July 1977 Education, Employment, St. Paul’s Mission

Education and Employment

7-4-77 trailer  

I asked Gordon how I would go about getting either SPEDY or YCC workers to help me in the potato garden. He said that I would have to ask SPEDY kids, and that I wouldn’t be able to get YCC.

People have been asking me for the YCC kids to help them around their homes, so I had to find out if they could go to do this kind of work. They told me that YCC does things that are permanent, like building structures and doing work that will remain. The SPEDY kids do work like gardening and work around homes. In SPEDY, the kids will move a rock from one side of the road to the other and then move the rock back to the other side the next day. YCC can’t do that sort of thing. The potato garden would be good work for SPEDY. I’m sure you could get as many kids as you wanted, and you could have them work for you as long as you wanted. The only thing is that you will have to be out with them all day long. If you want them for three days’ work, then ask them for a week. They always take a long time to get work done. I’ll explain to you how to get the SPEDY workers and I’ll save you some time. Go to see Wanona first. She’s the director of the manpower program. You can call her if you don’t want to drive up to the Agency. Cheta is the director of the SPEDY program. Then you go to see Cheta in Hays and he’s at the Forest and Fire Crew Building. Tell him what you want the kids to do, and he’ll tell you it’s alright.

I asked Gordon when Glen was coming back from the Flathead Reservation. Gordon said he was back and completed the special course that he took there on forestry (that’s his major in Bozeman). Gordon said that Glen would be working out of the BLM office in Zortman and will be working in the Little Rockies. A lot of his work will be working on taking aerial photographs of the mountains. He starts work on July 11.

7-5-77 Hays

Sister Bart asked to go with Susie and I to the post office. On the way to the Trading Post, she said that she heard that they were getting a new principal at the Hays school again.

I think that’s really awful. It’s bad enough that those kids have a new and different teachers every year, but it’s worse that they have a new principal. Each principal has a different policy about running things in the school, and as soon as they get started with one principal and a policy for the school, they get a new principal and the whole thing changes. Those kids have no security.

She asked me if they were going to start building the new public school soon. I told her that the government has already allocated the money. She asked me how much it was and I told her that it was a little over a million dollars. She said that all the money the public school gets makes her mad.

At the mission school we have to scrape for every penny we have. All the public school has to do is ask and they get all the new books and supplies and equipment they want. I had to write over 100 letters to foundations before we got $60,000 for the new school. The Bishop put up the rest of the money as a loan so that we could build the grade school, but he told us that we didn’t have enough for the gym. I kept writing more letters to foundations to get money for the gym building. That’s how we got the $75,000 from the Kresge Foundation.

7-6-77 mission  

Frosty came up to the rectory to make a phone call and he was in the living room. I asked him what he was up to these days.

I got a new job working for the sawmill. The tribe started a sawmill at Bear Gulch on the other side of the mountain. It’s on the reservation. So, I’m working for the tribal sawmill now. I run a chain saw and it’s sure hard work. We put in a long hard day of work. Right now it’s a small operation. There are only five of us working there. We have two operators, and two guys besides myself that run the chain saws. It could get bigger if it works out.

7-7-77 Gordon and Edith’s

In GED, Edith and I are working on fractions. We only met for a half hour. I told her that we should meet in our trailer the rest of the summer because we would get a lot more done. The kids are always running in and out and it’s hard to work. I told her that if she walked to the trailer, I’d drive her home. She said, so long as it’s not raining, I don’t mind walking both ways. Edith said that when the school year starts again, we can meet back at the house. Then in October, Dion will be going to headstart, and it will be quiet here. We’d be alone except if Gordon can’t find work after the summer, and then he would be home. I told her that would be fine.

7-11-77 trailer

Shannon came up to the trailer at about 2:00 this afternoon. She was in my cultural anthropology class last fall at Urban Rural. She graduated this spring in elementary education. She asked me if I would write a recommendation for her. “I’m applying for a teaching job, and I hope I can teach around here, at Hays or Lodge Pole. I hope I didn’t get my applications in too late. She asked me to send the recommendation to the placement office at the College of Great Falls.”

7-12-77 Hays

The summer is usually a busy time for adults. The highest employment level is during the summer, and a lot of people get hired for outdoor work that is only available in the summer. Men and women get jobs working for BLM, Forest Crew, Road Crew, construction, SPEDY and YCC. These jobs employ more people during the summer. There are a lot of people who only work during the summer and can’t find work after the early fall when the weather curtails outdoor work. So, most adults are busy working during the summer.

Also, there are some adults who go to school in the summer. They are either Urban Rural students or Indian teachers from the Hays Lodge Pole school district. The college program closes in the summer, and these people are encouraged to attend classes at another school. Their travel, per diem, tuition, books are paid for through the Indian Education program. These students usually go to Northern College in Havre or Lewistown.

Aside from work, there are numerous activities for adults during the summer. For those so inclined, there are pow wows all over, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota every weekend during the summer. Not all Gros Ventre are interested in the pow wows. It is the same people who go to the dances. Many adults go on the pow wow circuit traveling to the pow wows at a different place every weekend – Crow, Browning, Rocky Boy, Wind River, Red Bottom, Poplar, Ft. Kipp. There are also rodeos almost every weekend and people go either to participate or watch.

There are a few on the reservation, but people travel to rodeos all over Montana. A lot of people also spend time in their gardens. People hunt and fish and most women pick june berries and choke cherries when they ripen or they get someone to pick them for them.

There have been a couple of horseshoe tournaments at Gordon’s but these are infrequent. People generally spend a lot of time outdoors and more than make up for the time spent indoors during the winter. Some kids play outside in tents at night pitched next to their house. People say that in Hays everyone moved into their tipis during the summer months.

