, roll 18).Google Scholar
82 Rev. Meindert van der Beek to Perry, 23 July 1926; Folder 801; AIS 29.Google Scholar
83 Perry to van der Beek, 2 August 1926; Folder 801; AIS 29.Google Scholar
84 DeHuff to Hestor Naranjo, 3 November 1925; Folder 805; AIS 29.Google Scholar
85 Ibid.Google Scholar
86 For example, this rant taken from his diary entry for 8 March 1926: “I never saw such a pack of dammed fools as the outfit I am working for. I haven't had a happy day since I entered the God-dammed Indian Service and I wish it were all in hell, or that I was 10–15 years younger than what I am, so that I might get out.”Google Scholar
87 Jones to Capt. Nordstrorm U.S. Army, 21 September 1897; vol. 7, 348–49 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
88 Crandall to Henry Grant, 4 January 1911; vol. 34, p. 466 (M1473, roll 15).Google Scholar
89 Jones to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 26 October 1896; vol. 6, 252–53 (M1473, roll 3). In relation to a separate incident he wrote to a Catholic nun at St. Catherine that “It is full time that these Indians be forced to learn what they can and what they cannot do, after the vast expenditures made for them.” Jones to Sister Mary Envangelist, 22 September 1897; vol. 7, p. 355 (M1473, roll 4).Google Scholar
90 Ibid.Google Scholar