Toward A Better World
(Bits of Inspiration)
by Pipe Woman (Sister Giswalda)
Mission High School
Hays, Montana 1971
Sister Giswalda published a book of poems, Toward a Better World in commemoration of her Golden Jubilee, August 1972.
“Live and Let Live”
Grandmother- Speaks-in-Thunder watched the children
play,
While her thoughts went skipping back to another day.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop-plap.
Those were the days of freedom when prairies meant
home,
When wildlife and buffalo were left free to roam.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop-plap.
When warriors went hunting and women scraped hide,
And long lines of meat were drying outside.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop-plap.
When no one was hungry and rations unknown,
And harvests were reaped without having been insown.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop-plap
When children were healthy and futures held hope,
And there was no whiskey, repression, or dope.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop-plap
When Indians were proud of their culture and race,
And life was lived at an even pace.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
And a plop-plap, plop plap
PLOP!
Now existence has changed and Poverty rules,
And children are sent to the White man's schools.
They teach them their culture, language, and
skills,
And lure them away from the prairies and hills.
They hold up achievement as life's major goal,
With tension and pressure assuming a role.
They measure a man by the things that are his,
And not by the status of what a man is.
They hoard for the future and set their hopes
high,
While the needs of their neighbor they often
pass by.
The Indians’ true culture was never like this!
Let him keep what he has, or there’s something
amiss.
Recapture his pride in his culture and race;
Let him take what he wants of the white man’s
pace.
With a tom-tom-tom-tom
TOM!
As I read Sister Giswalda’s words, my head blew up. She genuinely respected and admired the traditional A’aniiih culture and devoted almost her entire life to changing it.
It is the case that the Ursuline sisters likely played a larger and more profound role in this culture change process, but it would be difficult to ignore that Sister Giswalda and the other sisters were all about having the A’aniiih adopt Catholicism/Christianity lock, stock and barrel.
Culture is an integrated whole; the different elements are all interrelated. It is from difficult to impossible to change (suppress) a religion and not impact all of the other elements of the culture. The sisters weren’t working with a scalpel … culture change was being implemented with a sledgehammer.
Perhaps Sister Giswalda’s words reflect her desire for the A’aniiih to adopt a blend of what is best from both worlds. That might have been possible if the process transpired differently. That blending might be possible when people control how change occurs as opposed to having change forced on them through both threats of starvation and physical punishment. From the earliest times during the boarding school days with the Ursuline Sisters, the traditional language and culture were literally beaten out of these people. Not a whole lot of blending going on.
And yet, the Sisters’ respect for the A’aniiih is reflected in Sisters Giswalda, Benno and Claire receiving the highest honor of the tribe. They were formally adopted into the A’aniiih tribe by perhaps the last Chief of the people, The Boy. You don’t get adopted into the tribe if you don’t truly appreciate, admire and respect the culture and the people. Period. The leaders of the A’aniiih recognized and respected the sisters’ work, and their dedication to the people.
Life is so incredibly complicated.
It is remarkably easy to have an opinion. Carefully developing an informed and thoughtful opinion is an entirely different matter.
I went to Hays to study culture change among the Gros Ventre. That they were not A’aniiih during my work is so emblematic of the amount of change this tribe had experienced. My fieldwork research was focused on the process of culture change, and the impacts of this change on their society and the people.
The Church, and specifically, St. Paul’s Mission, played a primary role in creating so much of this change, and fostering the direction of change over many decades. Susie and I came to Hays to volunteer at this mission through the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. The mission was, for all practical purposes, our employer. Susie and I were teachers in the St. Paul’s Mission School. Aside from the Federal Government, the most consequential vehicle for change for these people was the mission.
I’m a cultural anthropologist; a disciple of Franz Boas, the father of American cultural anthropology. Not surprisingly, this Jewish immigrant developed the notion that every culture had its own integrity and should be valued. We can only truly understand a society and culture by studying it from within and by recognizing the intrinsic value of a way of life. Forced change from outside is antithetical to this notion, because it fundamentally presumes that one way of life is better than another.
Cultures change and every society has always changed. If this was not so, we would still be using stone tools and putting food on the proverbial table through hunting and gathering. Change can happen from within a society through invention and discovery or it can occur through borrowing of ideas and elements from a different society. In both cases, these changes from within are controlled by the people from that society and there is a process of adaptation whereby new ways of doing things or new technologies are integrated with the existing elements of that culture.
