We used to play a game in the boarding school called Auntie-I-Over. (I was asked to speak to a fourth or fifth grade class in Everett several years ago. Another woman came to talk at the same time. They asked if it would be all right if both of us came. I said it would be grand. I never saw her before. She was born in Norway or Sweden, and she said they played Auntie-I-Over, too.) We made a round, handmade ball of old rags. My sister and some of her friends stood on the other side of the woodshed or a house. Some of the homes were small, shall we say; they were almost shacks. They had just an outside wall, no inner wall and no ceiling.
If I had the ball, I would shout loudly—“Auntie-I Over”—and throw the ball over the roof. I could imagine what it did to the roofs. Then it would roll off of the roof. My sister and her friends would catch it, and then we moved to the other end. Maybe we were at the front door of a woodshed. Then I went running over to the other end; the friend on the other side did that, too. You could just tell about where he was, or any of us were, by where our voices came from. We would catch the ball. You run clear to the other end, and here comes the ball right over, and you have to run and run to try to catch it before it falls on the ground. I will always remember my sister and her friends and us running over to the other end and throwing it, and it’s not where they think it’s coming from, and they would miss it. You could hear them saying, “Ohh!” They would say, “You are not supposed to do that! You have to stay in the same place after that.” “Auntie-I-Over” is hollered. But sometimes we hollered that out, and we ran—ran to a different place and threw the ball.
We made our own ball out of strips of cloth that were wound round and round. (The lady from Europe said they made theirs, too.)
We had homemade bats. We could bat the cloth balls half a dozen times; then it went flat. You couldn’t play with it anymore. We had to unroll our ball and ask somebody to roll it up again and make a new ball.
Now, when you go to stores there are all kinds of rubber balls of every size: soccer balls, basketballs, and footballs. Here it was a problem keeping a ball. Sometimes if we played baseball, somebody would bat the ball clear into the brush. Maybe we were running around the bases, and we were hollering. “Lost ball, lost ball. You have to go back to home plate. You can’t run!” You can’t make a home run on a lost ball. We tried to settle it. It’s the law. They didn’t have football in the boarding school, but they did have baseball and basketball.
We used to go over to Mission Beach. On the high bank, way up, are some black roots.8 They have bulbs on them that taste like raw peanuts. We were always eating them. We liked to climb up that sand and dirt hill and slide down. My grandmother and her younger sisters were there one time with my father when he was about three years old. They spread a blanket on the beach—the tide was way out—and they told him, “You stay here.” So his mother, the next sister, Mary (Martha Lamont’s mother), the next one was Mary Josephine (Henry Gobin’s grandmother), and Jenny (the youngest sister) were there together. The only one that was married then was my grandmother. They were about seventeen years old.
One of my aunts said my father hollered and hollered—standing up on the blanket—and hollered at them. “Let’s go home.” Of course, he is talking in Indian. “Let’s go home. Šəlus will get you!” Well, Šəlus was Father Chirouse. When he was little, they used to scare him by saying, “You have to keep quiet. Don’t leave this blanket, or Šəlus will come after you.” He was terrified of Šəlus. “If you don’t keep quiet, the Šəlus will come after you.” So, he would keep quiet. He was afraid of Šəlus. He finally caught a glimpse of Father Chirouse—but the priest at the school when my father came there in 1888 was Father Simon.
I remember my grandmother had another sister come from La Conner; her name was Jenny. She remembered my father hollering and trying to scare them that Father Chirouse will get them. My father said he remembered they would laugh, and here he was all by himself, scared, looking around, and they were pulling up those roots, filling up their aprons and baskets to take them home and wash them and eat them. My father said his mother and the others would laugh and laugh and giggle and giggle, and he would sit there and get so tired. He would try to scare them. “Father Šəlus will come and get you! Prayer will get you.”
T’aywəł is prayer. Isn’t that interesting, we had a word for prayer? T’aywəł.