7-12-77 mission

During the summer months the kids are out of school. There are a few programs for some of the kids to work. The SPEDY workers are younger (about 7-9 grade) and they work from 8-5 from Monday to Friday. They get an hour off for lunch. They work for different people almost every day doing odd jobs, painting, weeding, mending fences, cleaning. Both boys and girls work. It is a federal program, and they get paid from the government. There are three groups, one in each district, Hays, Lodge Pole and the Agency. Each crew has a crew chief and there are a couple of directors over each crew in each district. 

The YCC program is for older kids (high school age) and they do similar work. Their crews are set up the same ways. Gordon is the YCC director. Every morning the kids congregate at the fire station and in front of the store. They wait for assignments from the foreman and then go out for the day. Both the SPEDY and the YCC programs are under the Manpower Department at the Agency. Winnona Gives is the director of Manpower. These programs involve about fifty kids during the summer. There are many other kids, some too young, some who didn’t apply, some who didn’t get chosen, who don’t work for the summer programs. Some kids help their parents who have ranches or farms with the care of the cattle and harvesting hay. Most of the kids, however, don’t have any responsibilities during the day. These kids keep themselves occupied in various ways. Most of the kids are on horseback. They ride all over Hays in the bar pits along the side of the road, and they ride up into the canyon and into the mountains. They ride around just for fun, with no specific direction or purpose. A lot of the kids spend time just hanging around the store both inside and out. The kids also go swimming on hot days in the water holes, like at JJs. They also go to the plunge, a large warm water hole on the dirt road between Landusky and Zortman. The kids also hunt and fish and they play basketball outside.

The only organized activities are rodeos which take place at least once every two weeks. Some of the kids who ride in the rodeos practice during the week. Baseball is the other organized activity, a league organized by Gerald and the tribal recreation department. The league is for adults and high school age boys and girls. They play their games at the diamonds at the mission and at Whitecow Canyon. A lot of the younger kids watch the games, as do some adults who are not in the league. People sit in their cars and listen to their CBs or tape decks while they watch.

A lot of the kids just drive around Hays, mostly in the evenings. They drive around the mission and all over the Hays road. There’s a considerable amount of drinking that goes on in the cars and they are also smoking dope. They go into secluded areas and pull off and park there. These areas are easy to identify because there is an accumulation of beer cans on the ground. Lots of kids are bored during the summer. There isn’t much for them to do. There aren’t any recreation facilities for them in Hays and no organized activities for the younger kids.

7-12-77 rectory

Charles said that he went to work on Monday.

We drove to Browning and we picked up the trucks. We work for the BIA road crews. We start at 7:30 and work until 5 or so. It’s a long day. I’m not used to it yet. There’s five of us working and we each drive a gravel truck and then we spread out the gravel. The five are me, Matthew, Woody and Milton Werk and Bobby TD. I’ve been working on this road crew the past four summers, but all these other guys are new. We’re putting gravel down on a lot of the dirt roads on the reservation. Right now we’re working on the road up at the Agency that runs toward the airstrip. As soon as they’re done with the trucks on the Blackfoot Reservation, we’ll go up there and then we’ll start asphalting. We need those asphalt trucks to do it though. We’ll be able to pick them up in a few weeks. When we start asphalting roads they’ll hire about twenty more guys. I hope that when Matt gets on the crew, they’ll hire a lot more guys. We’ll asphalt the Whitecow Canyon road sometime this summer.

7-12-77 trailer

Edith and I finished fractions in GED today. It took us a month. She gets frustrated when she doesn’t understand something or when she can’t get a problem. So, I’ve been going very slowly so that she can build up her confidence and get the problems correct. She has been doing very well and once she builds up confidence, we’ll be able to go faster. But she is impatient and I’m afraid that if she doesn’t see success in her work, she might give it up. I give her homework problems each week and correct these with her and then go on to the next section. We’ll start decimals next week.

7-13-77 Hays College

I went up to the college this morning to find out what my status was for the last year and what’s going on with the program for next year. Granville and Mabel were in the office in the Title IV trailer. They are the only ones working this summer. Granville is the team manager and Mabel is his secretary. Granville called the College of Great Falls to ask them what my status is as a teacher. The College of Great Falls directs the program from a distance. Granville is the team manager, and Ken Noerr is the academic manager. The School Community Council and the Title IV Board of Directors run the program in Hays. The program is called: Intertribal Education Center, Inc. under the College of Great Falls.

When Granville got off the phone, he told me that my official title was instructor.

Mabel said that the proposal for the college was mailed directly to Washington DC and they’re handling it now. “It’s being considered by a special committee that deals with all the Title IV proposals. We won’t hear about it until the middle of August and then school will start at the end of August or beginning of September.” I said, well, that doesn’t give us much time. She said, that’s the way it is with the government programs.

It’s all last minute. The urban rural program was discontinued this year at the end of the school year. The program was run on about $135,000 of Urban Rural funds and $135,000 from Title IV. The school district 50 were the grantees of the Urban Rural money. They didn’t have much say over school administration or academics. They only handled the finances and books from the Urban Rural funds. The School Community Council was the decision-making body behind the Urban Rural funding. The SCC ran through this year, but now that the Urban Rural program has been discontinued, the SCC will no longer exist. The program, if approved, will be run entirely on Title IV funds, and the Title IV Board of Directors will assume full responsibility. This group also worked on the finances. They had meetings where Granville distributed the budget and expenses and all checks to be approved by this group. They also had a voice in hiring teachers, screening applications, setting up and approving courses and other administrative and academic responsibilities.