Forced change is an entirely different matter. First, what gives a society the right and ability to force change on a different society … it is power. In the case of the A’aniiih, that power was manifested by larger numbers of men in an organized army and superior war technology that totally outmatched the bows and arrows, spears and clubs wielded by the tribe. The nature of forced change can take place rather quickly when the most basic resources, including food, are destroyed. Forced change usually doesn’t involve much time for adaptation or a process of integration. Forced change is usually unadulterated mayhem. When it happens, the freaking out process can entail last gasp attempts to keep the traditional culture alive. This freaking out process occurred all over the world while Europeans were raping and pillaging non-western societies. Anthropologists call these phenomena revitalization movements. In the case of Plains Indians, the Ghost Dance was one such movement. The United States Army literally killed it.
The most effective and efficient weapon of change pointed at the A’aniiih was the Catholic Church through St. Paul’s Mission.
Given the most basic tenants of my discipline as espoused by Boas, my easy opinion about St. Paul’s Mission would be thoroughly negative. They believed that their way of life was superior to the traditional A’aniiih, and they certainly believed that their religion was far superior to the traditional rituals and beliefs of these people. The A’aniiih were forced to change; they were forced to bend to the will of the priests and sisters at St. Paul’s Mission because the Church had the backing of the government’s power.
Life is complicated.
Complicated opinions derive in large part from the fact that change for the A’aniiih was inevitable. The changes that took place were almost unavoidable. It would have been great if the process hadn’t been so abrupt and brutal, but the ultimate result was going to happen. And this statement of fact requires explanation.
When I speak of inevitability, I am not referring in any way, shape or form to Social Darwinism. If one hops into the anthropological way-back machine to the late 1800s and early 1900s, Social Darwinism was all the rage as a theory to explain (rationalize) the changes taking place in indigenous societies as Europe colonized all of Africa, the middle east, Asia and the Americas. Social scientists adopted this concept of social change modeling or analogizing them after Darwin’s concepts of biological evolution based on natural selection. They believed that western culture was at the pinnacle of societal evolutionary development because it was clearly the best way of life. Changes in the direction of western society were the natural course of social evolution. These changes were considered inevitable - that all non-western societies would eventually evolve into us. Isn’t that special.
Thus, it was believed that the forced changes that were taking place in these non-western societies were inevitable, and the forcing part of the process was just helping this inevitability along its natural trajectory. Also, quite special.
This is precisely the theory that the Jewish Boas was railing against in the anthropological tenants described above. And little wonder that the Jewish European immigrant Boas came to these conclusions. After all, his people from Europe had centuries long experience with dominant, more powerful societies forcing change by either killing or beating the crap out of them. Through this history from the Greeks, Babylonians and Romans to Ferdinand and Isabella to Hitler, Boas had acquired a heightened sensitivity to forced culture change and carried out by a society with larger armies and more technologically advanced weapons; and not by a superior, or more beautiful way of life.
So, if I’m not referring to Social Darwinism, what exactly do I mean by inevitable. By accident of their nomadic residence and the manner in which Europeans invaded North America, the A’aniiih happened to live in one of the last places western society manifest destinied it’s way throughout the continent. This was also the last location of the buffalo herds that served as the primary food supply and critical resource (for clothing, tools, dwellings) for the A’aniiih and all the other northern Plains Tribes. The first whites to arrive in this region were trappers and traders. There were so few of them that they were more likely to adopt the native way of life and ‘marry’ into the society than they were to create any great changes. They were, however, introducing rifles and alcohol which would have lasting impacts on culture change among these people. The first organized invasion of this territory came with the Lewis and Clark exhibition after the Louisiana purchase in the early 1800s. The expeditions went up the Missouri River right into A’aniiih territory. Lewis and Clark actually set their eyeballs on the Little Rocky Mountains.
Serious and permanent incursion by whites into their territory didn’t occur until the 1860s and 70s. After the civil war when the Army had a lot of soldiers with little to do, they were sent out west to kill off buffalo and to force tribes onto reservations. Thus, inevitability began to knock on the A’aniiih’s door. Homesteaders, miners, ranchers and the railroads were putting enormous pressure on the Federal Government to open (steal) all these tribal lands. As noted in my earlier historical blog (that I am assuming you memorized), Father Hugo Eberschweiler (a German Jesuit) started St. Paul’s Mission in 1887, brought in the Ursuline Sisters to establish the boarding school and the inevitability kicked down the proverbial door of change. The entire eastern, western, southwestern and southern regions of America had already experienced this dramatic change through contact with whites. There were tribes who were dealing with this crap all the way back to the 1600s. The A’aniiih were spared a couple hundred years before it showed up on their doorstep … but they weren’t going to escape this forced change. They represented the last, and for the most part, uninterrupted vestiges of traditional indigenous culture.
