Long years afterward, when I was in high school, I told my parents about being beaten with the strap. Of course, my mother thought the word “hell” was inexcusable; you can’t say “hell.” However, I did, and I was not very big. Of course, my father couldn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him when it happened. I saw my mother every Sunday afternoon and my father about two or three times a week. He worked at the Indian agency. Sometimes I saw him working around the school campus, and I waved at him and he waved back. I didn’t tell my parents what went on at the school, about the food, about anything, about the harassment, the punishment, until I went to high school. I don’t know why.
Years later my brother talked about it too. He heard about it after he left the school. I heard him talking about it to my father and several other Indians. They said they should bring charges against the superintendent of the school for inhumane treatment.
Being civilized is a long, long road. Once in a great while, when I have been in Seattle or some other city, I have seen Indian men and women. They are usually under the influence of liquor—shall we say, plain drunk. When I see them I try to share two or three dollars I might have. I tell them to go and eat. My husband said, “You know good and well they are not going to eat—not with that money.” I said, “Just let them use it the way they want.” You still see them once in a while, and you know good and well they grew up on a reservation in some Indian school where they were hungry much of the time. They probably got a whipping once in a while. The ones who are alcoholic grew up in Indian boarding schools. Today, this reservation takes boys and girls who have been in trouble to Oregon to Chemawa Boarding School; so, in some ways, you can tell the boarding schools were reform schools too.
I have met white people who said they were whipped, too. Their fathers took them to the woodshed and gave them a whipping. I said there is a difference between being spanked or whipped by your father or mother and a flogging with a strap by somebody else. It is different. Believe me, if an Indian strapped a white child like that, the whole city would kill him. When the children told their parents, the parents came in to talk to the agent and protest the food and the treatment of the children. The agent laughed and said, “Do they look like they are starving? They are getting taller. They are putting on weight.” We were all growing.
All of those years I was growing up were the years when the Indians all over the United States were dying off. The death rate of the American Indian was very high. Even about ten years ago, I had white people come here to see our Indian collection. Once in a while, one of them would ask why the Indians are always dying of tuberculosis. Why is it that they are sick quite a bit? You wouldn’t have the strength to withstand measles or the common cold. You would get very sick.
Discipline Continued
When I first got to Tulalip Indian School, breakfast was often oatmeal mush. I ate it because I was hungry. It was six o’clock in the morning. We were having breakfast. All of the smaller children ate it, but it wasn’t much. It was in a bowl, and it was probably about four tablespoons with about two tablespoons of milk on it and very little sugar. But there were little white worms in it. I looked at it when I was small, but I was too hungry so I just ate it up. Anyway, the matron went around to all of the tables and ordered everyone to eat it. If you didn’t eat it, then you had to stay there, and if you stayed there, then you got a good “lickin’.” So you had better eat it.
But the first time I had breakfast there, it really turned my stomach. When we were marching out, I was “hanging on,” my teeth were clenched, and I was shaking, trembling, because my stomach was so upset. We went marching out, from the tallest to the shortest, and here we were, the little girls, at the end. I just got through the double doors of the dining room, opposite the doors where the boys came in, and I vomited. It went “splat” over the waxed hallway, the shiny floor. I was so sick I didn’t care. The matron was standing there, and she was watching us marching out, and she said, “Lift your feet. Lift up your feet and stop talking. Stop that whispering. Keep your head up.” But, anyway, I vomited right there—just sicker than sick.
She got so mad, and I thought she might kill me, but I didn’t care. She didn’t dare slap me. She used to slap some of the girls who got sick like I did. She said, “You are not sick; you are just lazy,” and she slapped them.