The goals of the school (Urban Rural) are posted above Granville’s desk on a very large red piece of poster board (School Development Program):

1.     The need to improve communication and understanding between the community persons and the school staff.

2.     The need for greater understanding and awareness of educational issues and techniques by both school staff and community persons.

3.     The need to design a school program sensitive to and which reflects Indian values and heritage.

4.     The need to implement the program in a manner that will ensure participation.

5.     The need to establish basic data about both the school and community.

6.     The need to train local Indian people for teaching positions in the school.

7.     The need to train community and school people in the techniques necessary to locate further funding for school related programs.

Mabel said that Tall Chief was going to be superintendent of school district 50 again this year and Hasenkamp was appointed the assistant superintendent so they’re going to have to hire a new principal for the Hays Lodge Pole School. “They wouldn’t hire someone from the community.”

7-13-77 Hazel and Chinky’s

I asked Hazel how Chinky liked being back to work. She said that he wasn’t that excited about it.

He would like to spend more time with the kids to work around the garden and cattle all day. I’d like him to be home too. He worked for the BLM for nine years. He did the same kind of work that Richard is doing now but he was one of the bosses. It was hard on him, and it was hard on the family. All the kids were growing up, and he had to be away all the time. He either worked in Malta (BLM office) or he had to work in the field, and he’d be away from Monday to Friday. The only times he ever got home during the week is when he worked in Zortman or around the Little Rockies. He finally retired for two years, but then the cattle were down, we had a lot of needs with all the kids going to school, and he went back to work about a year ago. He’s working for Williams Construction out of Havre. He’s a cement finisher. He’s getting up there in years and it’s hard on him. He always comes home so tired and worn out. He works on the reservation when there’s work here. They were working in Lodge Pole for a while. But they had a big job in Havre, and he had to go up there and back every day. It’s hard on him. I know he’d like to retire again. I only plan to work for a couple more years. We don’t want to work until we’re too old to enjoy our kids anymore. I enjoy our kids and so does he.

I said, well, they’ll be getting older soon and out of the house. She said she knew and didn’t like it. I asked her if she was looking forward to starting work again. She said that she liked work; she liked school. But she enjoyed the time off she had this summer.

I’ve had one of my grandchildren here. He’s been staying with us; just a little baby. We sure enjoy it. I enjoy tutoring at the school. I tutor the kids at the Hays Lodge Pole school and I have kids from 6^th to 9^th grade. I’ve applied for the job as the first and second grade teacher. There’s a vacancy in that position. I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t get the job, because I enjoy the tutoring. I know that it helps those kids. I can see the improvement. I know we’re doing a good thing and that makes me feel good. We could use more tutors. We have six right now, four at the public school and two at the mission.

7-15-77 rectory

At 4:30 this afternoon I walked into the rectory. Clarence was just finishing up making a phone call. I asked him how Margaret felt about being elected vice president or secretary treasure of the Christian Mothers without being at the meeting. He said that she didn’t mind at all. She likes to do this work. She was also elected to be chairman of the PTA in the Hays Lodge Pole School District (School District 50). She wasn’t at that meeting either. She was elected to chairman as a write-in candidate. Her name wasn’t even on the ballot. But she wants to do it. She would have been involved in the PTA even if she hadn’t been elected. She enjoys the work and she’s good at it.

She has a lot of experience as a teacher in Massachusetts, in Zortman, in the Bear Paws and the Hays Lodge Pole School. She’s also concerned because we have two kids and they’ll be going to school in these schools pretty soon.

7-26-77 mission

Fiddles was at the mission all day cutting the grass around the school, rectory and trailer. His job is to take care of the recreation in Hays. This is a tribal job. So, he’s been working at the mission and the senior citizens center.

7-31-77 Bobby and Caroline’s

I asked Glen how work was for him this summer. He said that he was enjoying it.

We work on plots all around the reservation. We measure off a certain amount of acres in each plot and measure the trees that are four inches or more in diameter. We take all the measurements on the tree, height, diameter. We’re trying to figure out how much wood there is in each tree for the reservation. The tribe wants to know how much timber and lumber there is on the reservation. I took a course at Flathead this summer to train us for this work. The job goes on, but I’ll have to quit at the end of August because I have to go back to school in Bozeman. Bozeman is right in the Gallatin Range.

7-31-77 mission

Froggy got hired to work on the tribal sawmill and Matt was hired to work on the road crew.

St. Paul’s Mission

7-2-77 mission

Father told us today that the Jesuit Volunteer Corp found a new volunteer for the mission to take Bill’s and Brian’s place. He is a Spanish American. He asked me if I thought there would be any problem in the community for a Spanish American volunteer. I told Father I didn’t think it would make any difference. Then Father said that he may get a woman to teach third and fourth grade. She’s in her early 20s. Both volunteers have educations. Celso is from San Jose.

7-3-77 mission

The priest in Hays says mass in Zortman every first Sunday of the month. Father forgot to give Brad Reynolds the key to the Zortman church and Mike had to break down the door to get into the church.

Mike said that he found out yesterday that Father Pete Guthnic was transferred from Ft. Peck to the Rocky Boy Reservation (Chippewa Cree). Ft. Peck was Assiniboine. He had wanted this transfer for a long time and was glad it was finally happening. He worked on Rocky Boy during the summers while he was in seminary for six years. He gets along with the people really well. Last year he made the Sundance with them.

7-7-77 Rectory

At about 10:30, Mike looked out the window and saw ten horses in the mission hay field. He called the stock inspectors at the Agency and said that if they could come out today, he would help them round up the horses and take them away. None of them were in the office so he wasn’t able to get in touch with them. The horses have been in the fields all year and Father won’t enforce the rule, so Mike refuses to fix the fence. Father came out last week to see the garden. I told him the horses had gotten into and eaten some of the corn and trampled the onions. There were horses in the field while we were talking and he said, I bet they’ve already eaten about $200 worth of our hay.