Somebody was telling me that Tommy Gobin and his family are very religious people. In Adam’s church,9 Tommy gets up and preaches, talks about the sinfulness of the Indians who never knew Christ and about people who are not saved. They didn’t know anything about God or prayer or anything. I was saying it is interesting that all tribes have a name for prayer. In our tribe prayer is t’aywəł. It means “to ask,” almost in the way of pleading, but “to ask for information” is tkwwkwqw. “To tell news,” like our newspaper, is siə?dsəb. “To ask for information” is tkwwkwqw. T’aywəł is only “to plead to Dukwibəł,” to an almighty spirit for guidance or for courage. For instance, my father would be hollering at his mother that prayer will get you. He knew about prayer, but he thought the prayer he had never seen was in church. He had never been in the Catholic Church. He was terrified of the priest, of Chirouse, and he was terrified of Chirouse’s prayers. So that t’aywəł came from our own beliefs; they called that Father Chirouse’s “prayer” that’s t’aywəł He would holler at his mother and his aunts, “Prayer will get you folks! Stop your laughing! Let us go home! I am hungry! I need a drink of water!” They would come back and bring him water. There was a spring there. They would bring him a tin cup of water.
He remembered that once in a while, and he said, “No wonder they never came. They didn’t get scared of prayer. They hollered, ‘You are okay.’ ‘Don’t worry.’ ‘Quiet now.’ ‘Everything is all right.’ ” Now that I think about it, I really shouldn’t have been confused—that my grandmother would tell me to remember all of the legends and all of the traditions she told me and her sisters told me and all of the Indians told me, or the ones whom I met.
Every Indian woman I met, way back then when I was little, would always greet the little children. Every little child was greeted by a grandmother, any grandmother, even if they never saw them before. All of those older grandmothers—not just my real grandmother, but the same generation as my grandmother—would greet me. They would put their hands on my head and say the nicest loving words to me. They would say, “Oh, k̓woy[ə?].” It is almost like saying “oh, precious, precious.” They would all put their hands on my head and brush my hair. My hair was always parted down the middle and braided tightly into two braids. They would always do like that with my hair. They would smooth my hair, and then they would hold their hand on each side of my face and kiss me on the forehead—every one of them that I met. The very elderly men would put one hand on my head and say, “Oh, k̓woy[ə?], and that one word in our language—Snohomish, Skagit, Snoqualmie, Puyallup or Duwamish—is k̓woy[ə?]. You say that to a young girl, your daughter or your granddaughter.
My mother and father called me k̓woy[ə?] in our Snohomish language. S.k̓wuyi is “mother” with an “s” sound in the beginning, but that is not quite what they called the little girls. It is k̓oy, which means “precious little mother” or “daughter.” The Indians seemed to feel every little girl was going to be an important mother of the tribe. Her children would be additions to the tribe, and how she raised them was going to be important. So you have to treat her like a little lady. Let her know she is important, and the same way for the boys. Every little Indian child had his or her own blessing.
I haven’t thought of that for fifty or sixty years. They would put their hands on each side of my fat face and say, “Oh, k̓oy, oh, k̓oy.” A couple of years ago, some of us were remembering. Ethel Sam said, “Remember when we used to meet the elderly grandmothers and grandfathers? They would always put their hands on our heads and say such precious, loving things to each of us, even if they never saw us before.”
My father was the one who tol
d me, in a specific way, in powerful, slowly spoken words, “You always remember that you are an Indian. You are an Indian girl. You will always remember.” I never, ever asked, and what is more, I know I am an Indian girl. But how do I do this? I am supposed to . . . If time passes, I am here or there, and I know I am an Indian.
My father was the one who made it clear about pride, about being proud. “You must always be proud that you are an Indian. You remember. You be proud.” Being proud can mean different things. You can be proud and be really mean. That is not the kind of pride to have. It has to be with the knowledge that you have humble pride—that, I think, is the closest you can come to describing what kind of pride I was supposed to have.
