September 1977 St. Paul’s Mission and Education
9-1-77 Lodge Pole Community Center
There was a PTA meeting this evening and a potluck dinner at the LP community center. There was a poor attendance from the LP community, and it was even worse from Hays. Most of the community people who came were also teachers in the grade schools. Sister Giswalda, Benno, Claire, Kathleen, Laura, Father, Cel, Mary, Mike, Susie and I. Teachers attended from LP and Hays. Hazel and Chinky, Gootch, Margaret June, Lou Stiffarm, Mrs. Hasenkamp, Mr. Anderson – the new high school principal, Tennison Doney and Elmer Main attended. Margaret Cuts the Rope is the new PTA president and she ran the meeting.
PTA meetings will be on the first Thursday of every month and they would alternate between Hays and LP.
Margaret said that there were three resolutions that the PTA was going to support and present to the school board. She asked that people to raise their hands after each resolution was read so that they could get some idea of the support they had from the community.
Resolution 1. Resolve to do something about the high dropout rate at the high school. The school should make an effort to bring the dropouts back and to bring them back with honor. Before a student is allowed to drop out, the teacher should discuss it with their parents. They should talk to the parents first. The dropout rate at the high school is now over 50%.
Resolution 2. The school should come up with an alternative to out-of-school suspensions. There should not be out of school suspensions. There should be in-school suspensions. We’re not telling the administration how to run the school. That’s your job and what you are getting paid for. These are our suggestions. There has to be a better disciplinary measure for misbehavior besides out of school suspensions. We think there should be discipline. It is for the good of all the students in the class, and for the students being disciplined. We just think that there’s a better way of doing it than out of school suspensions. There were five students suspended last year for throwing snowballs. That was ridiculous.
Resolution 3. A curriculum committee should be set up composed of teachers from the school, teachers from the community who are also parents, and parents from the community who are not teachers. We don’t believe that the high school is preparing the kids for college. With the way the courses are taught now, these kids will have a hard time getting into and staying in college. We want this committee to go through each course and to decide what is to be taught in each class. We want each of the teachers in each class to hand in a curriculum outline for each course that is taught. And then the committee would add and subtract from this outline. We want to help decide the curriculum. Not all the teachers now in the school know the state requirements. And we don’t just want to go through the motions on this. Once the curriculum has been decided, we want to be sure that the teachers implement this curriculum.
During the dinner I had a talk with Bill Bliss, the high school social studies teacher. He sat across from me at dinner. Bill said that the community would have a hard time getting the community people involved in teaching high school. Right now, the community teachers are only certified to teach in the grade school, but they don’t want to be certified for high school. They don’t want to have to deal with the discipline problem. Last year it was really bad. The kids were always pulling some kind of prank. They’d put water on the door so that when you walked in, it poured all over you. While I was on vacation, some of the kids in my class set off the fire extinguisher and spayed it all over the room. I had a substitute. When I came back, there was a hole in the wall of my class.
Bill said that the teachers from the Hays community now have to teach in LP and the LP community teachers have to teach in the Hays grade school. This is the new rule. The administration is justifying this move by saying that they don’t want these teachers to have their own children in their classroom. This isn’t the real reason for doing this though. But I don’t know the real reason. All I know is that the teachers sure don’t like it. They’re complaining about all the driving they have to do. One of the reasons they’re making the teachers switch like this is that they want to improve the relations between the Hays and LP communities. They’re trying to promote better relations between the communities. I think this is a good idea. The Hays community people do like some of the things about teaching in LP. They didn’t like teaching in the trailers – the grade school in Hays. They like being in a building and a regular classroom. They also have smaller classes in LP, and they like not having as many kids in their class. There aren’t any tutors this year, at least so far, and all the community teachers have their own classes. Violet Crasco is in Hays, Caroline Smith is in Hays. Lou Stiffarm is in Hays. Gootch, Hazel, Elizabeth and Margaret June are in LP. Elmer Main said that there should be money for tutors. They have the tutors in Harlem. He didn’t know why Hays and LP didn’t have tutors.
Bill said that the police were afraid to come into the LP community. I was talking to a couple of the policemen and they admitted it. They said that they didn’t want a bullet in their car. Bill sounded bitter about it. He lives in LP with his wife in the teacher’s housing and this is his second year of teaching in the high school. His wife works as a librarian and resource person in the high school. If you have some kind of trouble and need help from the police, they don’t come until days later, after it is too late. Bill said that he was very surprised, but the Sister’s house in LP has been broken into twice.
Bill said that there were 72 kids enrolled in the Hays LP high school this year, and about 26 kids were enrolled at Flandreau for high school.
Bill said that a little more than one million dollars was appropriated from federal money to build a new high school and grade school in Hays. It will be in Whitecow Canyon. There’s no tax base in the community. The school will eventually cost about five million dollars, but that money will be appropriated later.
The school will be built where the football field is located. Dodson will be the home field for the football team, because when they constructed the field, they made it too low.
Margaret was thanking everyone for coming. She asked me to be on the curriculum committee, and I told her that I would help out in whatever way I could. She thanked me and said, “I know that you are sincere about wanting to help. That’s why I asked you.”
The Hays /Lodge Pole Public Grade and High School
9-1-77 mission kitchen
Mary said that she was sorry to see Bob Hogan leave. “We got close to him, and we liked him a lot.” Beatrice said that the volunteers leave here and they don’t write. “They don’t care about these damn Indians. It’s awful hard on us. The volunteers come here for two years, and they want to get real close, and they all want to call me grandma. They ask me how to say grandma in Gros Ventre. Then they leave here. It’s the same thing all the time. They leave here and we never hear from them again.”
Hearing Beatrice describe this experience really hit home for me. Susie is a great letter writer, and I know that she kept in touch with people after we returned home. The group of people we maintained contact with became smaller and smaller. We lost touch with Frank, Clarence and Margaret and the other Cuts the Ropes. That was painful. When I did get back to Hays, Cyndee took me to the Mission Cemetery. I saw Frank’s grave and felt such a horrible sense of loss and my heart really hurt … we were so close to this family.
Susie was about eight months pregnant with Aaron when we returned to Columbus at the end of May, beginning of June. My parents came out to Hays. My mom flew home with Susie and a day or two later, I drove back to Columbus in our truck with my father and Gahanab. Aaron was born at the beginning of July. We didn’t have any medical insurance for Aaron’s birth, because for some reason the priests and nuns didn’t think to carry maternity, birth or infant coverage. What’s with that? So, I went to work in a warehouse to earn the money to pay off all our medical bills. We were living with Susie’s parents and learning the complex and difficult art of becoming parents. That same summer, we found a house we could afford, and it was a shitstorm of a place. It must have been built on a swamp and the basement flooded regularly. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table watching the light fixture filling with water during a rainstorm.
Susie went to work at her family’s office furniture business, and I began the process of writing a dissertation, which took me five years to complete. I was also teaching at Ohio State University. Our second son was born in 1980, and I found a job working for the state of Ohio. I was thinking that as a parent of two children, it was time to find a real job with real wages. In my mind it was a temporary position while writing my dissertation. As it turns out, I retired from that same job thirty-one years later. And such is life.
This was also the beginning of the end of Susie’s and my marriage. People who think going through a divorce is a simple, straightforward process have never been through a divorce. It started with the emotional and psychological crappola and slowly migrated into the economic and parental crappola. It took us years to find our way to the end. But we did.
Susie and I loved Beatrice, but the shitstorm of our lives made everything more of a challenge. We weren’t doing a great job of keeping in touch with people, primarily because we weren’t doing a great job of living our lives.
Slowly, Susie and I each reconnected with people we loved in Hays. Edith took a train across the country and came to visit us in Columbus. We wrote to people and we sent holiday cards every year. Eventually, Susie made a trip to Hays with her new family. I came for a visit in 2014 and 2017. Cyndee and I became very close – even more so than when I lived in Hays.
We have always loved and love our reservation people. It has been a great joy for us to be back in touch with many of you. If nothing else, the stories and photographs I have been publishing have served as a catalyst for so many of us to find our way back to each other. It hurts that so many people are gone … but they all remain in our memories and our hearts.
9-1-77 mission kitchen
Beatrice comes into work every morning at 8:00. She drops her purse off in the kitchen and then walks over to the rectory to meet Sister Kathleen. Kathleen and Laura come to the mission every morning for mass. Kathleen is teaching Beatrice GED for an hour every morning.