I knelt down, and I leaned my head against the wall. I thought, “I don’t care if they kill me. I can’t get up anymore.” My knees were shaking and I was sick to my stomach. I was retching. I heard her tell a girl to go and get a bucket of water and a mop and clean up the floor. I never found out who cleaned up that awful mess. She told me to go to the hospital and line up for sick call. Sick call for the boys and girls was at 7 o’clock. That’s when we came out of breakfast. From 5:30 to 6 we were getting up. From 6 to 6:30 we were outside doing our exercises. Then we marched in to breakfast. Well, with the meals we had, we could eat in five or ten minutes; there wasn’t much of it. So by 7 o’clock we were back out of the dining room, and sick call lined up. We had to tell the matron if we were sick, had a cold, or got burned in the kitchen—burned a hand or wrist or an arm or got hurt, skinned a knee. She put my name down on the sick call list, so then I had to go down. I put on my coat and went marching down to the hospital. There was another small building there they called a hospital. The doctor asked what was wrong with me. I told him I vomited. He told the nurse to give me something to drink.
The hospital had about twelve beds: six beds for the girls and six for the boys. I thought the nurse gave me a glass of lemonade. It was in one of those “faddish” looking large drinking glasses. I gave it a fast glance and took a big swallow and found it was Epson salts; that is the worst tasting stuff. I took it away from my mouth, and some of it spilled and went on my lap. The nurse said, “You drink it.” The doctor said, “Make her drink all of it.” Nobody in my opinion could ever drink a big glass of water, but this was a big glass of Epson salts. She grabbed my head and my hair, and then she put the glass up to my mouth. She said, “You drink that.” She poured it into my mouth. So I did drink some of it, but I had to stop and breathe. I was upset, and so I turned my head. The Epson salts spilled down my face, my chin, went on to my dress, my coat and my hair. She pushed the glass on my mouth, my teeth. She held onto my braided hair and tipped my head back when I turned away and so the Epson salts landed on my hair, my face, my clothes. I drank most of it. But I started to retch, almost vomiting. She said, “Better take her and put her to bed.” I was taken to the ward.
She took me to the bathroom first. I barely got there and was vomiting some more, and I kept vomiting. She took me into the ward and gave me a nightgown that tied in the back. I had a fever. I was sweating, and I really got sick. I was there for two weeks.
I tried to get up and walk the next day. I fell down. The nurse came and said, “You get up and walk to the bathroom.” I got up, but I was shaking. I fell right down. I couldn’t stand up, and she got mad, but she didn’t slap me. She shook me a little bit, and she put me back in bed. She got one of the girls who helped in the hospital and told me to use the bedpan. So for the first time in my life I used a bedpan, and that was quite an experience. But, anyway, so much for the lemonade that was Epson salts.
If we went down to the hospital, no matter what happened, we got Epson salts to drink. If you had a broken arm, you got a big glass of Epson salts. But I was so sick that time, they let me go home for a month.
We had cornmeal mush for breakfast too, which I liked, but it had a different kind of worm in it.
I remember when I was little, the cook in the kitchen made cookies. We had two cookies for each child at Christmas and Sunday evenings and one third of a cup of cocoa. Hundreds of these cookies were put down in the basement. I don’t know what happened, maybe the girls didn’t cover them, but mice got into them, because quite a lot of the cookies had mice dirt on them. They were put on our plates. The matron came along and said, “You eat that now. Don’t leave
it.” Well, some of the girls tasted it, and they said it was bad. So I tasted it. But I was scared because I thought she might slap me. So I have said I know what mice dirt tastes like; it is gritty, and, well, it has a taste of its own. I told one of the doctors in Marysville. He said I have heard that before, and I am surprised the Indians still have stomachs left or even parts of their intestines, considering what they were fed.
For two whole years we lived on bread and gravy. The gravy had bits of meat in it. Bread and gravy for breakfast, two slices of bread for each boy and girl, and that was put at your place. Two slices of bread and about three or four tablespoons of gravy for breakfast, and the same thing for noon lunch and the same thing—bread and gravy—for supper.