I remember thinking when they would repeat it every once in a while, “You must always be proud you are an Indian. That is something very special. Don’t throw your face around, or stick out your little finger and pick up your food or cup, or have your little finger sticking up.” I remember thinking, “Oh, dear, I wonder what they mean by ‘humble pride.’ How can I be proud and still be proud and humble?” Those two things are totally different. If I asked, I don’t know what they would have said. Furthermore, I know better than to be asking. Somehow, you learn.
1 In 1864 they moved to Mission Beach and opened the Mission of St. Anne, which burned in 1902.
2 In 1868 the Sisters of Charity, House of Providence, from Montreal, Canada, joined the Mission.
3 Dukwibəł was not a deity. He was born from the union of an Indian woman and a star (see Haeberlin 1924).
4 Buchanan was the agency superintendent, physician, and head of the boarding school.
5 Miner’s lettuce or Claytonia sibirica L. or stol’tū·xked (Gunther 1945: 29).
6 The spindle is an important decorative item in Coast Salish art; see Suttles 1975.
7 This woman would be a sister or a cousin of her father or her mother, not her paternal grandmother.
8 Beach peas or Lathyrus japonicus; see Pojar and MacKinnon 2004, and Kruckeberg 1991.
9 Adam Williams, pastor of the Church of God.
6 / The Tulalip Indian Boarding School
IN school we tried to follow what our grandparents said. When I arrived at the Indian boarding school in 1912, I was seven years old. It seemed so cold, and we were always running, running, hurry, hurry, hurry. Compared to my home, it was a traumatic shock. I don’t think anyone stopped to think how hard it was for us Indian children to be taken to an Indian school and suddenly have to get up at 5:30 in the morning. At home I woke up around seven or nine o’clock in the morning, and I could always eat. My mother would fix something.
My mother did the laundry for the agent. When I was really small, I used to follow her around, tell her I was hungry, and she would finish her washing or whatever she was doing. Then she would take me to the kitchen and fix me homemade bread and butter. The Indian women made homemade yeast bread. Every week my mother made loaves and loaves of wonderful homemade bread.
The boarding school was a dreadful monotony: getting up early, and our shoes and stockings were left downstairs in the basement playrooms. We took off our shoes and stockings in the basement playrooms at night, and we marched up two stairways to go to bed. In case we tried to run away, we were separated from our shoes. I consider that like a life in a penitentiary. If a bell rang, I ran. The discipline was to civilize us.
It was a terrifying time to arrive at the boarding school. I never saw my mother, but I saw my father every other day or so. He worked there at the agency and he was there every day, but sometimes I didn’t see him. I was so very homesick. I used to cry. I wanted to go home. My sister was already in the school. She was almost two years older than me, but she used to talk to me and tell me not to cry. She said you will get used to it here and you will have some fun. I never could see why I would have fun, but I eventually did. They had a very short time for us to play in the evening.
It was a terrifying time to arrive at the boarding school. I never saw my mother, but I saw my father every other day or so. He worked there at the agency and he was there every day, but sometimes I didn’t see him. I was so very homesick. I used to cry. I wanted to go home. My sister was already in the school. She was almost two years older than me, but she used to talk to me and tell me not to cry. She said you will get used to it here and you will have some fun. I never could see why I would have fun, but I eventually did. They had a very short time for us to play in the evening.
The little girls stayed in dormitories C and D. That is where I used to sleep. When I first got to the school, I was in dormitory D, where the little girls were, and then when I got bigger—a teenager who was fourteen or fifteen years old—I was naturally with the big girls. The big girls’ companies were A and B. I never got to be tall enough for Company A, even though that was my ambition.
As soon as we got up in the morning, we made our beds. Believe me, the sheets had to be absolutely straight and stiff. You talk about how you can bounce a quarter off of the sheets in the Army. Well, ours were like that, and I mean they were absolutely straight and stiff. Each one of us had two Army blankets. They were wool, but thinner—not what you would consider wool today from a department store. They were Army blankets. The two blankets and top sheet were folded a certain way over the foot of the bed, so that the sheets were all showing. They had to be absolutely smooth and straight. Pillows were straight up and down.