After Bill left the mission, I had full responsibility for the greenhouse and the garden. And my hair finally grew long enough that I didn't need the hat to keep hair off my face. And I regularly see a dermatologist who cuts or freezes precancerous tumors off of the top of my head.

7-8-77 mission

The mission has had new phone hours and a new phone policy for the past couple of months. These new hours and the new policy is posted next to the phone and has appeared in the church bulletin on Sundays before the policy went into effect. The phone hours are from 9-11 in the morning and 6:30-8:30 in the evening, seven days a week. Father handles the morning hours, or the guys in the rectory, and the volunteers have split up the evening phone hours. The mission doesn’t run phone messages anymore unless it’s an emergency, and messages are posted on a bulletin board across from the new phone (a new wall phone was installed in the hallway). The office is limited to the fathers, sisters and volunteers use. Each phone call will cost the amount of the call, which the operator calls back and charges. We don’t have direct dial; all calls go through the operator. A 5% tax and 25 cent charge on any call which covers those who don’t pay their bill. The mission for the past 3-5 years was paying for $100-150 of calls that people hadn’t paid for. When Father Simoneau was superior, he only let people use the phone in an emergency. Father opened it up to any calls and it used to be all day with no privacy in the rectory. It got so bad that Father consented to changing the policy. The new hours were just posted outside the rectory this week. There have been very few phones in Hays. To get a phone, you have to be on a waiting list and either someone  loses their phone or give it up, which is unlikely. The number of phones is limited because the phone company won’t run anymore lines into Hays. It’s an eight-party line. Those living outside of Hays are on the Lodge Pole line. Most people believe that the phone company won’t run the line because they think that people here won’t pay their bill. With limited phones, those that have them have the problem with people coming over to use their telephones. The phones that I know of in Hays belong to the mission, public school, Urban Rural, Hays Clinic, John Capture, JJ, Ray and Irma, Bob Mount and Mary and BJ.

7-8-77 mission

Brian said that the land lease came in the mail today from the Bishop’s lawyer. It looks like a good lease. What we’re going to do now is advertise for bids on the lease again. Then we’ll get a long-term lease out on these fields starting this year.

7-8-77 mission

In this week’s church bulletin, Sister Giswalda of the mission grade school announced that parents should come to the convent during the summer months and before the end of August (the beginning of the school year) to register their kids for school. There is also a sign next to the telephone in the rectory asking parents to come to the convent to register their kids.

7-8-77 mission

With school out for the summer, both the Dominican and Franciscan sisters have been spending some time away from the mission. During the school year they hardly leave the convent or school, let alone the mission. Sister Laura left for New York to visit family for a month. Sister Kathleen went to St. Louis to be with her family, and she is also working on a master’s degree at St. Louis University in the summer. She will be there for a month. Sister Germain went to Iowa for a month to take a special training course with other Franciscan sisters who are domestics. She went last year also and she’s taking a cooking course. She cooks for all the Franciscan sisters, Father and the volunteers. Sisters Giswalda and Benno spent two weeks at the mother house in Milwaukee and tomorrow they are going with Sister Claire to Arizona to visit her family and then the three of them will go to California to visit Sister Giswalda’s sister. Then Sister Giswalda is taking Sister Claire to Disneyland. It was a surprise all year and to put it mildly, Sister Claire is very excited. Sister Bart is going to Kansas City for a Charismatic Conference and then is going to Chicago to visit her family for a couple of weeks. The Franciscan nuns can only travel for so long and for as much as Sister Giswalda says they can afford. She’s the superior at the convent.

7-9-77 Ray and Irma’s

Ray said that the nuns haven’t changed any at all since they’ve been here.

They are so different from the volunteers and Sisters Kathleen and Laura. You people are out in the community and in the people’s home almost every night. Do you know in the forty years that those sisters have been here, that they’ve only been in my home twice. Once they were here for my brother Pete’s wake, and the second time they were selling World Book Encyclopedias. They’ve never changed. For the longest time, they didn’t even look like they were getting older. Now they’re beginning to show their age.

Ray said that he could remember when these nuns first got here.

They replaced the Ursulines in 1936. I was about ten years old when the Ursuline nuns left. I must have been in about 4^th grade. The Ursulines were worse than these sisters we have now. They were sure tough. When I started at the mission boarding school, it was just becoming a day school. They used to favor the boarding school kids over the day school kids. They used to make us march around in lines. I guess it was to teach us discipline. Well, we could never stay in perfect lines. It was always the day kids who got punished.

We only went to school for a half a day. We only had formal schooling for half a day. We spent the rest of the day getting wood to heat the building. We’d have to go into the mountains and cut the logs into blocks, snake them down to the buildings, chop the wood, and then carry them into all the buildings. We needed a lot of wood because we had a girls’ school and a boys’ school and the church to heat. That’s a lot of wood. The girls and boys school each had separate buildings. There was a tall wood fence between the schools and you couldn’t even look at each other. You wouldn’t dare get caught looking at the girls. We had to heat both of these buildings, and the boy’s was four stories, the church, a laundry and a bakery.

When the Franciscans came in 1936 the school was made completely into a day school. They ended the boarding school. The mission was started in 1884, but they didn’t have a school here that early. The school started sometime in the late 1880s. It was all a boarding school then.