9-2-77 mission kitchen
Beatrice said that Jim will have to work until the day he dies. “With all of the years he’s worked at the mission, they never put any money away for him, and so he won’t get any kind of pension. Father went with us once to the social security people to see if we could get any social security. They told us we couldn’t because we never put any money into social security. The mission never took it out for us. So, the money we ever got was in our paycheck. That’s the only money we get.”
Needless to say, this was so not okay for Jim and Beatrice, and for all of the people who worked for the mission over the years. Jim and Beatrice didn’t work for the mission for ten minutes. They devoted their lives to St. Paul’s Mission. Jim and Beatrice were so incredibly loyal to the mission. It was so much more than the money for them.
One might venture that the mission never took out social security from their salaries because the church couldn’t afford it. Between the diocese, the mission organizations, the Jesuit order and The Church, it is incomprehensible that they couldn’t come up with either the money for a pension or to support a social security contribution. I know, sell a painting or a statue or a few cases of wine. Have a bake sale.
Jim and Beatrice deserved the same security and dignity in their retirement as every nun, priest and brother that they ever worked with at the mission for decades.
Not taking care of the people who gave their lives to this church doesn’t speak well for the values, ethics and morality that are fundamental to the teachings of Jesus. It was a matter of priority, and the church definitely failed these people.
I have been honest and candid in my writings about the mission from our experience. I have worked hard to offer a balanced approach. We observed and heard about all the damage, trauma and abuse the mission caused in the community. And we observed and heard about all the good that the mission contributed to the community. I have also recognized that the mission gave Susie and I an opportunity which made it possible for us to live and work in Hays. It was a gutsy decision to bring into the mission and community two Jews who had no spiritual interest in Catholicism or Christianity whatsoever; and a cultural anthropologist to boot, who was going to observe and write it all down. I have written about all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. We also created lifelong friendships with the people we worked with and shared our lives with for those two years in Hays. As in all of life … it is always complicated.
All of that being said, that the mission didn’t take care of the people who gave their lives to support the mission and its efforts is beyond shameful and brutally unchristian – however you slice or dice it.
9-2-77 mission
I took care of most of the people on my list to notify them of the new phone policy and to give them the handout that had the new policy on it and the date that they were responsible for phone duty. We asked the people in the community to take over the phone service at the mission, and we worked out the schedule for months, choosing the people who come to use the phone most often. I saw Joyce, Ida and Fiddles at the mission at different times during the day, and in each case, I read them the new policy and gave them the handout. They each said that they’d be glad to do it. Father, Mike and Kathleen told me that they weren’t having any trouble. All the people on their lists said that they would be glad to do it.
9-3-77 mission
For the entire summer and for most of the year, we have had horses grazing on the mission land. They have been trespassing and it has been a problem for years. It is costing the mission hundreds of dollars, because they lease land and take a percentage of the year’s hay crop. The hay fields are always grazed on by these horses. The horses get into the cemetery and do a lot of damage to the burial sites. All summer there have been between 15-25 horses illegally on mission land. Susie, Cel and I were walking to the canyon, and we noticed that the fences around the cemetery had been cut so that the horses could get into the mission fields. Some of the fence posts were also bent over to let the horses into the fields. Mike said that he could fix the fences, but they’ve been cut so many times, it isn’t worth the effort. Father doesn’t enforce the trespassing ordinance. The mission is in the process of getting a long-term lease done with a member of the community, and they will take over the repairing and maintenance of the fences and enforcing the trespassing ordinance.
9-3-77 mission school
There was a mission school board meeting after mass tonight in the all-purpose room. The meeting concerned the new gym policy. Father called the meeting. The school board was there, Davey Hawley, Caroline Smith and Sister Giswalda. Father started the meeting with a prayer and asked for guidance in the decisions that would be made. Father then passed out the agenda. It concerned the new gym policy, fees, clean up and policing.
Davey opened the meeting and said that he wanted to bring up a subject.
“It is going to come up sooner or later so I might as well bring it up now. This may not bother you, Father or Sandy or Sister Giswalda, but Caroline is a Gros Ventre, too, like me, and she’ll understand. Snuffy brought something to my attention. He said that he came up to the mission to play basketball with a bunch of guys and Charles was in there playing. Everyone playing was a Doney. I don’t know if they had a scheduled game, but they were all Doneys. Charles said that Father put him in charge of the gym, and he told Snuffy that he would have to come back another night to play, because they had the gym. Snuffy was mad that they couldn’t play because they are Gros Ventre and the gym was built with Gros Ventre money and the Doneys are Crees. This could be a problem, Father, and I thought you’d better know about it because it is going to come up. So, you better know it is coming. Snuffy brought it up at a treaty committee meeting so everyone knows about it.”
Father said that he couldn’t remember the incident. He couldn’t remember putting Charles in charge of the gym. Davey said that it is worse because the Gros Ventre Treaty Committee was having problems because of the off-reservation Gros Ventre, especially from Seattle.
“They’re mad that the treaty committee spent $75,000 from the Gros Ventre Treaty Committee money to build the gym and they weren’t consulted about it. They say that the treaty committee didn’t go to the people with it, they just gave the $75,000 to the mission for the new gym. (Davey is on the treaty committee). The treaty committee went to the BIA superintendent, and he told us that we should conduct business on the treaty committee the same way we do on the tribal council. So, we did it like the tribal council. We did what we thought was right for the people here. We made a decision that we thought was a good one. There was no full-sized gym in the area, and everyone uses it, the boys and girls basketball teams at the high school, there are weddings, wakes and dances and feeds in there. Everyone uses it. But we have to defend ourselves about it all the time, And, Father, you have to watch out for their complaints.”
Father started going through the agenda. Davey and Father did most of the talking and Sister Giswalda and Caroline were quiet and talked occasionally. Father asked if a fee should be charged for practice games and practices from the high school. Davey said that it would cause some problems. “People might complain that they paid for the gym already. Why should they pay again. They’ll say that they paid when the treaty committee gave $75,000 to build the gym.” But Father and Davey agreed that the utilities and maintenance should have to be paid for. It was decided that it would be the same as last year. A fee would be charged to groups who only charged an admissions fee. Father said that he was also using $200 a month from the Assiniboine money (the Assiniboine Treaty Committee donated $15,000 for equipment and supplies for the new gym) to help pay utilities and related costs in the gym. After Father said that a fee was only charged to groups who collected an admission fee at their activities, Caroline said that there was a misunderstanding with some people in the community. Some people think there’s a fee for everything. “I think that people here are just spoiled. They’ve been given so much for so long, they don’t want to support their church or their school. They’re just spoiled. They think that the mission has a lot of money.” Father laughed and said, that’s hardly the case. “The largest source of our money is the Indian Mission Bureau (Catholic) in Washington DC and we get $3,000 a month from them. Most of our contributions are small. Mr. Fugelvan is our business manager, and he worked out a budget for the coming year. He said that we will be $29,000 short this year. We’re going to try to start a newsletter and try to raise money from this.”
Then Father talked about destruction of property during activities, basketball games, wakes that go on all night. Davey said that he didn’t know about that. Father told him about the bathroom ceiling being destroyed and how Mike caught some boys stealing gas from the visitor’s bus at a basketball game. We talked about getting police to come to the games to supervise and patrol the building and parking lot. Davey said that he wished he’d known about this problem. Somebody would have heard from me.
They decided to postpone any decisions about the gym fee and maintenance and clean up until Mr. Fugelvan could tell them about how much the utilities cost for these games and activities in the gym. They decided to hold another meeting on September 9th and to invite all the people who are involved in activities in the gym. They made a list of the people who should be invited to this meeting and Father would send them invitations in the mail. Gerald Stiffarm (tribal recreation director), Greg Harbeck (public school business manager), Mr. Clabaugh (public school coach), Dora Helgeson (LP community hall director), Beaniford Wing (LP recreation and community hall), Fiddles (gym maintenance), Davey Hawley (Gros Ventre Treaty Committee), Mr. Hasenkamp (pubic school assistant superintendent) and Mr. Fugelvan (mission business manager).
Davey asked Sister how the mission enrollment was this year. Sister said that the enrollment was down. (Sister was mad). “You know, people wanted this school. They fought to keep this school and now they won’t come to it. I don’t understand it. Caroline said a lot of times the parents don’t even make the decision where their kids will go to school. “I know some second graders who decide what school they’ll go to.” Sister said that the parents weren’t interested enough in education and they didn’t care enough about their children. “I only have 12 in my class. There are a lot in 3-4 grade and 5-6 grades. The 1-2 grades should have more, too.”
Davey said that he remembered the parents’ nights they used to have at the mission. This was at the high school. “It worked real good for about three years and the parents sure came to those. It was always full. That’s when Father Coleman was here. One of the sisters once went down to the public school to do some observations and she said that all the school was doing was babysitting. I think I agree with her.”