I wonder where they got the pillows? The pillows and the mattresses were filled with straw. They were actually pretty good, I guess. But all of us had single beds. They were narrow steel beds. Each one of us slept separately.
When we got up in the morning, it was so bitterly cold. I remember my teeth chattering and everybody’s teeth chattering.
We had a clothing room. On one side were the cupboards. Actually, they were just boxes. All of them were numbered, and every week that is where my clean socks and everything came back from the laundry. Everything was folded up and put in there by some of the girls.
We wore uniforms. The girls’ uniforms were made of wool serge. Blue wool serge is the heaviest, scratchiest material that was ever invented on the earth. In the spring and summer, when we were marching into the church and then sitting in the church, sometimes it would get too warm. The dresses had long sleeves and a high, tight neck. My skin itched, and it was most uncomfortable. All of those ten years that I was there we had navy blue uniforms, and they were all made alike. They were made in the sewing room and made to fit each one of us. Sometimes they were trimmed with white braid and maybe the next year with black braid, but it was still navy blue serge.
We wore one workday dress every day, and then we had one school dress that was usually made of navy blue material that had little figures with tiny leaves or tiny flowers. We didn’t wear heavy serge to the classroom; it was for Sunday. We had school dresses, and they were made alike too. We had a small crossbar gingham dress for everyday. The small girls had red with tiny flowers in a flocked design, and the big girls had navy blue with small white flowers. They had high collars and long sleeves, but they weren’t hot and scratchy like the blue serge.
The boys’ uniforms were navy blue, with a high choker collar and gold buttons, and they had to be buttoned tight. Their school clothes were brown corduroy pants and blue work shirts.
After we washed up, dressed, combed and braided our hair, we lined up and put on our coats, and we were outside by six o’clock in the morning. We did exercises like the Army does for half an hour. We did deep knee bends and every kind of jumping exercise you could think of that was exactly like the Army does today. We were hungry and cold. Even in winter we were out there exercising, and we were freezing. The ground was frozen; it was all frosty white. We jogged around the quadrangle on the sidewalks, company by company, and all of us kept in step because we had officers, and the matron was out there on the porch where she could see us. She shrieked at us about keeping in step, and believe me, we learned how to keep in step. We were bett
er than any army you ever saw.
Once in a while, I see the Army on the news. Their exercises, their running, is what we did when we were little children. It was really a military school. You might say it wouldn’t hurt anybody. I don’t think it would hurt anybody, but there wasn’t enough for us to eat. We were hungry there.
Then at 7 A.M., we all marched into the dining room for breakfast. We marched everywhere. We all marched in, company by company, from the tallest to the shortest. We lined up around the tables. The tables held twelve boys or twelve girls. The girls sat separately from the boys, where we ate across the room. On each end of the tables sat a bigger girl or a bigger boy and a platter of bread.
I have to say something about the bread. We had the nicest bread. It was homemade; baked right there by the assistant baker. She had the big girls working in the bakery. Loaves and loaves of the best-tasting bread were baked every day. Now and then I say that the bread must have helped us survive, because otherwise the food was inadequate.
Actually, we were almost starving. I am quite sure people who hear me say that would say, “Oh, now, you know when you are little, you get hungry and think you are starving.” But in that school, the food was never, ever enough. We ate roast beef and potatoes, and it tasted really nice. We even ate roast beef and potatoes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes the potatoes would last until January, February, and then the potatoes wouldn’t be anymore. So we just had meat and bread. Of course, there were never any vegetables and there was never enough milk. The pride of the Indian agent was the dairy herd, but the milk that those cows gave for over two hundred children was never enough. I usually got, maybe, a fourth of a cup of milk. There was never any fruit. On Thanksgiving and Christmas each one of us would get an apple. But once in a while, since the school had orchards, we would have one slice of apple pie on Sundays. I don’t know what happened, but there would be years when we would have less to eat.
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 16