There was another boarding school up at the Agency. They called it an industrial school. It was a government run school with all government employees. They had a half day of formal schooling, and they worked a half a day in the fields, milking cows, feeding the animals, shoveling shit. The kids were running away from the school all the time. The kids didn’t want to have to give up their whole culture and their language. They wanted to speak their own language and wear their moccasins and wear their braids. But they wouldn’t let them in the school. So, the kids would run away. They would catch the kids and would throw them in what they called the ‘bilge’ for a few days. They thought that this would scare them enough to keep them from running away, but they would run away again. The mission had its share of runaways, too. The industrial school was started in the 1890s and it was closed down during the depression in the 1930s. The public school started here in the 1920s. We used to be part of a much larger school district that included Rattle Snake and Cleveland. The public school used to be across from where the Missionary Christian Alliance is now.

Irma said that she started school at the public school, but got sick and had to drop out. “Then when I started school again, I started all over at the mission school. The government didn’t get along very well with the mission. The government didn’t get along very well with anyone.”

Ray said that they used to have orphans at the mission.

The mission was a catch all for all kinds of people. Orphans from all over were at the mission, Ft. Belknap, Rocky Boy, Ft. Peck. Some of these kids were three to five years old. They would keep them in the classes all day long. They didn’t have any other place to put them. So, the small kids would sit in the back of the room on hardwood benches through the whole day of school. One day, these two young boys fell asleep, and they laid their heads down on each other’s shoulders. The sister walked to the back of the room and took each of them by the ears and knocked their heads together.

Raymond said that the sisters used to live on the fourth floor of the school (it burned down in 1973) and it was sure scary up there. “The sisters told scary stories about the hallway leading up through there so that the kids would be scared and wouldn’t go up there.”

“The new convent was built about 1962. I was in the second grade. At that time, the sisters had all their hair covered.” Ray said that hardly anyone has ever gone into the convent.

Ray said that the mission water system used to be a gravity fed system.

The water came from the canyon, and they ran it down to the mission in a wooden pipe wrapped with wire. Brother Fox had a big garden. He was out there all the time. He had a huge wooden tank that he stored water in. It was about six feet deep and was about as big as our living room. It was located where your garden is now. He kept it filled all the time, and he would water his garden from it with hoses. He grew some beautiful vegetables there. His carrots were almost a foot long. I used to kick a football into the garden and go in to get it. And walk away with some carrots. Brother Fox never figured out what we were doing in there. It would have been pretty bad if he ever found out. He was a tough one. He was from the old German tradition.

I told Raymond that I had been in the server’s room of the church, and I saw a plaque in there with his name on it and Jay Willie, Eddie Doney and a bunch of other guys. He said that all those people used to be honorary servers at the church.

We used to compete to serve. They gave out points to those who served the most times. We used to wake up real early and would try to get to mass first so we could serve. Me and Eddie used to serve all the time. He would get there just before me, though, because they used to live right next to the mission. They used to have mass every morning in the roadside chapel. We would serve at all those masses.

Irma said that the sisters and fathers used to tell the kids about the devil.

They used to tell the kids stories about the devil. They still might do it. The kids were too young, and it used to scare them. They shouldn’t have done it. This one priest told the kids about a story of devils. He told them about this girl that was possessed by devils, and a priest had to perform an exorcism over this girl. The girl kept lifting off the bed. When the priest was done, he told the kids that you could see seven small devils dancing up on the roof. This story sure scared the kids.

Irma said that the Christian Mothers were going to have a meeting this Tuesday and they would have to elect a new president and secretary treasurer because she and Gootch were quitting. Marilyn asked her what the Christian Mothers was all about. She said that it got started again to help out the mission. It’s really supposed to be for the spiritual strengthening of the mothers of the community.

7-10-77 mission

Mass was scheduled at 11:30 this morning. Mike, Susie and I were the only choir members. Caroline, Gordon and Edith came in late. Gordon said he wasn’t planning on getting religious all of a sudden, but he was there because of Edith. Mass started late because Brad heard a lot of confessions. A yellow light goes on when he is in the confessional with someone. A lot more people go to confession when there is a visiting priest at the mission. As noted, many people are not comfortable with Father Retzel hearing their confessions. He knows everyone and many don’t want to share their personal issues with him.

Martin and David were the servers. There were about 100 people attending from the community. Chinky took up the collection. The gospel reading was about Jesus and the good Samaritan. Brad’s homily was about compassion between people. He talked about forgiveness and how we should be civil to each other. He talked about the Hays community and how if everyone could be civil to each other here in Hays, and treat each other with compassion, this would be the most Christian community in the world.

7-11-77 mission

When I went out to the garden this afternoon, I noticed the tops of most of my corn had been chewed off, the stakes had been taken off about ten pea plants, and the cabbage plants had been chewed on and the onions pulled out of the ground. Horses had gotten into the field last night and did some of the damage, but kids must have done some of it too.

7-12-77 Hays

At 7:45 this morning, I went up to the fire station and found Louis Turntoes. I told him that I needed some workers to weed the garden and to clean out a root cellar. He told me that he could give me all the girls I wanted. I asked for help on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. He said that was fine. He said he needed to find work for the girls. He sent up a crew of seven girls. The foreman came with them, and she introduced herself to me. I told her what I needed and she told the girls. They started at 8:30. They worked fairly steadily. Breaks are frequent to go to the bathroom and to get drinks of water, but they worked hard. This was the SPEDY program.

7-12-77 mission

About a month ago, Father started seriously complaining about all the horses that roam and graze on the mission land. Since the Congress, he has been less vocal about it. At that time, Mike made an attempt to fix some fences around the perimeter of the mission, and he had the stock inspector out a few times. These horses are trespassing and don’t belong on the mission land. There are usually about twenty head on our land. Nothing has been done about it for a while, and they have been running wild around here. They have done a lot of damage to the garden and have eaten a lot of hay in the fields. They have also been running in the cemetery and have done some damage up there. Brad has chased them out of the cemetery.

