Remembering Indian Boarding School Days

MOURNING DOVE, A Salishan Autobiography (1990)

Okanogan Indian Christine Quintasket, or Mourning Dove, experienced the effects of America’s Native American policies in the late nineteenth century, a period she writes about in her autobiography, published half a century after her death. By the time of her birth in the mid-1880s, those policies rejected earlier efforts to concentrate Native Americans onto reservations. With the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, the federal government’s new aim was to eradicate “the Indian” within Native Americans. By discouraging reservations, where tribes had been able to maintain native languages and customs, the new policy hoped to “Americanize” them. Part of that effort led to an Indian boarding school movement where Native Americans were taught English, forced to adopt non-native clothes and customs, and made to live apart from their extended families.

Although Mother continued persistently to give me my ancient education with the help of my native teacher, she was also a fanatically religious Catholic. We never missed mass or church unless it was absolutely necessary. If church was not scheduled at the little mission below our cabin, then we “pilgrimed” to Goodwin Mission to attend church. Winter and summer, she never failed to make her confession and communion on the first Friday of every month. To her mind, and that of many of the early converts, the word of the priest was law. She strictly observed anything that the pioneer Father De Rouge so much as hinted at. On the other hand, my father was considered a “slacker” or a black sheep of the flock. He attended church only occasionally and without the devotion of my mother.…

During one of our monthly trips to Goodwin for the first Friday service, we met Father De Rouge on the big steps of the church, where he had come outside to mingle with his beloved Indian congregation.

The good [Jesuit] priest came forward and shook hands with Mother, spying me behind her wide skirts. He looked right at me and asked if I had made my first communion. He had a way of jumbling up words from several Indian languages he had learned so that his words sounded childish, but I dared not chuckle at his comment. Instead, I shook my head in answer to his question. He looked at mother reproachfully and, shaking his head, said, “Tut, Tut, Lucy. You must let your child go to school with the good sisters to learn her religion so that she can make her first communion like other children of her age.” Mother tried to make a protest, saying she needed me at home to care for the babies. But Father De Rouge could seldom be enticed to change his mind. He always had a very strict, ruling hand with the Indians. His word was much respected by the natives of the Colville Reservation.

He shook his finger at Mother and said, “Tut, Tut, Lucy. I command you.” Then, pointing at the cross atop the bell tower of the church, he continued, “Your church commands that your child must go to school to learn her religion and the laws of the church.” In obedience, Mother promised to send me to the mission for the fall term of 1898.

I had known Father De Rouge all my life. He had been a stationary superior at the Goodwin Mission until the arrival of Father Carnia [Caruana], whom the Indians called T-quit-na-wiss (Large Stomach), since the new priest had plenty of abdominal carriage. After that De Rouge became a traveling priest, covering all the territory of the Colville Reservation and beyond. He taught the Indians their prayers and erected the first little cabins that served as chapels until they were later remodeled into larger frame churches. These early church locations included Ellisford, St. Mary’s Mission on Omak Creek, Nespelem, Keller, and Inchelium. These last four compose the modern districts of the Colville Reservation. Earlier these districts all had their share of the faithful work of the self-sacrificing Father Etienne (Stephen) De Rouge.

He was the descendant of a rich and influential French count, but he rejected his claim to this title to fulfill his mission among his beloved Colville. Many times he would stop by our cabin home at Pia to visit with the family. He traveled astride his cayuse leading a pack animal loaded with the sacred belongings needed to say mass. This gave him the convenience of holding services in any Indian tipi or cabin where night would overtake him. He was never too busy to answer a call for help, rushing in the night to visit the sick or administer the last sacraments to poor, dying natives. His life was thoroughly wrapped up in his chosen work. He spent every penny he could get from his rich family and from small Indian contributions to aid the needy.

It was through his influence and encouragement that the Indians gradually discontinued their ancient customs and were more willing to send their children to school at Goodwin. He later erected a fine and roomy school at St. Mary’s Mission, after he had permanently established other churches that were maintained either by traveling priests or by one permanently settled in the location to teach the Indians and provide an example. This boarding school, built with his own money and contributions from Catholic whites in the East, remains a successful monument to his life’s work.…

When my father told me I had better start at school, I was scared. It took much coaxing, and buying me candy and nuts along with other luxuries at the log store at Marcus, before I consented to go.

Father was holding my hand when we went through the big white gates into the clean yard of the school. A high whitewashed fence enclosed all the huge buildings, which looked so uninviting. I hated to stay but promised Father I would not get lonesome. I walked at his side as he briskly entered a building to meet a woman in a long black skirt, with a roll of stiff white, oval cloth around her pale face. I looked away from her lovely, tapered fingers. I loved my mother’s careworn hands better.