Change in A’aniiih culture was inevitable, not because it is the natural course of social events for inferior cultures to evolve into superior cultures. It was inevitable because the A’aniiih had nowhere to hide and enormous numbers of whites using threats of starvation and really big guns wanted their land.
This entire history is confused by the fact that the missionaries were firmly planted in the Social Darwinism camp. They believed their way of life, fundamentally Christianity, was far superior to the traditional A’aniiih culture. So, bringing them along was both inevitable and doing these people a great service. That’s the part of the opinion and perspective that is wrapped in resentment, frustration and profound anger. Those sentiments were absolutely universal while we lived in Hays. As a Boasian disciple in anthropology and as a Jew with my own family history of this kind of brutal crap in Europe, I shared all these very strong negative thoughts and feelings about what happened to the A’aniiih.
Life is so complicated.
The informed and thoughtful opinions on this matter also bring us to the incredibly ironic feelings of gratitude, respect and admiration. The people in the community resented and were angered by this history and process of change … and yet, were so grateful for all of what these sisters did for their people. They had great respect and admiration for their work and for these individuals. And in my most informed and thoughtful opinion, I share in this respect and admiration for the sisters, and particularly Sisters Giswalda, Benno and Claire.
These sisters devoted an entire lifetime to educating the A’aniiih – and the Chippewa Cree (less so the Assiniboine). They lived out in the middle of nowhere and had an amazingly austere existence –remember, that’s why Mike and Bill enjoyed coming over to eat dinner with Susie and me. The people in the community recognized the magnitude of their sacrifice. As a result of this work, the sisters did an excellent job of preparing these people for the inevitable world they were going to live in. When I was doing my work, half of the A’aniiih were living off the reservation, primarily driven by the need and desire to find employment that was absent on the reservation. So many of the A’aniiih have acquired college educations and professional degrees. I know of at least two A’aniiih who have been professors at Harvard. One of the A’aniiih has been instrumental in establishing the American Indian Museum of the Smithsonian. As noted in another previous blog, leaving the reservation is a significant step away from A’aniiih culture, but from a western point of view, their accomplishments represent tremendous success. That success, in large part, can be traced back to the exceptional educations their great grandparents, their grandparents, their parents and they received from these sisters.
The easy opinion gets us (the community and me) to resentment, anger, and frustration. The informed and thoughtful opinion includes gratitude, respect, and admiration.
This is the original St. Paul's Mission in the early 1900s. There were a lot of buildings at the mission, including the church, a separate boy's and girl's school, a rectory for the priests and brothers, a convent or dormitory for the Ursuline sisters, and the buildings for a working farm, a bakery and laundry. Very few log homes can be seen where the community people lived. At this time, they were likely a combination of log homes and tipis.
The next three photographs are close-up views of the mission church and school.
These are the Ursuline Sisters and their girl students on a hill up above the mission.
The mission had an article about how St. Paul's Mission was established in the 1880s. The article was in German. We asked Sister Benno, who was German, if she would translate the article for us. Susie worked with her to do the translation and she taped her. I have tried to find the article so I could provide a reference, but I am unable to do so. Susie and Sister Benno identify the author, publisher, and date at the beginning of the recording. It isn't easy to hear, but it is noted. The quality of the recording isn't great, but I thought it was worth including ... and particularly if you were a former student of Sister Benno's.
Sister Giswalda was a remarkable person. She was born in Milwaukee in 1903. On December 29, 1919, she joined the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee. She was received into the order on August 2, 1921.
Sister first came to Montana in 1933 when the Franciscans replaced the Ursuline Sisters at St. Labre on the Cheyenne Reservation. She was there for three years. She came to St. Paul’s Mission in 1936 just after the fire in the Little Rockies. After the fire in the mountains, the Ursaline Sisters were told by their community that they could come home if they wanted to because of the dangerous conditions. So, they left. The bishop in this area asked the Franciscan order to have sisters sent out to the St. Paul's mission. Sister Giswalda was sent out and was made the superior and the principal of the school. She remained in charge since that time.
When the Ursaline sisters left St. Paul’s Mission there was no longer room for a boarding school at the mission. One of the buildings burned during the fire was the girls school; they were separate from the boys. So, when the Franciscan sisters came, they began to operate a day school. In the fall, 1937, with the approval of the bishop, Sister Giswalda founded the Mission High School and became its first teacher and principal. By the time the first 12th graders graduated in 1941, it was an accredited high school.
During the boarding school days, most of the students were Crees. Fewer of the Gros Ventre were sending their children to the boarding school. The complicated feelings and relationship between the Cree and Gros Ventre on the reservation, started very early on (from the beginning). When the day school started, during the first year, the children were all Gros Ventre going to the school. Sister said that the kids were very good and very well behaved.