7-12-77 mission

I was in the old gym talking to Brian. He’s remodeling the gym according to blueprints drawn up by Bill Fugelvand. He’s putting in new rooms on the other side of the gym to make it into a recreation center for Hays. He’s renovating the whole building, carpentry, electric, plumbing. Jim helps, but he’s too old to do the heavy work. Brian is planning on leaving the mission after five years to find work in Great Falls. I asked him who was going to take over the work in the gym when he leaves. A lot more needs to be done. He said that he hoped that Fiddles would do it. It would be part of the work of the tribe. His job is to take care of the recreation buildings in Hays, the two mission gyms and the senior center. That’s his job. The reason he hasn’t done much in this job so far is that they have been gone for two months. He was in Seattle with Angy for his operation, but now Angy is home and doing well. So, Fiddles can start doing the work on the gym.

7-12-77 mission

Brad had been here for weeks this summer while Father Retzel was gone. He’d had a lot of time to observe everything. This is what he said about the mission:

“I was thinking what a loony place this is and how much needs to be done here.” 

“Sisters who have been cloistered for decades. A Brother who is a hermit. And administrative chaos.”  

Mike said that people in the community don’t understand this place. “It’s a mystery to them. This place has no goals. Everything is for the present.” 

It was all pretty wild.

7-12-77 trailer

The foreman and her crew of SPEDY workers were up at the mission all day. I had them working in the garden. They weeded the whole garden this morning, cleaned the root cellar in the afternoon and weeded the potatoes in the afternoon. They’ll be back on Wednesday and Thursday to finish the potatoes. The girls worked very hard all day long and they took breaks for water and to use the bathroom when it got really hot. The girls were quiet and didn’t complain about the work. I had seven girls in the morning and three in the afternoon. Brian and I drove over to Jeb’s and we gave him the rotten potatoes to give to his pig. He has the mission pig. He said that he was going to have it mated and then afterward would slaughter the pig. He’s going to give the mission some piglets and stock up the mission with bacon. “I’ve worked out this arrangement with the mission before.” We told Jeb how we fed the pig the slop from the school lunch program. He said until you get the piglets you may bring the slop up for me to feed this pig. Brian said that would be ok.

7-12-77 trailer

Gordon said that all religions claim to be the chosen people. “I wonder at the end of the world, who really will be the chosen people.”

Good question. My thought … we all are or none of us are.

7-13-77 mission

Gootch said she would be at the choir practice Saturday night. Edith made an announcement about the choir at the Christian Mothers meeting Tuesday night when she was elected president.

7-13-77 rectory

At 8:00 this morning, Lori came up to the mission and brought her crew of SPEDY girls to work with me. It rained all last evening and during the night and this morning, so it was too wet to work in the garden. The small garden and root cellar were completed yesterday so I didn’t have any work for them today. She said that they would come back tomorrow and on Friday. Lori is the foreman. I asked her what SPEDY stood for and she said, Summer Program for Economically Disadvantaged Youth. She said that the kids make $2.50 an hour and the foreman makes $4.00 an hour.

7-13-77 trailer

We asked Irma how the Christian Mothers meeting went last night. She said that Edith was elected president. Irma said she didn’t want it. She was really fighting it, but she got stuck with it. Margaret Cuts the Rope was elected vice president and she wasn’t even there. Irma said, she is too busy to be the president. She is taking anatomy classes for her CHR job and she is getting tested.

7-15-77 Hays

John Werk has been working for SPEDY this summer. He has been working with Mike and I on different projects. He helped build the fence in front of the school. He also helped Mike build the outhouse for the Lodge Pole Church and is going to help Mike repair the roof of the Lodge Pole Church. Mike plans to go home in July and to work for three weeks in Ft. Wayne. His brother has a construction business and is lining up work for Mike. Mike asked John to go home with him for these three weeks, and he would do construction with Mike and his brother. He figures they could each make about $1,000. Mike likes John and thinks it would be a good experience for him. John has never been outside of the state of Montana and besides the opportunity to see some of the country, he would get some work experience in construction. Mike went to talk to John’s parents, and he got permission from them to take John back to Indiana with him.

7-16-77 Bruce and Ida’s

Bruce said that he really liked the Latin Mass. I was sorry when they changed it to English.

It sounded so strange. I grew up with the Latin Mass. I liked it better and I wish they’d bring it back. There used to be a boy who played violin during mass, and we used to sit in the balcony and we’d drop marbles on him. He used to try to stand away from the balcony so we wouldn’t hit him. (everyone laughed).

7-16-77 Hays

A meeting to organize a church choir was called for today at 6:30. We were going to practice for mass on Sunday and get the choir organized. The announcement was in the church bulletin and Brad announced it during mass last week. Mike, Susie and I talked about it all week to people. We had promises from at least five people that they would be at our practice meeting. Susie, Mike and I were at the church at 6:30. We left at 7:15 after no one came. The choir is on the way out, before it really got started.

7-19-77 trailer

Mike came over for a visit and we were talking about the relationship between the mission and the community.

People borrow money from the mission all the time. If they have a good reason, I’m sure Father will give them the loan. I don’t know if the mission gets paid back on all these loans either. People use the phone at the mission. It used to be all the time and even with the hours now, we have no privacy at the rectory. The phone is always ringing, and someone is always coming to the door. The people use the phone, and they don’t always pay their bills, which is why we tacked on 25 cents to all calls to cover for those who don’t pay their bills. But the mission phone has become a community phone.

People ask us to drive them places all the time. Mike said that he drives people around a lot but he won’t let people borrow his truck. I have to put my foot down somewhere. I know that Brian drives people all over too.

Mike said that people are always borrowing shells from him.

Tools are always being borrowed from the mission by everyone, crowbars, garden tools, shop tools. Someone came up once and asked to borrow the tractor. People come up all the time to borrow or buy gas from the mission. Father usually tells them that we get the gas tax free and by law we are not allowed to sell it. But if the people have an emergency, he will give them the gas. Because he says he’s not allowed to sell it.

There are people who have come up to borrow things. We had a bunch of old tires in the basement of the rectory. Some of these tires were the right size for them. So, most of the tires were taken. These were old tires from mission cars.

People who never go to church and don’t have anything to do with the mission still come up to borrow things whether they are involved or not in the mission for religious things. People take advantage of the mission and they don’t even realize it. A lot of it has to do with Father. He lets things get out of hand and he doesn’t know how to say no. And I doubt it was like this before the mission started getting volunteers. The mission has changed since the mission started getting volunteers. The mission has more people out in the community and more time in the community. The relationship between the mission and the community has really opened up and this has helped stimulate this borrowing relationship. I’m sure it wasn’t this way before the volunteers came here.

Most of the priests who have come here didn’t spend any time out in the people’s homes and the sisters didn’t spend time out in the community either. The Dominican Sisters and the volunteers have really changed that. The relationship is open now. Father is in the community pretty often and the volunteers even more so. And people come up to the mission to visit almost every night. I’m sure it was never this way either. I’ve noticed in the past year that when the adults want to borrow something or ask a favor from the mission, or even from a friend or relative or neighbor, they send out one of their kids to do the borrowing instead of going themselves. The kids will either pass on a verbal message or they’ll bring a note, usually written by their mothers.

There are a few other services that I remembered after Mike left that the mission provides to the community on a pretty regular basis. During the winter months, the mission operates an emergency road service – informally of course. If someone runs off the road or gets stuck, one of the first places they go for help is the mission. At least one of the volunteers is called out with a truck, chains and tow ropes every time we get big snows in Hays. This happens both day and night.

The mission also does a lot of counseling. This is done by the volunteers, the Dominican Sisters and Father. It is by no means limited to spiritual problems and in most cases, in fact, the problems aren’t related to religion or the church. People come up to talk to us at the trailer to talk about marriage problems, family trouble, alcohol problems, unemployment and many other more specific problems that come up. Most of the time we lend an open ear and keep advice to a minimum, but we are asked for advice. The mission volunteers are a good source of taking on problems, because they will always offer an open ear. And just as important, the volunteers are a very transient group. They come and go, with a few minor exceptions, in one or two years. This provides a perfect circumstance for people in the community, because they can share their problems with the volunteers and that person won’t stay in the community the rest of their lives. The community is peculiar this way. The people, for the most part, are secretive about their problems. They don’t talk openly with each other about all their problems. They don’t want their relatives or friends to think that anything is wrong in their lives. This may be related to the jealousy in the community which is strong and pervasive. Almost everyone in the community realizes, feels and experiences this jealousy; not wanting anyone else in the community to do better than them, or to have someone have fewer problems or a better job or more money, or make it in the city. Consequently, people don’t share their problems only or often with each other. But they can share problems with someone they know is going to leave. The paradox is that everyone in Hays knows each other’s problems. There are no secrets about even the most personal areas in a person’s life. And gossip is one of the most common ‘activities’ in the community. People usually gossip about other people’s problems. So, this information travels far and wide and rapidly. And a commentary usually accompanies the gossip.

There is another interesting aspect to this relationship between the volunteers and the people in the community. The people usually enjoy telling stories about their lives, but these people can’t tell these stories to each other in the community because the stories have already been heard before, probably multiple times. Even in one year, people have told us the same stories a few times. You don’t say anything about it because of being polite. So, the volunteers are a good audience, open to listen to all of these life stories. And the best part of it is that the volunteers are transient. There is a new set of volunteers every two years. So, the stories don’t get old or redundant.

The mission volunteers also provide a service in education. Sisters Kathleen and Laura and I teach GED so that some of the adults can get their high school diplomas. I have done it for about four months. Bill did it for a few months. Kathleen has been doing it for a few years. We don’t charge for these services, and it is all individual. Also, Kathleen, and Sisters Claire and Giswalda and myself have taught at the Urban Rural program and our salaries are far below what the regular teachers receive. Also, the volunteers do tutoring for the people who go to Urban Rural or to the other colleges in Havre or Lewistown during the summer. People are always coming up for help.

7-19-77 trailer

In the past month our bathroom has become a public restroom. There are a lot of kids that come up to the mission to play. They play down by the creek, they are on the playground, they ride their horses all over and they play baseball in the evenings, and a lot of people come to watch. There aren’t any bathrooms available, the school is locked, the boiler room bathroom is locked, and people don’t feel comfortable going to the rectory and asking them, so the kids come to the trailer almost every day to use the bathroom. They sure aren’t going anywhere near the convent.

The older boys never come to use the bathroom and adults don’t either. But the younger kids, both boys and girls, do come to the trailer pretty often. They come to ask us if they can use the bathroom and when we say yes, they go into the bathroom together. Then they leave when they’re done. When the SPEDY girls are working at the mission, they also come up to use the bathroom. These girls are high school age. They come, usually two of them together, and they both go into the bathroom. They would rather be in the bathroom together than to have to talk to me or be in the trailer alone. The girls are very shy, especially with the volunteers at the mission.

7-25-77 Clarence and Margaret’s

Poncho said that he’s been really busy for the past few weeks cutting and bailing and loading hay. We got a lot of hay from the mission fields. We’re cutting the mission field on the west side, across the road. We’ll get this done this week. They leave their equipment behind the rectory every evening when their day’s work is done.