Going to Tulalip Indian School, I remember this little detail. All of us students underwent a physical examination. We all, girls separate from boys, lined up army fashion, with the tallest first, and we marched, and I mean marched—one, two, three, four, left, right—down to the hospital. There, as each of us, 115 or more girls, entered the door into the hospital hallway, one nurse would order us to unbutton and then take off the tops of our clothes. We slipped the tops of our dresses, underskirts, and underwear off to the waist. This always made me feel so cold and forlorn. And for many years, the doctor would listen to my puny chest—millions of years it seemed—fix on me a fierce blue eye and ask me if I was scared. I would whisper back, “No doctor,” while my poor little heart and soul died ten thousand deaths with fright.
Classes
I was in the Tulalip boarding school for ten years, from 1912 to 1922, and in those ten years I went through six grades. Another interesting thing that happened to me at this Indian reservation school was that I skipped the second grade, and I skipped the seventh grade. Skipping the second grade was a big mistake. But I have to tell you what happened.
I went through the first grade. I really loved the first-grade teacher. While I was in the first grade, our teacher taught us how to dance. I wasn’t allowed to go to the dances. The school had a dance once a month on a certain Saturday night. It was only for the A and B companies—the bigger girls. C and D companies didn’t see anything.
We learned how to dance in the classroom. I remember she taught us how to do the minuet. Imagine what we looked like! The sewing room made wigs out of white cotton. I remember the girls made them pretty fancy, in rolls, like Martha Washington and those people. They were even able to make a roll of cotton so it curled down our backs. Can you imagine, with our dark skin? We had long white dresses that we made in the sewing room out of white crossbar muslin. So we had long white dresses and white wigs, and so did the boys. We had green kerchiefs that tied around our shoulders. They were a medium green with little pink flowers. They made two puffs that went around our waists. We must have looked super! I heard the matron say, “I wonder how those children learned to dance that way?” I guess Dr. Buchanan was astounded. He talked about it for months afterward.
You should have seen us dance. We danced the minuet across the lawn and counted the steps, “one-and-two.” Maybe we looked all right because we could do it together. We knew how to do things together. Our teacher played a record on a Victrola. We had real music to dance to. I just happened to hear the matron talking with some others. They talked about us as if we were not there. She said, “How in the world did those children learn how to dance like that? It was really lovely.” Dr. Buchanan was very impressed because he saw the minuet danced when he was growing up in Virginia.
Then I was supposed to be in the second grade, and I must have started, but after about a week or two weeks I got sick and I was sent down to the school hospital. I stayed there for two weeks. My mother came to see me every afternoon. When I got well, I went back to school, and I went into the second-grade room.
A different teacher was there, and somebody was sitting at my desk. I was standing there. I didn’t know where to sit. I was terrified. The teacher asked me my name. I told her. She came over and put her hand on my shoulder. She said, “I don’t think you were in here last year.” I said, “Yes, ma’am. I was.” The first grade was in there in the morning, and in the afternoon the second grade was there. I was in that room the year before, but I didn’t get to tell her that I was in the first grade. She said, “I don’t think you are supposed to be in this room. I think you are supposed to be in the third grade.” She took me out of the room and down the hall and knocked on the third-grade door. She went in and told the teacher. It seemed as if the whole roomful of students turned around to look at me. I was too terrified to tell her again that I was supposed to be in the second grade, that I had been sick for two weeks. So I was put in the third grade and I skipped the second grade.
Maybe you think I didn’t work. There were multiplication tables I didn’t have in the second grade, but then I hadn’t been in the second grade. Then we learned how to write with a pen and ink, and that was different from the pens you have today. You have to dip your pen into an inkwell and then you write. We had to write with a pen and ink in all of the language classes and all of the arithmetic classes. If you made a mistake, you couldn’t erase it. Oh, me! I don’t know how I lived through it. I was too terrified to tell them, “I am not supposed to be in here, damn it.” I stayed, and I got through that miserable year.
Language, strange as it may seem, was not too bad for me. We learned to speak English quickly and easily. Even after we were there only a few days, we learned to say several words in English. My parents and grandparents said to pay attention to words, what you read in books. You read it, word by word, and learn it. My father said, “Learn the white man’s language and learn it good. You must learn how to use those words and speak their language as good as the best-educated people because their language can also be used rather commonly.” He used to mention that the Indians didn’t have swear words like the white man does. Spelling was easy. In geography we had to learn the countries and the people who lived there.
Then I went into the fourth grade. I was in the fourth grade for three years. I skipped the second grade, went into the third, and then into the fourth. Almost at the end of the fourth year, the doctor said I should go with my father to Seattle and have my tonsils out.
I suffered. They just used the local anesthetic. He was busy talking with my father. He had what seemed like a long needle. I didn’t really look, but he stuck it in each tonsil and pushed the handle down. I was swallowing all of the dope, and it was going down and burning into my stomach. I tried to tell him, but he kept the needle down there. I couldn’t shut my mouth. I was still trying, and he was not paying any attention. So I swallowed most of the Novocain—that is what they used to deaden the tonsils when they cut them out. He used long-handled surgery scissors. I could feel every cut he made.
Every time I think about all of it, I think, “Poor, poor me.” I can laugh about it now, but I couldn’t eat anything for two or three days. Your throat is so sore you can hardly say “yes” or “no.” You just have to keep your head still. You can’t turn it.
So I got my tonsils out, and I didn’t finish the fourth grade. I was out for about three weeks, and they had their finals. When I came back, I took one examination, I think. It was in language. If the teachers had thought about it and if I had been more aggressive, I could have talked to the teacher and asked if I could take some of the examinations by myself. I could have done them. But I didn’t take the fourth-grade examinations. So when I went back the following year, I was in the fourth grade again. I went through the entire thing, and I almost knew it by heart. I went through the same book and the same arithmetic lessons. But that year I went home again because my sister got sick.
My Sister Died
My sister was named Ruth, after my mother. My mother was baptized, as I said earlier, when she was just a girl, but the priest was not Father Chirouse; I think it was somebody called Father Simon. So my sister was named Ruth, and she was about a year and a half older than me. She caught a cold in February and it t
urned into pleurisy and pneumonia.
I saw her in the morning. She was sick. She had her coat all buttoned up and she was hunched over. It was raining outside. We were jogging—the boys and girls—on the big quadrangle. It was raining a fine, cold rain, and our heads were dripping wet. We would come in from outside with our hair dripping wet. We gave up wearing warm hats because you have to take it off and hang it with your coat on a numbered hook in the hallway and it would fall on the floor and people would trample on it. Some of the boys and girls had knitted tams or warm knitted hats like you see today, with the pom pom on top. Our hair was long, and we wore it braided and tied up with ribbons. The water dripped off of our eyelashes. We looked at one another and laughed because we looked so funny. We were little. The rain dripped off of our noses. But for those who had colds, like my sister, then they would get worse. We went back into the building for breakfast, and usually by then the heat was on in the radiator, and it would get very hot. The windows were closed, and by the time we got into the classrooms, they were hot.
When I first got there, I was thankful it was hot in the room, but after you are in there for a while, half an hour or so, it becomes suffocating. Most of us were too frightened of the teachers to ask if the windows could be opened. Some of the teachers in some of the grades would open the windows, but there was a long row of windows. Some of the teachers were very nice, and they would open the windows that were not right next to the children where they were sitting at their desks. Some of the teachers didn’t care. If they did open the windows, they opened them too wide and the cold wind blew in on us. If your hair is wet and then you are sweating and the cold wind blows in on you; then you get really sick. I got over my colds. I made up my mind. “I am not going to die. I am not going to give up. I am going to live. When I get out of here, I am going to come back and kill that matron who strapped me.”
Tulalip, From My Heart Page 19