Sister told me that when the Franciscan sisters first came to Hays, one of the first people they met was Fred Gone. They were a good family. They were both up in years when he divorced Mary; and he gave her all those children. They were very different people. He had a lot of ideas and he was always thinking.
Sister said that the Gros Ventre were years ahead of the Cheyenne in education.
I was down at St. Labre among the Northern Cheyanne before I came here. And when I got here, I was so surprised at how well educated the Gros Ventre were. When we first got here, the first night Fred came over to see us with his whole family. They used to live across the road from the mission. We walked to the church and Mary said something about not being able to get windows for the church; and Fred used the word appropriations. I was just amazed - especially after working with the Cheyenne.
In 1946, Sister Giswalda established the House of Loreto, a five-room house behind the convent. She teaches Christian family living, home management, meal preparation, housekeeping and home arts and crafts to the girls at the St. Paul’s Mission School.
Sister Benno was adopted into the tribe during the dedication of the school. Sister Claire was also officially adopted into the Gros Ventre tribe and was named "Speaks Holy."
In May 1951, Sister Giswalda was officially adopted into the Upper Quarter Clan of the Gros Ventre tribe and given the name “Pipe Woman.” The ceremony took place in the Civic Center in Harlem during a music festival. Chief The Boy gave her a replica of the sacred pipe, wrapped and tied in the official manner.
Rite of Adoption. Chief The Boy:
Now I would like to take this occasion, and I feel it is not an intrusion of this time to show you how an Indian appreciates something. We have a Sister here who has almost unassumingly done wonders for our children. At the Mission she has worked wonders, and I want to show you how an Indian appreciates a thing like an education. I come from St. Paul’s Mission along with this woman. I appreciate so much what this woman did for my children, my grandchildren, and all the other children out there. She went so far to educate those children out there. I am now going to bestow upon her the highest honor of our tribe. Sister, will you please come here? (Then in ancient Indian custom, he proceeded to adopt Sister Giswalda into the tribe).
Facing south, he said:
Above Whiteman, look down today at what I am about to do. Give me power, understanding, and a clear mind. Make my heart, my mind, and my tongue right, so that I will do right that which I am about to do.
Then when both were facing west, he said:
Supreme Being, I pray to You today with all my heart and my mind. Guide my action and my hand so that what I am about to do may be successful and good, and bring much merit.
Facing South, he said:
Master of all, You are mighty and all powerful; I pray to You. I am a poor and mortal human being. I came from You, You revealed to the Indian race how to ask You for favors through prayer. I am poor; help me; hear my prayer.
Finally, facing east, he said:
Master of all, now I finish my prayer to You today. I have exerted my whole being in so doing, even down to the very breath You gave me. Hear me, and grant that which I seek from You. Look at this person who stands in front of me. I am about to adopt this person into the Gros Ventre tribe in the ceremonial ways as taught by You to my ancestors from time immemorial, I ask You by prayer to grant and give to this person wisdom, strength of character, a strong heart and mind. This person is a woman to whom I will give a strong name. She has dedicated her life to You, by strong resolution. Give her happiness and joy to the end that all of her tasks and works may be light and not beyond her capacities. I pray for her to You that she may remain loyal and true to the great promises made to You. Give her patience and tongue, so that she may teach the rising generation of young Indians to the true path of life to You. May she live a long, healthy and happy life as I have lived long. May she attain the four great horizons of life. Clear the path of her life from all evil and bad things.
The Boy pushed Sister four times, walking around in a circle with her to symbolize that she must be strong and able to take it. As he presented the new Gros Ventre with a pipe, Mr. Tom Main interpreted the speech, stating that henceforth Sister is to be known as “Pipe Woman,” a name sacred and held in veneration by the tribe. The pipe, an unborn buffalo bag (five generations old), and other gifts were given to her in the hope that she might live to a ripe old age replete with all the fullness and blessings of life.
Chief The Boy, with Paul Spotted Bird in attendance opened the Sacred Pipe Bundle. The bundle was hoisted upon a tripod and contained the sacred Flat Pipe which was given to the GV tribe by the Creator himself. The Boy was the last Indian to unwrap the sacred pipe. The ceremony was lost with his death. Sister Giswalda owns a hand carved replica of the sacred flat pipe. She keeps it in the buffalo skin bag along with kinknick kinknick.
Sister Giswalda said on her adoption into the GV tribe:
If the Gros Ventre will keep their culture and add onto it what is good of the white man’s culture, they will become a superior people.