Father said that the mission would charge a fee for all activities only where an admission fee was charged. Davey said that the high school teams weren’t funded from government money. There’s government money to buy equipment, but everything else, the kids have to raise the money on their own. They have different clubs and activities to raise money.
9-4-77 mission
Father Retzel was in Zortman all afternoon. It was the first Sunday mass there. I asked Father when the church there was built. He told me it was 1911 under the direction of Father McNabb. It is still the original building there. He got the miners to build the church.
9-5-77 Hays and LP
Jan was on the MDA telethon early in the morning. A lot of people in the community were talking about it. Gerard and Faye went around Hays collecting money for MDA. They collected $6. Father also collected money in Hays and LP and at the mission. The Hays Lodge Pole School also had a challenge and raised $100. People know Jan well because she has such a close relationship with the mission and community. Jan has muscular dystrophy.
9-6-77 Hays
The Hays Lodge Pole public school hires some people from the community for several jobs besides the grade school teachers. Carol Doney is secretary. Target, Fatso and Esther Doney are cooks. Wallace Doney, Dale Fortin and Clyde Werk are bus drivers. Virgil Doney is a custodian. The school days for both the mission and public school are from 9-3:20.
The schedule and route for the school bus is the same every morning and afternoon, but who gets on the bus is very erratic. The kids don’t always ride the bus to school. Some of the kids go with their parents or guardians by car or truck, and sometimes the kids walk to school or back home. The only way I know if they are coming on the bus is if they are standing outside or if I see them walking out of the house. When I drive the route, I drive by their homes very slowly.
Taking the kids home, I don’t worry about who is getting on the bus, because some kids walk home, but it is different every day. Another interesting situation exists with the bus routes. The kids get off at different places every day. Sometimes the kids get off at the store. Sometimes they get off at a friend’s house to play. Sometimes they get off at a relative’s house, particularly a grandmother and sometimes an aunt. And the kids do often get off at home.
Getting ready for school in the morning is a rushed activity in most homes. Most of the kids are half asleep when they get on the bus. Some of the kids are getting dressed when they get on the bus. Sometimes the kids will be on the bus for a while and then remember that they’ve forgotten something and they get off and walk home.
Both the public school and mission school have a breakfast program. Most of the kids don’t eat breakfast at home before school. But some of the kids are eating something when they get on the bus in the morning, sometimes a donut or pastry. Some kids eat candy on the bus on the way to school in the morning. They are almost always eating some kind of junk food on the way home, especially the kids who stop at the store on the way home. When the kids get onto the bus in the morning, a lot of mothers or grandmothers will be looking through a window or standing in the doorway when their kids get onto the bus, and they often watch as I drive away.
One morning, Fiddles and Mary Agnes were standing outside with their kids when I drove up with the bus. They stood there and waved good bye as their kids got on the bus.
In the morning, the kids are pretty quiet on the bus. They sit straight in their seats all the way to school. In the afternoon, it is an entirely different story. The kids are screaming and yelling. They bounce in their seats over every bump. They pull the windows up and down and they stick their heads out. They throw rocks, run up and down the aisle, hang over the step well. Cram four into a seat. The kids run out of school and onto the bus. Most of the kids will sit with a friend. Often times an older brother or sister will watch over younger siblings. They’ll sometimes hold hands getting onto the bus or walking home after getting off the bus. If I yell at a young child for misbehaving, an older sibling will sometimes repeat my order. On rare occasions, an older kid will pay some attention to one of the younger kids. Today CM was getting off the bus and Royce was behind him. Royce lifted him into the air from under his arms and carried him down the steps. Sometimes the older kids will tease the younger ones.
It is very common for people in the community to use our bus driving service to get around Hays. Anita Haakinson came out of the house with her kids this morning when I came by to get the kids. She asked me if I could take her to her father’s (JJ) house. I told her sure, and she got on the bus. When I went to Itty’s to get the kids, Mary Abieta came out with the kids and got on the bus. She said good morning and came to the school with the kids.
I have no idea what I have included in my fieldnotes regarding my exceptional bus driver experiences that occurred during my second year working at the mission. I don’t want to let those experiences go unrecorded, so I am going to write the following from my memory. These events took place fifty years ago, my memory sucks … but these were way beyond memorable.
The mission school bus was really old. I have no idea how old, but everything about that bus communicated its very old age. The mission had no money, so if the bus needed repairs, those were often done by the volunteers, none of whom were mechanics. Brother was a mechanic, and I’m sure he did work on the bus. We stored the bus in the old, original, wooden mission building that was behind the rectory and our trailer. The bus was too tall for the building, so someone dug out the dirt floor to make it possible to drive the bus into the garage. We pulled it in and we backed it out. The bus just fit into the garage both length-wise and across the width of the bus. There was absolutely no wiggle room. The dirt ‘ramp’ behind the bus was therefore steep. To get the bus out of the garage, you had to rev the engine to give it enough gas to get it immediately up the hill. The bus had two side view mirrors on either side of the bus. Those mirrors were inches from the doorway of the building. In the course of my time driving, both of those mirrors were knocked off the bus. The only view we had behind us was the rearview mirror, and to actually see something behind us, the kids had to be planted in their seats. Reference to the above … running up and down the aisles.
Montana gets really cold in the winter times. I can remember going through periods when the temperatures dropped down to 30-40 below at night. When we hit these periods, we would have to let the bus warm up for a while, before we could drive it, and before the interior was warm enough for the kids to ride. I can remember times when I would have to get up really early and get the bus out of the garage to just let it run. I would park it by the school and go into the kitchen and share coffee and cigarette time with Beatrice and Mary. I have very fond memories from those times.
We also got a ton of snow in Hays which made driving the bus an exhilarating experience. The road crew guys were great about making sure that the bus routes were plowed before we started our routes. This was a critical activity for all involved, because there were some places where we needed a turn-around plowed to get out of a side road. One such location was the turn-around at Jim and Beatrice’s place. We drove up there to get their grandkids who were going to school at the mission. On one very snowy morning, and for some unknown reason, the crew hadn’t plowed the turn-around. The snow was too deep for me to even try to get the bus turned around. I don’t remember just how far I had to back up the bus to get back to the main road. It seemed like miles. I was backing up a bus loaded with kids and with no sideview mirrors. I’ve got kids screaming at me, ‘no go to the right … no go to the left.’ Exhilarating. Miraculously, I made it all the way out to the main road, and got stuck as I was backing out of the gravel side road. As I noted in a previous blog, no one in Hays was interested in all of the exhilarating experiences that were taking place at any given moment. And all news traveled very quickly in Hays. Before too long, one of the road crew guys appeared and pulled me out of the snow. I continued on to get the kids to school. No harm. No foul.
Sister Bart would often give the kids holy water in ‘squirt’ bottles to take home with them. I never asked nor figured out if the kids were getting holy water because they did something good and this was an award or if they did something bad, and they needed to squirt something as an act of absolution. Well, put a bunch of grade school kids on a bus after school with squirt bottles, and before you know it, you have the holiest bus in the universe. On one such occasion, a very sweet little girl came up to me while I was driving and told me that she was ‘hit’ with holy water. She wanted to know what she should do. What immediately came to mind was, ‘sweetie, you are asking a Jewish bus driver what you should be doing after getting squirted with holy water.’ As I didn’t think this sweet child deserved my brilliant sarcasm and irony, I suggested that she genuflect and then return to her seat. To this day, I have no idea whether this was appropriate advice, but I was counting on the good Lord’s recognition and understanding of this sweet child’s and the Jewish bus driver’s ignorance.
I do not remember why I was driving out on the highway. My guess is that for some reason, I had kids from the mission I had to bring home after school, and the public school bus drivers were done with their routes. I was headed out towards Camie and Richards to get Darian home, and I lost the brakes. Fortunately, I was on the highway and had nothing in front of me for 30 miles, so I just coasted to a stop. I wasn’t in the least surprised that the brakes went out, because the bus was losing parts on a regular basis. I don’t remember how we got help, because there were no cell phones in those days. But if you were in trouble on the highway, everyone stopped. I’m sure lots of help arrived to get the kids home and me back to the mission. While I don’t remember, it is also possible that I drove back to the mission without brakes. Crazier things were going on at the mission.
Driving the bus at the mission was an adventure. So many adventures.
9-6-77 mission school
This morning, Ang and Robert Norquay ran away from school. Sister Benno gave a note to Sister Giswalda and she in turn told Father about the kids running away. Father drove out to look for them. He found them playing at Ang’s grandparents, Quentin and Lilly. Father brought them back to school.