7-25-77 trailer

Father returned from his vacation and retreat and came over to say hello. He said that we have our volunteers for next year. A Spanish American from San Jose who will do the maintenance work. We’ll also get a teacher for third and fourth grade. She just graduated from Indiana this spring. I sent her application to Davey and Caroline from the mission school board to make a decision about her. They said she was fine. Both of the new volunteers went through the Jesuit Volunteer Corp and they’re going to the orientation in August. I’m going to go to try to meet them there.

7-29-77 mission

While Letty was at the mission, Father asked her if John and Joan were coming up for their appointment at 7:00. They are taking the four-month marriage course, a requirement of the diocese for a church wedding. It was already after 7:00. Letty said that they weren’t coming. “John is working. He was deputized to be a tribal policeman for the Indian Days Pow Wow at the Agency. She said it was real quiet last night. They haven’t had any trouble so far. Today was a tribal holiday. All tribal employees and BIA employees had the day off because of the pow wow.”

Letty asked Father if she could use the all-purpose room of the school because she wanted to have a wedding shower for her brother, John, and Joan’s wedding. She said that she wanted it for August 3 at about 6:30 and she would need it for about two hours. Father said that they needed it for the prayer meeting and George Horse Capture might be in the gym for the “White Clay People” Language Workshop. He told her if she could move up the date to August 2 she could use the room. She said they already had the invitations written out and the date was set for Wednesday. At 10:30, she drove up to the mission and honked the horn outside. I went out and she gave me an invitation for Susie. It was for the wedding shower on August 3, and it was going to be at her mother’s house.

7-29-77 trailer

Father went out to Davey’s to borrow some feed for the chickens. Davey said that he would give us all the feed we wanted for free.

Father said that he was trying to hire Clemence to cook meals five days a week. She’d be making dinner at the rectory for all the volunteers and himself during the week, and we’d eat at the rectory. She’d work from 3:30 to 6:30 and we’d pay her, of course. She’s a good cook and it would help to create more of a community at the mission. I’m also going to try to get a woman from the community to come up and teach the girls PE and to be the basketball coach. I’d like to turn the bingo over to the community, too.

7-30-77 Caroline and Bobby’s

Gordon showed me an article that was in the Great Falls Tribune on Saturday. He had cut it out. The article listed some changes in the church, such as the Charismatic Renewal. In bold heading it said, what’s happening to the Roman Catholic Church. And it announced a Latin Mass would be held on Sunday in Great Falls. That morning, Father showed me the same article, and he was upset about it. He said that people should be able to choose a more traditional approach if they want but they shouldn’t condemn less traditional ideology. He said that the priest who wrote this and was doing this must have been an outsider. I can’t think of anyone in this parish who would do it.

After I was done looking at the article, Edith showed it to Susie, and Gordon said, “it’s about time somebody did something like this.”

They should bring the Latin Mass back here. A lot of people want it back. That’s the way it should be. When Father MacNutt came here and they did all those things at the mission, I really thought the whole thing was anti-Christ. If he tried something like this a few years ago, he would have been thrown out. Even today, a lot of people didn’t like it. A lot of people don’t like the changes that have gone on in the church.

Bobby said that the Latin Mass was said here until three or four years ago.

That’s about when they changed it. There weren’t any explanations about the change either. It just seemed like we went into the church and overnight everything was just different. I used to be a server, and we said all the prayers in Latin. It’s just not the same way they do things now. I don’t like the changes at all. It was much better the old way.

Gordon said that if they brought back the Latin Mass that he would go back to church. “I enjoyed it that way. It was much nicer.” Susie said that she heard on the radio news that the Pope just made another change. Communion could be given in the hand instead of the mouth. A person had a choice to take it the way they wanted. Edith said, “oh, what will they do next.”

Gordon said that it used to be that before a person went to confession and took communion that they had to fast from midnight the day before. You couldn’t eat or drink anything, not even water. “This was a better way of doing it. Now you just fast for an hour. That’s nothing.”

Caroline said that she found out from Edith two weeks ago that you could eat meat on Fridays now except during lent. “Before Edith told me, I didn’t even know that. I thought you still had to eat fish on Fridays. There are so many changes that you can’t even keep track of them. The change from Latin to English was so fast. We just walked in there one day and there it was. And there weren’t any explanations. It was just there all of a sudden.”

The Latin Mass was much prettier and it was much more meaningful to us. You could follow along in the English too, in the book. That’s the way we were all brought up and we just like the Latin Mass much better. When mass was said, Father never faced us. He did the whole mass facing the altar and he only turned around for the Eucharist. It was nicer the other way. Another big change in the church was that we were never allowed to touch the priest or nuns. Now it’s changed. Father is always touching and hugging everyone, and I just can’t get used to all that. If they held a vote here, most people would vote to have the Latin mass brought back. It was so nice when the Latin songs were sung. It was sure pretty and it added so much to special occasions like confirmation and the different holidays. They haven’t changed everything though. They kept some of the traditions, but I think that they’ve gotten rid of the wrong things and kept the wrong things. They’ve changed the wrong things in the church. (She was intimating the divorce issues; she can’t take communion because she’s divorced and her marriage to Bobby isn’t blessed in the church).

Father Simoneau did things the old way, he was traditional. We like the way he did things. The changes must have been hard on him too because he was pretty traditional. If the church keeps changing like this they’re going to force people to switch from Catholic to other religions. Some people are already doing that.

I asked her about the Christian Missionary Alliance. Caroline said that they’ve been here for years. “I can remember that when I was just a little girl. They’ve had some loyal followers for years, but not many.”