I know she believed this desire in her heart of hearts.
Life is so incredibly complicated.
On December 5, 1973, fire destroyed the 30 year old mission school building.
The sisters first left after the fire. It happened in the winter, and the kids all went to the public school. But then the three sisters moved back and lived in the house of Loreto. Some of the kids wanted to graduate from the mission school and begged Sister Giswalda to teach them. She did in a small trailer, with handheld black boards and without books, just so that these kids could graduate from the mission school.
When Susie and I were speaking to Mary Gone (before the wake for her husband, Ira Talks Different), she asked us if we were from the mission. She said that she went to the boarding school there. The day school was new. She said that the church there was really beautiful. When it burned down, she just stood and looked at it from her house (across from the mission) and just felt very sad. She said that the new church is built right on the spot where the old church used to be.
Gordon told us that when the school burned down (1973) it was very sad. His grandfather, Old Fred Lodge, built a lot in the school. He said that he still doesn’t understand how they got those big 12" by 12" beams up to the 5th story. When the building was burning, he was standing next to some old timers and they turned to me and said, “your grandfather built a lot of things in that school. There goes a lot of his work.”
The new mission grade school, the one that Susie and I taught in, was built in 1974. This school, along with the beautiful mission gym, was destroyed by a fire in June 2008.
The old mission building that housed the Ursuline Sisters and later served as our bus garage also burned down some time after Susie and I left Hays.
There were a lot of fires at St. Paul’s Mission. Life is complicated.
Anyone who was right in the head felt some amount of fear toward Sister Giswalda. The amount of fear was commensurate with a person’s inclination to challenge her authority or to interfere with her mission to teach her students. Her students certainly experienced this fear. And the parents, grandparents and great grandparents of her students (who were all former students) experienced this fear. Everyone felt it. She was my principal, and I thoroughly enjoyed working for her. She was always respectful of me and gave me free reign to teach her students how and what I taught them. She was supportive and kind. I also understood that if she asked you to do something, you didn’t ever question her … you just did it. She had absolutely no patience for shenanigans of any kind, from anyone - from the priests to her colleagues, to her students, to people in the community. She was fearless, she was competitive (particularly with the public school), and she was singularly devoted to educating the children in the community. Her students learned because she required them to learn, and she had total control over her classroom. No other teacher commanded the same kind of discipline that she had with her students. Every student was warned by their parents, grandparents and great grandparents that they had better behave in her classroom, and these warnings came from personal experience.
No one … and I mean no one ever screwed with Sister Giswalda.
Sister Giswalda told us that someday there would no longer be any sisters from the Franciscan community at St. Paul's Mission.
We have tried to advertise for nuns from our community for years. We have asked for sisters from our order to come out and fill some of the teaching positions. Sister Bartholemew came out just before the fire in 1973. We were very happy when she came out, but she is the only one who has answered our advertisements. We can’t get teachers from the Franciscans, because our order is changing. Women’s lib has entered our order also. I never thought that it would ever happen, but it has. They do not want it so rough either, and we do not have much out here. It is very isolated and there are almost no cultural activities out here. There's nothing out here to attract new and young sisters from our community. Today the nuns have a choice where they want to go - we did not have this choice. And they do not want to come out here. Other places they can make some money, but there isn’t any money that they can make teaching in our school. Someday Indian teachers will replace the non-Indian teachers at the public school and also at the mission. This will be very good for both schools. The Indian teachers will have a better understanding of the children. No matter how hard that we try, and we have been here a long time, we do not have the same background, and we were not born here - they can understand their children better, and they will do a better job of teaching their children.
Those are some incredibly wise and prophetic words.
Sister Giswalda died in 1988. May her memory be a blessing.
Beatrice, Mary, and Father Simoneau are taking a break and enjoying the sunshine.
Susie was the music teacher for Sister Benno's 1st / 2nd grade class. Sister Benno was teaching the kids nursery rhymes, but Susie seriously expanded their repertoire. The 2nd year students had learned this music from Sister Benno before Susie's arrival. Often, we can learn the words to a song without identifying the exact words or understanding their meaning. Take for instance, in a gadda da vida - just kidding, but you get my point. Sister had a very heavy German accent. When the kids sang the songs they had learned from Sister, they did so with a German accent. That was one of Susie's great pleasures in the classroom - listening to the A'aniiih and Cree children singing in a German accent.
This is a recording of the kids singing the songs that Susie taught them during her class. You even get to hear Sister Benno yelling at one of the kids for something. In the same vein as Sister Giswalda, Sister Benno had no patience for shenanigans and could be a stern disciplinarian. She was also sweet and kind and had a wonderful relationship with Susie. The tape ends with the kids reciting prayers that Sister had taught them. Susie didn't know these prayers and would have been more likely to teach them Adon Olam.
