Ch 3 Living by the Bell

While children arrived at Haskell, they were stripped down and bathed. The older children washed themselves and the younger ones were washed by the staff. This was a very humiliating experience for the young children. They then had their hair cuts and they were checked for lice. They were giving clothes and were expected to wear them. One girl said the dorm beds reminded her of a hospital. She said she was very scared because her father passed at a hospital. The beds were very close together and the sheets were all white. The children were forced to do everything military style. They were to stand at attention in the morning and night. They also had to make beds a certain way as well as scrub the floors till the varnish wore off. The food consisted of beef, bread, potatoes and gravy. The children caught on to the routine fast and became very good at it. One child wrote that everyone followed direction but most didn’t like it. But there was a few that did enjoy the military lifestyle which surprised me.  After reading this chapter, it reminded me of Chillocco. How children were treated and how they were treated. They were treated like military soldiers.  This Chapter kind of got on my nerves, I didn’t like the way they were treated at all.

Coming to Hakell

I enjoyed reading this chapter very much. This chapter starts out talking about how students enjoyed going to school at Haskell. It also talked about how Haskell was competing with other boarding schools like Chilocco and Charlisle with enrollment. A lot of student’s parents did not want their children going to boarding school because of health reasons and scared that your children were going to lose their culture and language. The schools wanted to recruit reservation children because they wanted full blooded Indians attending their school. The book calls the 1\4 and 1\8 Indians “white Indians”. In 1902 Haskell expelled 120 students because they were so called white Indians. This really surprised me to read this part. Like Chilocco, a lot of students enjoyed going to boarding school. I am starting to change my mind about boarding school after reading Chilocco and the start of Voices from Haskell.

Voices from Haskell

The first chapter is titled beginnings. It talks about how white or Caucasian people wanted to educate the Natives in their own way. One part stated they want to “kill the Indian and save the man”. This chapter also talks about how the boarding schools were conducted. Children were taking away from their families at a very young age. When they attended school the girls were taught how to be house wives. They would learn how to clean, sew and cook. The boys were taught how to be carpenters and farmers. Then the chapter got into Haskell the school. Haskell was the forth boarding school opened in the U.S. The name came from a man named Dudley Haskell. Haskell opened its doors on September 1, 1884, students consisted of twelve Ponca boys, and they were joined by two Chillocco boys. Five girls and three boys from Ottawa reservation also joined. By the end of that school year, there were over four hundred students attending Haskell Institute. Like Chillocco hard discipline and hard labor were part of the system. To me it seems like all boarding schools had the same agenda. No matter what school you went too, they all had the same set of rules. No wonder why a lot of tribes lost there ways and language, because the majority of the children went to boarding school where they were forbidden to speak their language and practice their ways.

Ch. 6 Chilocco

This chapter brought back a few memories while I was growing up. When I was smaller my family used to visit my grandma in Mandaree North Dakota. She lived out in the country and her house was surrounded by trees and ponds. My brothers and I would go and make forts with trees and whatever else we could find. We would try to make the biggest fort we could. We also would try to catch rabbits and prairie dogs but we would rarely have luck. I also remember going to school in high school at Bismarck High and there was a lot of students there and there were a lot of cliques. There were the jocks, nerds, gothic, skaters, and a few others. I think kids go with a group that they are most comfortable with or the group that they relate too. I hung out with the jocks because that was the group I was always around.

I could just see the boys around the camp fire singing and dancing. I remember when I was younger, my brothers and I would have our own powwow. We would hit a box for a drum and the others would dance and use clothes as outfits. It was fun times, I enjoyed reading that part.

Chapter 5 Chilocco

A couple of my friends went into the military and when they came back from boot camp they would tell me stories about it.  How tough the drills were, and they would have to march everywhere.  They would tell me how strict the rules were. How mean the people in charge were and how many rules they had. That’s how I think Chilocco was. The school was run like military life.  No wonder why some of the students would rebel or even run away. I know if I went to school at Chilocco, I would have probably ran away or went home in the summer and never went back.

Chapter 4

This chapter brought back a few memories going up. It took me back to high school days when we used to play pranks on each other. The boys at my high school used to play pranks on the girls all the time. One time the boys threw a lot of water balloons at the girls at homecoming. The girls were pissed for a couple days but they eventually got over it.

I also remember the times where it looked like everyone was following the rules but not everyone was. A couple times in English class we were suppose to be reading a book and a lot of the guys had magazines in the books. So the teacher thought everyone was doing the assignment because everyone was quiet and looking at they’re book. But a lot were reading magazines.

It makes me feel better about the life of boarding school that the students were making the best out of school and yet they were having fun in the progress.

They Called it Prairie Light Ch 3

When I was reading this chapter, memories from high school started going through my head. When I was a senior in high school I had to attend school for a full day, but I only had two classes I needed to graduate. I would have those classes in the morning and the rest of the day I took carpentry and welding classes. These courses were no where near intense as the kids at Chillicco, we were mostly there because we had to take something to full up the day.

In the summer time my high school had a summer program, where students can work in the school and get paid. All we wanted to get with our checks was the best clothes and shoes at that time. We worked hard for our money but it paid off when I bought my first pair of Jordan’s that year!