9-6-77 rectory
I told Clemence that I heard there was going to be a meeting of the Little Shell Band this Saturday in Havre. She said that her uncle worked on getting the payment until he died. “He thought he saw it through, but we are still waiting. They started working on this payment in the 1930s. You have to be enrolled by March. I need my baptismal records. I asked Father about it and it seems he misplaced them. But I know they are here, because I’ve asked for them twice before and they were here. I also need the records to prove who my mother and father and grandparents were, so I can prove that I’m eligible for the money. It is the people from the Little Shell Band who are now living in Great Falls who are organizing this.”
At dinner tonight with Clemence, Cel, Mary, Susie and I we were talking about the sonic booms today. They happened in the afternoon and two of them were so loud that they shook the buildings. Clemence said that she could remember when the booms started here. “I was working as a cook at the public school at the time. It was about 1959.” She said she couldn’t remember any damage to buildings or any broken windows.
I think the military has designated this area as either low or no inhabitants. Figures.
9-6-77 rectory
Clemence started her job making dinner for all of the volunteers and Father at the mission. She lives behind the store and was renting her place from Allen. So, one of us was picking her up and taking her home every day.
We were talking at dinner. Clemence said that she used to go to the mission.
“We couldn’t speak our language. If they heard us even on the playground, we were punished. The Ursaline sisters were very mean. I hate to say that about the mission, but they were. They were mostly French. The Father that was here at the time was Father Piette. I worked in the laundry behind the mission and also in the bakery. They had a chicken coop over the hill with a lot of chickens. The old mission was used as a visiting room with parents and brothers and sisters who came to visit. This is now the bus garage. The boarding school was there. The back of the mission was a lot like the basement of the church. It had old clothes in there.”
“I once had the job of heating the irons over the fire, because we didn’t have electricity then. I thought I did a real good job, but when the sister came down to check my irons, they weren’t good enough for her, and she beat me. I told her I was going to report her, and she pulled me back and beat me again and she kept doing that until I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone that she beat me.”
“There was a little girl there whose job it was to do the laundry. She was so happy because she got all of her work done. She was getting ready to go, because she was finished when a sister came down. They carried those suitcases with the straps then and she took the strap off the suitcase and beat this girl with the buckle and whipped her on the neck with the strap until she bled. And then she sent her away, all covered in blood. The little girl went to the priest looking like that and the next day they had that nun expelled.”
“They used to make us peel potatoes so thin. They would come around and check our peels. If they were too thick, we’d have to peel some off the peel. We used to have to sit there with the pan on our lap while we were peeling them.”
“There were two boarding schools here then, one for the boys and one for the girls. We had a big, huge fence around ours. The only time we saw each other was in church. We had to go to church every morning at 6:00 and on Sunday. There were about 100 kids going there then. They separated the older and the younger girls.”
“My brother froze to death. He tried to run away from here. It was on New Years day. Of course, he didn’t know the area. He was new around here. John Doney, the mailman, was delivering the mail, and he found him on January 5th, frozen to death. It looked like his partner had frozen to death first, because you could see tracks in the snow where he tried to drag his partner behind him for a while. I was around eight years old then. I’m 74 now. He ran away once before in the fall. I went after my father to tell him he was gone. They caught me, but they didn’t do anything to me. Vernie was at the mission then, but she is older. Most of the people who went there then are passed away now. Jeanette Warrior was in my class.”
“Ruby Jones told me that the girls who worked in the bakery once got mad at one of the sisters and they took off their shoes and they mixed the dough with their bare feet. There were about seven sisters here then; one to cook, one for laundry, one for bakery and some other. Then there were brothers in the school, the boy’s school.”
9-6-77 trailer KOJM Havre
Jack Quincy on his radio show said that someone asked him to play Floyd Waterman’s song, ‘The Missionaries.’ He said that the missionaries have done a good job of educating our people and preparing kids for the future. But a lot of people feel that although they’ve done a good job, they’re responsible for the loss of the Indian culture. We would hope that they would help the Indian people to regain their culture. Then he played the song which is a negative statement of the missionary’s influence on Indian culture. It is a satire.
9-7-77 mission
Beatrice and Kathleen have been working on GED for the past two weeks. Beatrice is trying to get her high school diploma. She comes in with Jim at 8:00 and then goes over to the rectory to work with Kathleen. She works for an hour and then she comes back to the kitchen and starts making lunch. Kathleen said that she concentrates on math. People can pass everything else on their own. It is only the math that gives them any trouble. The only other thing she works on with people are graphs. When they go to take the test, and with the help with math and graphs, most of the people can pass the test.
9-7-77 rectory
At dinner tonight I was complaining about all the horses that got into the garden. Clemence said that she used to live up here at the mission in the brick house behind where the garden is now. “We rented that house from the mission for five years. We had some geese, chickens and turkeys.”
Father told me about going after Ang and Robert yesterday after they ran away from school. Today, Robert Healy took off. “I’m supposed to go out looking for him, but I’m going to call Gretchen Healy in Lodge Pole. She’s supposed to be doing this as the home school coordinator.” Father called her and asked her to find Robert.
9-8-77 mission
Jim smokes Bull Durham tobacco and he rolls them as he smokes them. He smokes all day when he is at school. When I’m working with Jim, which I do every day as we clean the school together, when I see him reaching for one of his (the pouch and paper), I always offer him one of mine. He thanks me and he always takes it and smokes it. Whenever I light up a cigarette, I always offer one to Jim and he always takes it. It’s so much easier than rolling them.
I have so much respect for Jim. It makes me feel good that I can do anything for him.
9-8-77 mission
Tonight was the first bingo of the year and most of the volunteers were there to work. Laura is directing the bingo this year and she is selling cards. Mike and I sell cards. Susie and Mary are working in the concessions. BJ volunteered to call the numbers. The bingo was in the all-purpose room and the six tables were put out. BJ called the numbers over the portable PA system that is located in front of the stage. Beatrice and Jim came early to help us set up. There were about 100 people who came to play. It was a very large crowd. Most everyone was from Hays and all ages attended, from preschoolers to seniors. Women bring their babies and young children. Frank brought Matilda and she sat with Evy and Riggy. Nucky and Hazel were also at their table. The bingo was announced in the church bulletin, and we put a sign up in the store. Lots of people heard about it through word of mouth.
Older kids were there. They only came in to buy food at the concession. They spent most of their time in the parking lot and in cars driving around. There were some kids sitting in their cars drinking beer and Cel went out to ask them to leave. There were about 30 to 40 kids in the parking lot. Cel said that the first thing they asked him was whether he drank beer and smoked dope. Mike laughed and said that is the first thing they ask you.
The cards are sold for ten cents a card or 25 cents for three. Caroline Smith donated a 10-pound turkey and that was the prize for one of the games.
Mary made popcorn all night. They sold coffee, pop, candy bars, and popcorn. Next week, Laura is going to bring hot dogs and chips. They sold out of about everything. The bingo made around $200.
Bingos are going to be held on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. The people enjoy playing and it does make some money for the mission. Bingos are one of the most popular money-making methods for different organizations around the reservation. It is one of the few opportunities that some people have to get out of their homes and visit with friends and relatives for a few hours. It is particularly good for the older people, and they do come and enjoy themselves. The bingos are especially crowded during the winter months when it is difficult to get outside for recreation.
After bingo, BJ, Mary, Beatrice and Jim stayed to help the volunteers clean up.
9-8-77 rectory
Kathleen has taken Mary Agnes as one of her GED students.
While I was selling cards at bingo I stopped at Itty’s table and I asked her how Urban Rural was coming along. She said she finished one summer term and Granville just found out that we were funded for next year. It is Title IV, Class B funds. We started again for next year on October 3rd. Itty is a secretary at the Intertribal Education Center. I asked Itty if any new teachers were hired yet. She answered that there are some people who applied for jobs at the college, but they haven’t been hiring yet. Jim and Ken are still going through the applications.
9-8-77 Whitecow Canyon
On the bus route this afternoon, Justin and Dorothy were on the bus and I stopped at Roseann’s. They didn’t get up, and Justin yelled, we’re going to grandma’s. So I pulled away. Then I thought how strange it was that he assumed I knew what he was talking about – that I knew who his grandma was. I did. He wanted to go to Jessie’s. But to these kids, their world in Hays is very small and they do assume that everyone knows everyone in the community and all of their relations.