Since I could not understand English, I could not comprehend the conversation between Father and the kind woman in black. Later I learned she was the superior at the school. When my father was ready to leave, I screamed, kicked, and clung to him, begging to go home. This had always worked before, but now his eyes grew dim and he gently handed me to the sister and shamelessly ran out the door. When the sister tried to calm me, I screamed all the louder and kicked her. She picked me up off the floor and marched me into a dark closet under the long stairway to scream as loud as I could. She left me to sob myself to sleep. This cured my temper.

I was too young to understand. I did not know English, and the other girls were forbidden to speak any native language. I was very much alone. Most of the time I played with wooden blocks and the youngest girls. I did not attend much school.

Each morning the children got up and dressed to attend church before breakfast. We walked in a double row along the path that climbed the slope to the large church, where my parents came for feast days. We entered the church from the west side door as the boys entered from the east one. The few adults came through the front double doors. There was also a small school chapel that we used when the weather was too bad to march outside.

Our dormitory had three rows of single iron beds, covered every day with white spreads and stiff-starched pillow shams that we folded each night and laid on a small stand beside the bed. Every Sunday night we were issued spotlessly clean nighties. This was the first nightgown I ever wore. Previously, I had slept in all my clothes.

Our dining hall, called the refectory, looked big to me, perhaps because I was used to eating in a cramped space. I was afraid of falling off the chair and always waited for others to sit first. The tables were lined up close to the walls, and the sister in charge had her table in the center, where she served our food on white enamel plates. We brought them up to her empty and carried them back full. Then we all waited until she rang the bell to begin eating.

The school ran strictly. We never talked during meals without permission, given only on Sunday or special holidays. Otherwise there was silence — a terrible silent silence. I was used to the freedom of the forest, and it was hard to learn this strict discipline. I was punished many times before I learned.

I stayed at the mission for less than a year because I took ill and father had to come and take me to the family camp at Kettle Falls. People were catching late salmon and eel. I returned to the mission again until my mother died in 1902 and I went home to care for my siblings.…

My second stay at the school was less traumatic. I was anxious to learn more English and read. The school had been enlarged, with much larger buildings adjoining the old ones. The old chicken yard was moved farther away from the hospital windows. There was a fine white modern building, with a full veranda along the front, for the white students who paid fifteen dollars a month to board there. Although they were next door, we never met them; it was as if we lived in different worlds. They had their own playroom, refectory, classrooms, and dormitory. We only saw them in church, when they filed in ahead of us and sat in front of the guardian sisters. Our own teachers sat on long benches behind our rows. The only white girls we got to know were the charity orphans who boarded with us.

The paying boarders got school tuition, books, meals, and free music lessons for their money. This price was so low that many white families around Marcus, Meyers Falls, Colville, and Chewelah sent their children to Goodwin. Native children only went as far as the lower grades, but some had the privilege of attending more academic grades in the classroom of the white girls. Only two girls ever did this, and they were both white charity cases. Some Indian children studied music free, learning piano and organ. We all learned to sing church hymns. Eva, the chunky little daughter of Bridgett Lemere, became a fine organist and choir leader at the Pia Mission. She had a beautiful voice, and her fingers flew over the keys so lightly that the sacred music would ring through the building. Her sister Annie was a few years older than I and became my chum. I stayed away from the girls my own age because my whole life was spent around older people, except for my sisters.…

I was very interested in my work. With the knowledge Jimmy Ryan1 had taught me from his yellowback novels, I passed first grade during the first semester. After my promotion the sisters had no second reader, so I had to study out of the third-year one. My marks were so good in all classes but grammar, which I never could understand, that I graduated at third level. I worked hard on catechism, which Mother had taught me in the native language. When I passed, I made my first communion in the big church, with many younger girls, including Eva and Annie Lemere. Our white dresses and shoes were supplied by the sisters. We wore flowing veils with flowered wreaths to hold them in place. It was Easter morning of 1899. We filed back to the convent, and the sisters gave us a big banquet with many goodies. It was a memorable day, and I thoroughly believed in the Catholic creed. I honored it as much as my native tutor had taught me to revere the ancient traditions of my forebears. I saw no difference between them and never questioned the priest.

I was so enthusiastic that I promised the sisters and girls I would come back in the fall. We were dismissed in June on the feast of Corpus Christi, always a big event in our year.

I never got back to Goodwin, however. Mother had a son, christened Johnny, whom I had to take care of because the duties of the ranch took much of her time. I began secretly to read Jimmy’s books. My parents scolded and rebuked me many times because they thought reading was an excuse for being idle. There was much work to be done around the cabin and in the fields.

One day I heard about the Tonasket Indian School, where the Pierre children went to school. I begged Mother to go, but she replied in agitated tones, “Do you want to know too much, and be like the other schoolgirls around here? They come home from school and have no shame for their good character. That is all girls learn in government schools — running around and exposing their bodies.” I ran outside into the rosebushes and cried in bitter humiliation. I wanted to go to school and learn the Mysteries of books. My meager education was just enough to make out the simplest words. Jimmy Ryan was only a little better, but he could speak English well.

Mourning Dove, Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography, ed. Jay Miller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 24–31.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS