Employees/Extending the reach of the Bureau

This photo was taken from the book titled "Rapid City Indian School"
The superintendants were the school's public face. They were the most publicly visible members of its staff. They represented the school to Rapid City residents, businesses, and civic organizations, spoke to reservation officials, corresponded with parents and traveled to reservations to meet prospective students. It spoke of the reputation of Chauncey Yellow Robe, a native american, who graduated from Carlisle Indian School. He was employed at the Rapid City Indian in 1904 as an industrial teacher and was later advanced to disciplinarian. Mr Yellow Robe represented both the Indian past, rooted rooted in political and economic dependence, and one possible future, economic and social assimilation. He told of his struggles to maintain his employment status along with raising his two daughters as a single father. He was an excellent role model for the make students at the school, over the superintendents.
There were a total of 31 employees at the Indian School attending to a total of 250 to 300 children. Work at the school was year round; as a government institution with a stable budget, the school offered its work force, whites and Indians alike,, a level of job security unknown in the private sector. Nine of the thirty one employees were Indians. The titles held in these positions were: seamstress, assistant positions, shoe and harness maker, industrial teacher, cook, baker, laundress, financial clerk, the physician, matron and four teachers. Superintendent House not only avoided hiring women with children, but also preferred not to employ parents who had children attending the school. "Parents naturally want to exercise authority over their own children, and resent in a measure the authority exercised by a school, if same is done in their immediate presence", he stated to the commissioner of Indian Affairs. It is quite frequent to run into problems between the parent and the other employees when they come into contact with their children.
The employees most successful at the school were those who internalized the value and mission of the school.

When Rapid City Indian School opened 1898, Indian children attended day schools, reservation baording schools, and off reservation schools under threat of force, represented by reservation superintendents and Indian police. Hostile to Indian cultures adn suspicious of Indian parents, neither officials in Washington nor BIA employees in the field trusted Indian parents and children to see the value of government education. Rather than address Indian concerns, educators enforced their conviction that they knew what was right for Indians with the disciplinarian's strap and the school and agency jails.

Dollars, No Sense

Cycles of Days and Years/Discipline, punishment and violence

This picture is taken from the book titled Rapid City Indian school. In this section of the book, it talked about the different types of events that take place in and around the school that the children and their families are allowed to take part in. On June 25, 1904 Indians from reservations in South Dakota and Montana began arriving at Rapid City for the "Council of Nations," a political and social gathering of northern tribes meeting under the guise of celebrating the Fourth of July. The celebration was a fine day for Indians and towns people alike which begin with a grand parade in the morning, with students of the Rapid City Indian school leading the way. The afternoon festivites included games for all ages with prizes (gifts) donated by businesses houses and others. Although Indians and whites alike participated in the fourth of july, they did not always agree on the celebration's meanings. For the whites, the day celebrated nationhood adn the achievements of their state and municipality. For the indians, it provided an opportunity to voice the concerns of the gathered tribes and remind whites of their treaty obligations and to call on them to share the wealth flowing out of the Black Hills.

The school year began on a variety of schedules. Children typically worked a half day at tasks that the BIA defined as vocational training but were in fact routine work necessary to keep the school running and attended academic classes the other half day. The daily routine resembled that of a basic training in the military. The students rose early to the sound of a bell, in between rising and breakfast they made their beds, washed up, dressed and brought their beds, lockers, and clothing to military standards of perfection. Students with early morning duties, such as milking cows or working in the mess hall, rose earlier and had less time to prepare before going to work. After breakfast, students had a few minutes to return to their dormitories before going on work details or going to class. By lunch time, the student' day was nearly over as they switched activities in the afternoon, and those who studied in teh morning went on afternoon work details. Only after a late supper did students have time to themselves, when they could catch up on shining shoes, repairing clothes, and all other "personal maintenance." The school offered sports for the children to take part in such as, basketball, football, which also brought about team competition with surrounding schools. Most but not all of the Rapid City students had summer vacations. All had the opportunity to go home at government expense at the end of their three year terms of enlistment at the school. Those runaways were forced to stay through the summer as a form of punishment.
Some of the methods of punishment might have been taken from army practice. Running away was also physically dangerous for the students as most were too far away from their home reservations to venture out in the prarie by themselves. The winters were to dangerous as it brought about dangers such as frost bite and sickness so severe that caused amputation.
The "real dangers" of military descipline lay in the disrupted lives of students who did not flourish under the system.
The school's harsh discipline and inadequate supervision had lifelong consequences.

Curriculum

I retrieved this image from google images. The photo is the girls' basketball teams at the 1929 tournament at the Rapid City Indian School. The Bismarck Indian school team is front and center in the white sweat shirts, witht he Rapid City team above them in the top two rows. The teams on the left and right are the Pine Ridge and Pierre Indian School teams, but it is not clear which is which.
Language was a critical issue at federal indian boarding schools. First and foremost, the BIA wanted indian children to be taught the english language. The Commissioner J.D.C Atkins stated " the first step to be taken toward civilization, toward teaching the Indians the mischief and foly of continuing in their barbarous practices, is to teach them the English language." He concluded by saying that the content of American civilization and citizenship could not be transmitted through Indian languages but only through English.
The school employed two teachers, one instructing young students and one the older students. The school had an enrollment of 80 students. The curriculum consisted of what was called the half and half schedule. This is where the students and teachers had a half a day to cover material that took a full day in the public schools. The schedule seriously retarded laerning. Any added time needed for instruction was to come out of the students' free time. The meriam report called for the outright elimination of the half and half schedule for the first six grades. To provide the indian children with opportunities at least comparable to the white children, they needed full time schooling with time for play and recreation through age fourteen. Unfortunately the elimination of the half and half schedule could not be eliminated due to the lack of funding, time and little or no support of the BIA; Rapid City Indian school remained on the half and half schedule. Student labor was up and running with the other half of the school day being spent learning hands on instruction. The instruction included sewing for the girls and shoe and harness making for the boys. Because students spent much of their time doing such "productive" labor, they learned far less than they might have in their academic subjects.