On the bus route, David Kirkaldie got mad at one of the other boys and gave him the finger. The kids sometimes swear loud enough for me to hear. Their vocabulary in this area is extensive. The kids very rarely swear in front of an adult, and I have never heard them swear in front of a parent or grandparent.
When I returned with the bus after school, two of the high school girls stopped me before I went back into the trailer. They asked me if they could each bum a cigarette. I said to them, aren’t you on the basketball team. They said yes, they were on their way to practice. I told them they shouldn’t smoke before their practice. They said that they always smoke a couple of cigarettes before their practice. So I gave them the cigarettes. They thanked me and walked off. I sure hope that I’m not going to hell for doing this.
9-9-77 mission all purpose room
There was a school board meeting tonight for the mission school. Father called the meeting to determine the mission policy for the new gym. Father, Sister Giswalda and Caroline Smith were there from the school board. Davey Hawley was absent. Father also invited Mr. Hasenkamp, Mr. Clabaugh, Mike, Mary Porsche, Fiddles and me. Dora Helgeson, Gerald Stiffarm, Mr. Fugelvan but they didn’t come. The meeting concerned cleaning, policing and supervising activities and the fee for use of the gym.
It was decided that a fee would only be charged for activities where a fee would be charged. It would be $15 for utilities and $30 for cleaning. The cleaning is optional if the group wants to do the cleaning themselves. Mr. Hasenkamp said that he couldn’t afford to have the public school janitors clean up after the high school basketball games. They get paid over $8 an hour and we couldn’t afford to pay this extra money. It would break us. The cleaning would be the gym, the bathrooms and the all-purpose room.
The meeting then turned to supervision. Father complained that there was damage done to the property, the outside and bathrooms. Mike said that he once caught kids stealing gas from the visitor’s bus. Mr. Hasenkamp said that the public school calls the tribal police and writes them the dates of the games, and they ask for two policemen. The problem is that they don’t always come and when they do, they spend more time watching the game than they do policing the parking lot and building. We hire a guard from Manpower over winter vacation, when the building is empty, he patrols the building. A couple of guards are hired through Manpower, and we have someone in the school all day and night. Maybe we could ask for the tribal police and try to get the Manpower guards also. Everyone agreed that the supervision in the parking lot was necessary. Father and Mr. Hasenkamp said that they would try to get two policemen, one for outside and one for inside. Father said that he would talk to Ed Azure and see if he could also get Manpower guards. The security guards would be paid and hired through Manpower. Fiddles said that the Manpower jobs were federal funds, and he said that was the program he was on for cleaning the mission gym and senior citizens. Then Father said that he would try to get a full-time security from Manpower for all scheduled events in the gym.
Then they discussed liability for damages. It was decided that the building would be checked before and after any activity and the sponsoring group would be liable for any damages to the property. Father said that it might be difficult during wakes because you wouldn’t want to bother anyone about this during a wake. Mike said, that’s true, but there’s more damage done during wakes than at any other event here. The gym is open all night and people are in and out of the gym all night. There are kids in the parking lot all night and the bathroom takes a beating. We should have a policeman in the parking lot all night during a wake, and the building should be supervised. Caroline said that if there were police in the parking lot, people would feel safer. “Most people worry about their cars. There are some people who just don’t respect people’s property. The people should know that they’re liable for damages, even during wakes. It might make some people aware of all the damage that is done. Maybe some of them will start to watch their kids closer. Maybe they’ll pull their kids down when they start to climb the walls.”
Then Father and Mr. Clabaugh worked out the basketball practice schedules for the use of the gym for the boys and girls’ high school basketball team.
9-10-77 trailer
Mike came over to visit with his brother and sister in law. We were talking about the early church and how the mission treated the kids and the loss of the culture, especially with the brothers and the Ursuline Sisters. Mike said that sometimes when he’s talking to JJ, he’ll talk about Brother Beese. He’ll have a twisted lip when he talks about this brother. He must have been pretty bad.
Mike said that the people here in the community were moving away from the church because of some of the changes that were taking place. All of the ritual that attracted people to the church are changing, like the use of the monstrance during the benediction, the ashes on ash Wednesday and all the other tangibles and rituals. During the whole year that we’ve been here there have been only three marriages in the church. People aren’t getting married; they’re just living together.
Why people weren’t getting married in the Catholic Church. Mike noted one possibility; the changes in ritual. There was another very important reason. Marriage was a precarious proposition on the reservation. Poverty, cultural trauma, and a whole lot of other issues put extreme burdens on couples. Under the best of circumstances economically and socially, the divorce rate in America was high. In 1976, the United States divorce rate was 5.0 per 1,000 people, representing a significant peak in American marital dissolution during a decade of high divorce numbers. There were approximately 1,083,000 to 1,091,000 divorces granted that year. If you are Catholic and you go through a divorce, there are lifetime consequences that take an enormous amount of mumbo jumbo to reconcile. Taking communion was important to people in the community and they were forbidden from doing so after getting a divorce from a marriage that was performed in the church. I believe that there were people in the community who recognized that marriage was a difficult proposition, the Catholic beliefs and rituals were important to them, and they took a very rational approach to the situation. If there was a separation, even if they had children, there were no repercussions from the Church. I’m not sure that the Church was connecting all of those dots.
Mike said that they went out hunting with Kay and Glen and Tom and Dopey. We got two antelope out near three buttes. We gave one to Glen and Tom took the other one.
I asked Mike why Vernie called Lindey Brother. Mike said that Vernie calls anyone who is associated with the church, brother or sister. She’s been involved with Pentecostalism for a long time in her life, and I think that this is a result of that influence.
9-12-77 mission Susie
In music today, Sister Benno had me teach the kids, ‘one little, two little, three little Indians.’ Most of the kids already knew the song. Then she had me teach the kids another song: ‘my mother and father are Indian, and I am an Indian, too.’ Mary P. told me that every fourth Friday in the month was designated “Native American Day.” She thinks it was passed by the state. We will be having a program in the school for that every month now. The first one will be a week from Friday.
9-12-77 trailer
Father came to the trailer to talk to Susie and I at about 9pm. He asked if we could come to church and to dinner on Wednesday. He wanted to make sure that it didn’t interfere with Rosh Hashsnah. We told him it wouldn’t and we would be there. He said that Wednesday was the 90th anniversary of the mission, St. Paul’s mission. September 14th. The mission was really started here in 1886, but the old mission (he pointed to the old mission building) was commemorated on September 14, 1887. So we’re going to celebrate with a benediction in church at 5:15 and then a dinner afterward in the all purpose room. All of the mission people are going to be there. We told him we would be happy to come.
9-14-77 mission
At 5:15 Father held a service in the church to commemorate and celebrate the 90th anniversary of St. Paul’s Mission. He said a benediction (with the Monstrance and Eucharist) and it was a short service. He prayed over the job descriptions of each of the sisters and volunteers. The people invited were only the mission personnel, the Franciscan sisters, Kathleen and Laura, Mike, Mary, Cel and I, Jim and Beatrice. Mary and BJ were invited but they couldn’t come. After the service, we went to the school all purpose room for dinner. Clemence prepared dinner. Father asked Jim to say the prayer before we ate. Jim said the prayer in Gros Ventre. The mission was here in 1886, but it was formally commemorated, the old mission building, on September 14, 1887.
9-15-77 mission school
At lunch today at the mission grade school the kids went outside after lunch to play. There was an incident and one of the girls came in crying. Father went outside to investigate. When he came back he said that one of the girls was teasing another girl and calling her names. He said, it doesn’t come out of the clear blue sky. I asked, do you mean that they hear it from their parents. He answered, that’s what I mean. The kids have been giving this girl a rough time since she started school here. She is white and they won’t accept her. The boys and girls in her class both beat up on her. They put gum in her hair and break and steal her supplies. Her father told me that he bought her a box of 24 crayons and there were only four left. The kids stole or broke the rest.
We had an informal teacher’s meeting after school today. The children were unusually cruel today. A girl who had been egged on by some 3rd and 4th grade boys beat up a girl who is white. Father said that her own sister told on her. I mentioned that on several occasions mission volunteers have been offended and abused by the kids. Mary P. was hit today by one of her 3rd grade students. I asked what the school policy was for handling a disrespectful student. What do we do if a student hits us. Sister Giswalda said that it wouldn’t happen. (It happened to Mary, but I didn’t want to say anything). Sister Giswalda said that she ordered a book, ‘Peace in the Classroom.’ She wanted for us all to read it. It is about all the hypertension that is in the children today. Father said that he has a similar problem in church. People bring their children and they run around the back of the church like it’s a playground. He said that he’s felt like saying, you know, I’ve heard that traditionally in your times of prayer, especially the pipe ceremonies, that children were not even allowed to attend, and it was quiet in there. I find it difficult to project my voice over the noise. Sister Giswalda said, I know Father, where is their culture. She also said that she’s found in teaching here that you have to use every bit of psychology ever learned and then some.
9-18-77 rectory
George Chandler came up to the mission for phone duty. He said that he used to drive the mission school bus. It was in the 1960s. “I drove it for three years. And Marge drove it for a year, too. They used to pay me $15 a week.” He laughed when he told me how much he was paid. He said that he drove it more for something to do. “I used to keep the bus up at my house when it was warm out. When it was going to be cold or snowy or over the weekend, I would bring it up to the mission and keep it in the old mission. I would bring it in because I always had so much trouble getting it out in the mornings when it snowed. In those days, when we had the high school too, we had to make two runs, one for the people in old Hays, and one for the country people. We didn’t have to drive too far, only to about the Lodge Pole turnoff, because there weren’t that many people who lived out there then. The people from Lodge Pole really have to drive the bus a long way. People come from way out to go to the Lodge Pole school. I had to get up extra early on those mornings when the bus was parked at the mission. I get up at about 5:00 now, because I work so far out.” He works out by Dodson. “It is about an hour drive to and from work all together. With the driving, I put in about a 12 hour day. I work on the road crew. Right now we are laying crushed gravel but next week, we are going to start paving the Dodson Road. It is about a three-mile stretch. Then after that is done, we are going to pave the Whitecow Canyon road. We’ll probably pave the Hays-Lodge Pole shortcut road next year.”
9-19-77 Hays
This morning I drove the school bus to get the kids. David Kirkaldie walked onto the bus and he was carrying something in his hand. When I looked closely, I noticed that he had a whole cucumber that was peeled. He ate the whole thing on the way to school.
This afternoon when I was taking the kids home on the bus a few of the boys were fooling around with the emergency door on the back of the bus and the alarm went off. I went back and hollered at them. They stopped. Then about five of the boys started throwing rocks on the bus. I stopped again and had them clean it up.
After school everyday, about 20 or 30 kids go to the Hays store and buy candy, chips, ice cream and pop. When I come back to the mission from Whitecow Canyon about 10-15 of the kids get back on the bus from the store. They usually still have food when they get on the bus. When I stopped to let them off, one of the boys dropped an empty chip bag onto the floor of the bus. I asked him to pick it up. He came back and kicked the bag off the bus and onto the ground outside.
You know that old commercial about littering where the Indian notices someone throw a piece of paper out of a car window onto the road and they pan to his face with a tear going down his cheek. Not so much.
9-19-77 mission
We were heading over to the rectory for dinner and Jr came riding up on a horse. He was holding a chicken, and he had two dogs barking at his side. He said that he found this chicken at his house and was returning it to the mission.
Where was my camera.
Doug Morin took his kids out of the mission school. Both boys were very well behaved and were good students. They worked hard and they did well in school. Doug said that he pulled them out because their classmates wouldn’t accept them and always gave them such a hard time. He’s sending them to the Hays Lodge Pole school and if that doesn’t work, he said that he would send them to Harlem. There are more white kids there and they might be accepted more easily. Some of the kids put one of his boy’s boots into a toilet while he was in the gym. Doug told Sister Giswalda that he thought it was the parent’s fault. They just don’t care and they don’t discipline their children. He said that he tried to start a Community Action Committee in Hays, but the parents wouldn’t come to the meetings. They were either too busy doing other things and some of them just don’t care.
Father said that Mr. Hasenkamp sent a letter to the tribal police, asking them to come to the basketball games, He asked for two of them to patrol the area, one outside and one inside the gym. He invited them to the feed afterward and then to escort the visitor’s bus at least out of Hays, “to avoid any uncomfortable situation.’
9-21-77 mission kitchen
Beatrice and Mary have established a very regular routine in the kitchen. Beatrice comes in at 8:00 with Jim. Then this year, Beatrice goes over to the rectory for her GED class between 8-9 with Sister Kathleen. At 9 she returns to the kitchen and usually has something for breakfast. Mary comes to the mission around 8:30. They don’t start making lunch until Susie starts cleaning the kitchen from breakfast. Mary makes bread or rolls every day, and she starts mixing the ingredients at 9:15. Until then Mary and Beatrice visit with each other and with the mission volunteers. We all regularly congregate in the kitchen to visit with Mary and Beatrice. Occasionally, Mary will help Susie to clean the kitchen. During the morning from 9:30-11:30 Mary makes the bread and rolls and Beatrice usually makes the main course for lunch. Depending on what they are making (how complicated or time consuming) they’ll take one or two breaks to talk to Susie or other volunteers. They take most of their breaks at the lunch table and they usually have a cup of coffee. There is almost always a pot of coffee on the stove. They call it ‘cowboy coffee’ – the grounds are on the bottom of the pot and then they fill the pot with water and they boil the crap out of it. Then they allow the grounds to settle to the bottom. It is very strong coffee and the last cup of the pot is incredible. As noted earlier … three packs of cigarettes and twenty cups of coffee.
They have lunch done by 11:30. Mary puts the salt, pepper, butter and sometimes mustard and ketchup out on the tables in the all-purpose room. At 11:45 the 1st and 2nd graders come to get lunch. Mary and Susie pass out the dessert, chips, fruit and vegetables, and Beatrice passes out the main part of the meal. I pass out the silverware and milk. This was Father Simoneau’s old job. The 3rd and 4th graders and 5th and 6th graders come next and the 7th and 8th graders come at noon.
Then Mary starts to clean trays. Beatrice sits at the table waiting for Mary to get most of the trays sprayed off. Jim usually eats in the coat room and his maintenance room. By 12:15, Mary is ready to eat and she and Beatrice take their lunch and eat at the kitchen table. When they’re done eating, Beatrice has one cigarette and they visit with the volunteers or any other visitors who show up in the kitchen. This break usually goes on for about a half hour. At about 1:00 they start cleaning the kitchen. Mary sometimes helps me clean the kitchen tables. When it needs to be done, they do laundry in the afternoon – towels, wash cloths and pot holders. They walk back and forth to the rectory to use the washer and dryer. They also divide the cleaning chores. Mary does the trays, washes the stove and oven and Beatrice cleans the food warmer. Then at about 3:00 Mary sweeps and mops the floor.
Depending on the next day’s menu, Beatrice will put out the food to defrost, usually meat. The menus used to be planned a few days in advance and sometimes on the same day, depending on the food available. Since Fugelvan has organized the food ordering, they plan the meals almost always a few days in advance. Either in the morning or the afternoon, they consult their recipe cards and books. These are sent by the government school food program.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Jim eats lunch at the senior citizens center. He comes back before 1:00 and he brings a lunch for Beatrice. She doesn’t always eat what Jim brings her. It depends on what she made for lunch at the school. Sometimes Mary brings her little kids to work with her and occasionally Beatrice brings Linelle. The kids play in the kitchen and in the all-purpose room. The kids only come when Joey isn’t able to take the kids.
Mary and Beatrice go home before 4:00.
9-21-77 rectory
We had a new student today at the mission school. I drove him home after school up in Whitecow Canyon. As I was leaving, he ran up to the bus and said he wanted to go back to the mission. He was very sad. He said that he wanted to talk to Father Retzel. When we got to the mission, I asked him if he’d ever been in the old mission and if he wanted to drive in there with me. He got really excited and smiled for the first time and said yes. When we left the bus, I asked him if there was anything I could do. He said that he came to this school to see what it was like. He’s in the 4th grade. The boys keep fighting with me. They’re always hitting me and giving me a hard time and they’re always saying that they’re going to beat me up. I asked him who was doing that and he told me. They were all boys in his class. I told him to be sure to talk to Father about it. He said that he might not come back. I told him to please give it another try and to talk to Father. He said he would think about it. He was very sad the whole time I spoke with him. When I mentioned being afraid, he cut me off and said, ‘I’m not afraid.’ I should have known better than to characterize his feelings in that way.
9-22-77 mission school
At lunch today Sister Giswalda said that the mission enrollment is going up. In the past couple of weeks, we have enrolled 10 new kids. They were at the public school. That will bring our enrollment up to about 65-70 students. It used to be that the kids would transfer back and forth all year. They’d be punished in one school and would transfer to the other. Then they would be punished in the new school and they would transfer back. This went on all year. The school finally tried to put a stop to it and decided to charge a fine of $5 each time a student switched school. It did cut it down some, but it still continued. We cut it down. September 30th is the last day that a student can enroll in the mission grade school. We won’t accept any new students after that. The public school has to accept students any time during the year. They can’t turn them away. But we can do what we want because we’re a private school. I would never accept any federal money for the school, because once we accept the first dollar, we’d have to do things the way they wanted us to do it. We’ve been offered some federal support, but I wouldn’t take it.
Mike said that he thought the kids this year were more disobedient and there was more misbehavior than there was last year. The kids just aren’t as respectful this year. I took the boys up to the canyon. I went out to take some pictures and while I was gone, the boys loaded the truck with rocks and were planning to throw them while we were heading back. When I got to the truck, I told the kids to get rid of the rocks. One of the kids started throwing rocks anyway. When we got back to the school, I yelled at him. He told me that he was going to go back to the Hays school because he didn’t like the way I was running the class. I told him that I was running the class, not him. Sister said, well, let him go. She was mad. I’ve had to get rough with some of the other boys, too. They ignore me and they talk back to me.
Sister Benno told one of the kids he was acting like a clown. First she said it in German, and then in English she said, you don’t want to be a clown do you? Gerard said, “Yes, I do. I want to be a rodeo clown.”
9-23-77 mission
At the mission program for American Indian Day, the 1st and 2nd graders sang a song.
My father and mother are Indian.
And I am Indian, too.
I’m proud that I am Indian.
And wouldn’t be anything else.
I’m proud that I am Indian,
And wouldn’t be anything else.
Clemence comes to the rectory on weekdays around 3:00 to cook dinner for the volunteers and Father. She also cleans the rectory. She has kept it very clean. She does a great job and is very conscientious. She’s also a good cook and she uses all of the leftovers. She recooks them in different ways. She throws almost no food away.
9-24-77 mission church
Jack Plumage and his wife came to the mission this afternoon to have their baby baptized. Father performed the ceremony. The baby was named Charles Jack for his father. There were about 20 people at the baptism.
9-26-77 mission arts and crafts Susie
We had a large crowd at arts and crafts this evening – Joanne, Nuckey, Tootsie, Nedra, Audrey, Mary Agnes, Fiddles, Clayton, Edith, Mary P and myself. I asked everyone to sign a guest list because Bob Swan said that he would give us some money for ceramics if a lot of people show up.
9-27-77 mission
This afternoon I saw Lou Shambo driving back from Brother Ryan’s house. I stopped to talk to him. He asked me if I saw Brother and I told him I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. Lou said that he went up to his house, but he wasn’t home. I want to get some tin, and I thought he might have some. I told Lou if I saw Brother, I would let him know.
9-27-77 trailer
Father Retzel came to the trailer tonight so that Susie could give him a haircut.
9-27-77 rectory
Father said that he had a baptism tonight. I asked Father if there was a special age when the baby should be baptized. Father said that the kids should be baptized between two and three weeks. I told Father that it seemed like people bring in their kids when they are much older. Jack Plumage’s baby was two months old and others seem to be older. Father said that people do bring in their kids when they are older (between two and six months). I think that the people here don’t realize that there is a certain time when their kids are supposed to be baptized. When Jack had his son baptized, he brought in water from Snake Butte Creek. I used this water for the baptism. It used to be that on Easter, we could bless water and then use this holy water for the whole year for baptisms. But baptism means something new, and it just didn’t seem right to use old water. So, it is ok to do what Jack did – we used the water that he brought in.
9-29-77 mission
The road crew has been working on Whitecow Canyon road since Monday and they have had all the equipment down there, four trucks, a few graders and a couple rollers. Father asked them to bring gravel to put around all the mud around the new gym. At about 9:00 this morning a truck came up with a load of gravel and about two hours later a large gravel truck dumped the gravel around the gym. It was a larger load. They raked the gravel around the gym and from the front of the school, in front of the boiler room and to the back of the church. There were four road crew men raking the gravel. At 2:00 a road grader came up to the mission and worked for about an hour spreading out the gravel.
9-30-77 mission
Sometime during the night someone stole all the mission’s gas out of the gas shed. They leaned a ladder against the shed and climbed onto the top and cut a hole in the roof with tin snips and then crawled down to the tank. The ladder was still there in the morning. They got about 100 gallons of gas. They emptied the tank. I saw Mary in the kitchen and mentioned that I was amazed that they could get away with 100 gallons of gas. Mary said that it would have been easy. Our truck has two tanks, about 40 gallons, so they had to fill two trucks and a car.
At lunch when Sister Giswalda heard about it, she smiled and said, well, that’s a good joke. You mean they get all that gas and no one heard them. Boy, they’re good at that.
After lunch, Mary, Beatrice, Mike, Jim and I were talking about the stolen gas. Mike mentioned a possible suspect. Mary said that it wasn’t him, because she saw his boys this morning and they were out of gas. They were pushing their truck into town. Tom Doney came into the mission and Mike told him about it. He asked Tom to keep his eyes and ears open to find out who did it. After he left, Mike said, I don’t know what good it will do to know who stole the gas, there’s nothing we can do about it. And the police can’t do anything about it. Mike said that no one can get gas out of his truck. There are two right angles in the tank, and they can’t get a hose down there. Mike was talking about how the kids have become experts at siphoning gas.
If I was an academic, I could have written a great article about how stealing gas had replaced the practice of stealing horses from enemy tribes.
9-30-77 mission school
Mary P., Father and Sister Giswalda established a new policy for Mary’s 3/4th grade class. When the kids misbehave in class they are going to be kept after school. Today was the first day of the policy and during the day, Sister Giswalda announced it to the class. After school every boy in class was made to stay after school. They went into Sister Giswalda’s room, and she had them sit in chairs without saying a word for an hour. She had each of the boys come up to her and promise that they would behave and be good in class from now on. Then Mike drove them home on the bus. None of the girls were kept after school.
That evening, Mary spoke to Susie and I about her class. She said that the boys were shooting rubber bands and one of them hit a girl in the nose and bloodied her nose. A mom told Mary that her daughter comes home with bruises all over her arms and legs. The boys are always beating up on the girls. Another mom came up to the mission and told Mary that she wanted to transfer her daughter from the public school to the mission school, because all the teacher did all day with the kids was yell at them. Mary told her not to send her daughter to the mission because the mission wasn’t any better. She was yelling at the kids all the time, too.
If the kids aren’t disciplined in the classroom in a consistent and fair manner, they take over the class. One indicator of discipline in the mission school is the condition of the classroom. Sisters Benno and Giswalda’s rooms are organized and clean. The carpet is clean, books, papers and supplies are put away, and the inside of the kid’s desks are neat and fairly organized. Sister Bart’s and Mary’s rooms are in the opposite condition. The carpet is covered with mud, paper, broken crayons, pencil sharpenings, chalk and broken pencils. The carpet is always wet next to the drinking fountain. Papers are all over the shelves and desks. Supplies and books are scattered all over and the desks are a mess. I know all of this because Jim and I clean each of these rooms every day.
With the kids from this community, discipline is a big problem, especially in the schools. It’s not enough to just yell at the kids. They behave with Sisters Benno and Giswalda because they have a forty-year reputation in the community. Parents and grandparents warn their kids and tell them stories about their own school experiences. They are warned about the sisters. The parents and grandparents had Sisters Benno and Giswalda as teachers. Any new teachers in the school have a big discipline problem, especially the volunteers. It happened with Sister Laura, Brian, Bill, Meg, Bob, me, Susie and Nade. It was just Mary P.’s turn. It was the same way in the public school although from what I observed, it was worse there.
This was Mary’s first year teaching and she was being seriously tortured.
9-30-77 Urban Rural
I was visiting with Granville. He said that their proposal for the college program was funded for the next three years. This first year is a ten-month program. It will start on October 10th. Ken Norr is still with us, but Jim and Roger quit. Margaret Cuts the Rope is going to teach and we have a guy coming in who will teach math and science. The other teachers will also be teaching in Lewistown. The College of Great Falls wants us to keep this thing going with Lewistown. But we have to pay for their travel and we’re getting tired of doing that. I haven’t signed the contract yet. With the teachers living away from the school, there’s not as good community relations. I have to take a good look at this thing with Lewistown. The College of Great Falls has been real good to us, but they want to hold the reigns. They want to run things from there.
Mabel said that Chester was doing good in school, but he really didn’t like it. (Chester graduated from the mission grade school and was in the public high school). Granville said that none of our kids liked school. To have a good school, you need a good administration that is going to hire teachers who care about the kids and want to do good for them and then give them freedom. You let them do what they want to do. You only hold them back when they’re doing something that’s not going to benefit them. Not like this place – he pointed over to the public school. Over there they just treat the kids like cattle, feed them grain and hay. It’s nothing more than a head count of students (to get federal money).
I asked how long the public school has been here.
Mabel said that the public school was across from the store. That whole block over there was the school, and there was a café there. Then they made the white building (now the Christian Missionary Alliance) the first grade and the cafeteria and all the other grades were up here (where the public school is now). I’m not sure when the public school started, but I went there for a little while. They had the Ft. Belknap Boarding School up at the Agency.
Mabel said that those Ursuline Sisters used to be real mean. They were cruel sometimes. But the sisters now (the Franciscans) aren’t like that. Granville said, well, the nuns haven’t really changed much. It’s the people. The mission is better because the people have changed. The mission used to have a life and death hold on these people. They had a strong hold on these people, and they could do what they wanted to do. But now these people have become independent, they run their own lives. The mission has to be better because they don’t have the same hold on these people.
Granville said that when they started the public schools in Hays that it used to be a much larger school district than what it is now. It used to run all the way out to the Bear Paws and there were always whites on the Board of Trustees. McCann was on, and he was pretty good. Bill Kern was also on the Board. School District #50 was set up. The northern boundary of the district is People’s Creek, and it must run along the Phillips County line on the east side, because Beaver Creek isn’t in the school district, but Lodge Pole is in the district.
I asked Granville when he thought there would be an all-Indian administration at the public school.
He said that there already is one. The whole school board is Indian and even though the superintendent is a foreigner, he’s still an Indian. The grade school principal didn’t come back. He thought it was too depressing around here. Now they have a combined grade school and high school principal. Granville said that he thought there were a couple of people from the community who would be ready to be administrators in a few years. Our program (Intertribal Education Center) gets funded (Title IV) because we’re placing our teachers. We place our teachers in the schools. The government is getting their money back. We get grants but the government gets their money back from the taxes the teachers pay on their salaries.
Granville said that there was a meeting next week in Kalispel that he was going to. I want to be sure to go so I can have input. The meeting is about an Indian college. They’re going to set one up in Montana. The Blackfeet and the Crow are going to fight over where the college is going to be, and it is going to end up on one of those reservations because both of them have a lot of political pull. The Flathead are backing the Blackfeet to have the college up there. The Northern Cheyenne are backing the Crow to have the college there. But I’m going to push for getting resident credit for our program. Our kids won’t go to either of those reservations for college. Our kids are afraid of the Blackfeet, and they won’t go to Crow. A couple of our people went down to Crow and they were killed – do you savy. So, I’m going to try to get resident credit for our program through this Indian college, and then we’ll end our relationship with the College of Great Falls.
Granville said that it’s possible to have a good school with federal support. Their rules and regulations aren’t so bad. But I don’t see how any school could be a good school with state support, The state has so many rules and they’re so mixed up.
Granville said that he read a real interesting report a couple days ago. It was about the mission. The mission was given 320 acres but there were some strings attached. If the mission ever stops its service to the community, the tribe can take the land back. But so long as the mission keeps the people in the Catholic religion, they have nothing to worry about. The people may put up a fuss, but they wouldn’t force the mission off of this land. And most people around here are Catholic. They don’t have anything to worry about. The mission will keep this land. The 320 acres is a half section, but they don’t have the mineral rights on it.
Granville said that the people here, this tribe in Hays, knows about money and materials. They’re not going to be mixed up about this land – the mission land. You have to give these people credit for that. They’re not like the Sioux. The Sioux don’t know anything about materials and money. They just give everything away. They aren’t getting any better with time. They still don’t know about money or materials. Our people know how to handle it.
Mabel said that when there was a fire at this mission (December 1972), all the high school kids had to go down to the public school. My kids told me about it. The mission kids and the public school kids stayed separated from each other. The mission kids would be on one side of the room and the public school kids would be on the other side. They didn’t mix and they didn’t get along with each other.
Granville said that this weather was really amazing. I haven’t seen weather like this since about the 1930s. It has been almost 30 or 40 years since I’ve seen so much rain here, like three days in a row like we’ve been having. We’ve had rain in June and a lot of rain since August. We’ve been lucky too, because a lot of places have had drought, even up in the Milk River. We should get ourselves ready this year for a tough winter. We’re going to get a lot of snow this winter. But it seems sometimes when there’s a drought in the summer, there’s usually a tough winter with a lot of snow.
Mabel said that they’ve been looking for gas for the past two days. We drove out to the store in Lodge Pole but they were closed. Itty called them while we were there and Lodge Pole said that they have gas. Granville said it is a good thing because we’re below empty. He said that Allen hasn’t had gas at the store for a couple of months. Mabel said that Allen saves gas for the forest crew and the ambulance.
Granville said that he was reading an article in the Great Falls Tribune about the western governor’s conference. They’ve been talking a lot about tribal sovereignty. These western states have fee patent land on the reservations, but they hate to be under tribal jurisdiction, under the rules of the tribal governments and tribal police. They’re really fighting about tribal sovereignty and it’s eventually going to go to the supreme court. The tribes are going to win the case. They have the sovereignty. Just like the way the tribes have always been handled by the government. The federal government in its handling of the Indian has proven tribal sovereignty themselves. First of all, they made treaties with the different Indian nations, they treated them like they were foreign governments, just by the word treaty. It wasn’t a contract or an agreement, it was a ‘treaty.’ Like what the government did with the Cherokee and the Creek. They were on their own land, and the president moved them to Oklahoma. He couldn’t have done that if they had been US citizens. But he moved them like a foreign nation. That’s how all the tribes were treated. They are sovereign tribes.
But the states hate to be under the jurisdiction of the tribes. It’s really unfair the way the laws are now. All men should be under the same laws, so long as they’re under the constitution and the laws of the nation. On reservations, we’re under two different jurisdictions, the federal government has limited jurisdiction on the reservation. They have jurisdiction over about ten or twelve felonies, it used to be five or six felonies. And we’re also under tribal jurisdiction. But when we leave the reservation, we’re under the jurisdiction of about five different sets of laws. We’re under federal law, state law, county law and most of these towns have ordinances and then there’s personal sovereignty. I don’t like these ordinances. I don’t think they’re fair. We should all be under the same laws.
Itty said that she went over the mountains and there’s a big mining company up there. They fixed the roads up there. It’s real good. I bet they’re making a lot of money up there. Granville said the company probably isn’t finding enough gold up there to pay for the operation. Where they make all their money is on the rip off speculations. They get all their money from the investors. There’s something about gold that makes people kind of crazy. They’ll invest to try to get in on it. Most of the gold that was found up here was found with cyanide. To get the gold out they would crush the rock. They crushed all the tailings, and they had to mix it with cyanide to get it out. The gold came out in the cyanide and water solution. They put the tailings in the boilers with this solution. But they got a lot of gold just from panning. They took $9 million out of Montana Gulch up there just from panning for it.
Granville said that Wild Horse Butte and Three Buttes were of volcanic origin. The Little Rockies resulted from uplifting. The creek (Mission Creek) was always there and when the area lifted up, the creek cut the canyon. The creek was there before the canyon. The source of Mission Creek is North Fork. The South Fork used to come this way, too, until they diverted it. Now they diverted South Fork, and it runs the other way to the south side of the mountains and off the reservation.
Granville asked me if I saw the boxing match last night. Boy, Ali can really take a punch. People don’t give him enough credit. Since Norton broke his jaw and he still finished the fight, I knew he could take a punch. It was a good fight. But I think Shavers is going to be the next heavyweight champ. I haven’t seen anyone else around who can beat him. (Other people I spoke to about the fight told me that they wanted Ali to lose because they thought he had a big mouth).
When I was leaving, I told Granville that if there was anything I could do to help the program, he should let me know. He said that if I wanted to teach again, I was always welcome to, but I understand that Father Retzel doesn’t want you to take the time down here. He wants you to work more up there at the mission. That’s the way it is with slave labor. We both laughed.
We laughed but neither of us thought it was funny. Granville would have loved me back because I could teach cultural and physical anthropology and also Native American studies. And Granville didn’t have to pay me as much as he was paying the other teachers, because I lived in the community, and he also knew that I wasn’t doing it for the money. My teaching in the college program was an important service to the community. It was a bit more than frustrating that Father didn’t recognize this and I honestly didn’t understand his motivations. Such is life.
Mission Creek
Susie and I lived in Hazel's trailer until we moved to the mission in January. Hazel spent the summer in the trailer and then returned to Seattle in the fall. She had the trailer boarded up for the winter.
The sunsets from the mission were pretty incredible.
... and the moon rises!
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