This is my 5th / 6th grade history-geography-civics class. I would screw myself into a pretzel to try to get the children engaged in learning. One of the more effective approaches I found was to have the boys compete against the girls in a contest to provide me with the correct answers to questions I asked them. Our history book covered a lot of information regarding the One True Religion in the Americas. That was a really tough sell.
Two Dominican Sisters were at the mission while Susie and I were there. Sister Kathleen had first arrived in Hays in 1973. She came to serve as the principal of the school. I don’t know this for certain, but it is possible that when the Franciscan Sisters left after the fire in 1973, Kathleen might have come to help in the new school. Sister Giswalda probably took her position back when she returned. Sister Laura arrived at about the same time that Susie and I showed up at the mission. Laura was going to be teaching the 3rd/4th grades in the mission school.
Kathleen and Laura were very different from the Franciscan sisters who were very traditional. They were progressive in their thinking, and particularly regarding the traditional Assiniboine and Gros Ventre cultures. They really didn’t come to change a way of life … they came to Hays and Lodge Pole to serve. They were most respectful and supportive of that way of life. Kathleen got me involved in the Urban Rural program and teaching GED. She got Susie involved in the arts and crafts program. She was a good friend and very supportive while we lived in Hays. Laura left the mission school during the second year we were in Hays, and both she and Kathleen moved to Lodge Pole to serve that community.
Susie and I admired their work, and we valued our relationships with them. Sister Laura remained in Lodge Pole and was cherished, respected and loved by the people in the community. She passed away in 2012. May her memory be a blessing.
Sister Kathleen was given the name Runs Still in the Water by the Gros Ventre. She left the reservation in the early 1980s to serve in the diocesan office in Great Falls. She remained a teacher, was involved in prison ministry and worked with urban Native Americans. She later moved to Big Sandy, Montana. When I was in Montana in 2014, I stopped in Big Sandy to see her on my way to the airport in Great Falls. She wasn’t home. That was a bummer. Kathleen retired in 2024.
The next two images are of Susie pouring the molds for her ceramics class. If I remember correctly, they mixed the clay in an old washing machine. These photographs are horrible because there was so little light in the church basement and I'm trying to hold still while the shutter is open long enough to get a decent exposure.
This is Susie's ceramics class. It was held in the basement of the church. The people were painting the molds that had been poured and dried by Susie and then they would be taken to a kiln to finish. The people really loved doing this work. Whenever I would observe Susie's class, the thought would occur to me that an archeologist might do some work on this site thousands of years from now and wonder about how all these Disney characters were introduced to the A'aniiih and Cree. You could find them in every other household in Hays. I'm including all these photographs because I don't have a lot of good images of people, and for whatever reason (like maybe they were too engrossed in their painting to be irritated by my taking pictures) they weren't objecting to what I was doing with the camera.
After the school burned down in 2008, the mission built a new grade school across the road. On my visit to Hays in 2014, I went to the school with my sister, Cyndee. I was excited to introduce myself to the principal. Dominican sisters had taken over as the principal and teachers at the school. When I introduced myself to the principal and told her that I had once been a teacher there in the 1970s, she smiled. She was pretty much unimpressed and was anxious to get on with her day.
These next few images are from my visit in 2014. I'm standing in front of the rectory looking east at where the mission grade school and gym were located before the fire. Looking at this scene made me sick.
This is a photograph of the new convent which was located on the spot where the green trailer had been.
After the old mission building burned down, a new bus garage was constructed. Hopefully this school bus was much better and safer than the one we drove in the 1970s ... stories forthcoming.
This was our old school bus.
A new public school was built in Whitecow Canyon. John Denver had a concert in this school. You can find it on YouTube. I have no idea how this happened in Hays.
And this is the new teacher housing. I have no idea what these fences could be keeping in or out.
In recent years, the mission school has had a difficult time attracting teachers from the community and also from the Dominican order. The Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, New York helped run the school for thirty years beginning in 1980; after the Franciscan sisters retired. The school was going to close at the end of the 2020-2021 school year due to lack of staff. The future of the school is uncertain.
Father Retzel left St. Paul’s Mission in 2015. He was the last of the Jesuit priests to serve the mission and community. The Jesuits had been there since 1887. Father died in 2018. May his memory be a blessing.
I believe that the mission remains ministered by the Great Falls Diocese, but I am uncertain about whether any of the priests still live in Hays at the rectory. There was someone there in 2014 when I stopped by for a visit, but I wasn’t sure he was living there.
It is my understanding that St. Paul’s Mission was given this land on the reservation by the tribe for the purpose of educating the children in the community. Operating a school and teaching the children was the condition for the church owning this land. If the Church is unable to operate the school, I have no idea what the Tribes are going to do about this arrangement.
A special issue of the Hays-Lodge Pole student newspaper came out, and was concerned with the activities in the school, or the lack of activities in the school. Letters were written to the editor by students and teachers who were blaming each other for the absence of initiative to start school activities. The following letter appeared in the paper:
Dear Editor:
I hear that the dear students at H/LP High are complaining that the administration won’t do everything for them. This is disgraceful. To see a perfectly capable staff ignoring its god-given responsibility to bring real culture and enlightenment to the heathen is perfectly scandalous. It should be obvious to the staff that these poor Indians are helpless and incapable of fending for themselves. As it was our duty to make their land productive it is our duty to see that these Indian children are shaped into productive and obedient citizens. Without firm guidance from above that is obviously impossible. Though the white man's burden be heavy we must all do our share for the lesser races. Only When the staff at H/LP High provides firm direction for these primitive savages will they be raised from ignorance and shiftlessness to a condition of our own. I hope the situation will be changed in the near future and these poor children will have something to do.
A Concerned Citizen
(Holy, crap. Read the room).
This letter was the topic of conversation for two days after it came out. All the reactions from the people around Hays were about the same; people were furious about it. The conversations about the letter were mainly about who wrote it and why.
Some people thought that it was written by an Indian to show his sarcasm about how some whites feel about the Indian. This is what Sister Giswalda thought. Some people thought that it was written by a teacher at the high school to get the kids mad and to get them stimulated enough to get some activities started in the school. Most people thought that it was written by one of the teachers in the school in a serious way; this is exactly what the teacher thought. One of the people at U/R said that it was a teacher, but he said that he did not know which one. He said that it didn't matter; take your pick, it could have been any one of them over there.
Before the end of the week, the people in Hays had learned who the teacher was that wrote the letter. He told the kids in his class that he wrote the letter and that he was only being sarcastic. He is the high school English teacher. Many people are upset about the letter, and there is supposed to be a school board meeting to decide what to do about the letter and this teacher. Some of the people are talking about wanting to have him fired.
The letter that appeared in the school paper used very derogatory language and old stereotypes to describe the American Indian and the reservation. Both students and parents were very upset. One of the students from the high school told me that they know who it is now. He said that the students used to like him, but since they found out that he wrote the letter, they will not listen to him in class. They ignore him and his class is a complete mess; they won't do anything for him.
In the past issue of the school newspaper, Thunderbird Express, the teacher wrote a letter to the students and to the community to explain why he wrote the letter and what it meant. The following is the letter that appeared in the Thunderbird Express on November 19, 1976.
Letter To the Students and Parents of H/LP High School:
Many people are extremely upset with my editorial signed “a concerned citizen” which was printed in the school paper, the Thunderbird Express. At first, I was confused. I did not expect to be taken seriously. A lot of people asked me “how could you write such a thing?”
What I had tried to do in the editorial was to move the students toward starting their own activities instead of waiting for the school to do it for them. The editorial was written as a challenge to the students, not to insult Indians. The surface message was completely false and did not express my personal opinion. (My real opinion was stated in another editorial which was not published in the Special Edition.) By blaming the staff in a ridiculous way for not doing everything for the kids, I hoped to make the opposite point; that the kids should get off their bottoms and start their own activities.
My choice of words made the hidden message impossible to see for most people. I imagine it was a double shock to see those words in the school paper. The words I used were from sayings about Indians in use many years ago. What I did not know was that the words I collected were still in use around this area. Once I was informed of this, I realized what I had done to create such strong feelings. Then I could see a reason for people to be upset. The use of those words was “like rubbing salt in open wounds,” as it was explained to me. I have since become convinced that these wounds are very real to many people here.
The intent of my editorial was to help, not hurt. I failed in my purpose. But I failed through ignorance and bad judgement and not from any feeling against Indian folk or their ways. I regret all the hurt feelings that have resulted. I hope that this incident will not hurt your opinion of your school.
I would like to thank the parents who cared enough to come to the school and talk to me for their help. If they had not told me what the problem was, I might never have understood the situation.
Sarcasm is a dicey proposition to begin with, but if you use it, you had better know for certain that the audience understands you well enough to accept your words in that vein. I can be amazingly sarcastic, but I limit my sarcasm on social media because it is so easily misinterpreted. What made this teacher’s judgement so precarious was that he didn’t consider that the community had some conflicting and complicated feelings about the teachers in the public school. Most of the teachers came to teach as a way to have some of their student loans forgiven. They lived on the school campus in special housing, and they were rarely seen outside of this compound. I rarely saw any of them at community events or pow wows. I’m sure there were teachers who were motivated to teach on the reservation by a desire to make a positive difference. The problem was that the community felt as though they remained cloistered and apart of the community. These feelings were fairly universal in the community. They come to teach for their two-year stint and then they leave here. Given this perception of the public-school teachers, sarcasm was absolutely a tone deaf approach. And of course, the great irony here is that he would have known that had he spent more time out in the community.
The basketball season for girls is about over. The grade school girls at the mission do not have a good team, but the girls are finally enjoying it. They are very shy on the court in front of a crowd and tend to be passive.
The boys’ basketball practice at the public school began on November 1. By state rules it could not begin before that. The mission grade school will begin practice on the 9th. Mike and Bill volunteered to coach the mission basketball team. Neither one of them had any experience coaching anything and they didn’t know much about basketball. Mike took out a book from the library and learned the rules. They did it for the kids and to have a good time; and they did. This was pretty much how things operated at the mission. If it needed to be done, and you had no idea how to do it, you tried to learn and you did your best. As noted previously, that is precisely how I found my way into teaching hunting safety to the kids for the Montana Fish and Game Department.
The boys’ basketball team at the public school is supposed to be very good. All the adults follow them and are avid fans. They made it to the tournaments last year. They lost because the kids were in a hotel and stayed up late having a good time instead of resting .
Mike and Bill tried to arrange a game between the mission grade school and the public school in basketball, but the public-school coach and principal decided against it. He said that the rivalry would be too strong, that there would be too many hard feelings, and there could easily be a fight.
The new mission gym is supposed to be completed for the mission and public school to play their basketball games, but the supports for the backboards have not yet arrived. Everyone is concerned that they will get put up before the season starts. Nothing is easy here.
The girls’ basketball tournaments began. The teams in the league are composed of the highline schools and the games are being played in Havre. The Hays-Lodge Pole public school is in the tournament. Most of the people in the community follow the team. Not many people have been out to the games (they do go to the boys’ games) but they keep up on the scores and many people listen to the games which are broadcast on FM radio. Both adults and kids listen to these games.
I was talking to the coach of the Hays/Lodge Pole basketball team, and he told me that one of his players dropped out of school and went to live on the Rocky Boy reservation with his mother. He is a very good basketball player, but he is three days too old to play on the team in conference games. He was a senior in the school but was there to play ball, and so he quit school. The coach said that he was going to try to get the other coaches in the conference to agree to let him play ball in the conference games so that they could get him back to finish school.
Susie was speaking with one of the mothers who had children in the mission school. She asked Susie if she thought that the kids here were any different from the children in Ohio. Susie responded that they weren’t different; that kids are kids everywhere. This mom then went on to tell Susie a story about a woman who was a teacher in Chinook. This teacher was talking to parents and said that she thought that it was really strange that she never heard Indian children singing spontaneously and making up their own words. This mom got really mad and argued with this teacher. She told the teacher that she had never heard white children singing like that and making up their own words. Yikes. Wasn’t it a requirement to be a sensitive human being back in the 1970s.
The Hays-Lodge Pole public school has been showing movies for the kids at night. They have a small charge for admission. One Tuesday they showed a western which is very popular here, and on Thursday night they had a Three Stooges movie, because who doesn’t need a little Larry, Curly and Moe on the reservation. I thought this was really nice, because we didn’t hear about very much activity going on at the public school for the community. It could be that the event with the English teacher raised some awareness among the public-school teachers.
Last week Caroline Smith was elected to the mission school board. She is a teacher and has two daughters in the mission school in 7-8 grade. She will serve on the board with two other men from the community, Father Retzel who is the superintendent of the school and Sister Giswalda who is the principal and the 7-8 grade teacher. She replaces Hazel Doney who served on the board, but her term was up this year.
There is a bookmobile that comes to the mission grade school every two weeks from the Great Falls public library. There are not too many people who take advantage of this service, except for the kids in our school. Beatrice and Mary, who work in the kitchen, take out books. Beatrice just took out a book on the construction of tipis. She wanted to learn how to build one, because one of the sisters wanted her help in building a model of a tipi for her classroom. Beatrice did not know how to build a tipi. She said that she knew that it was a very difficult job, and that it was the women who did this work.
One of the sisters told us that there was a white woman married to a Gros Ventre man in the community. Her last name clearly identifies her as an Indian. She has a lot of teaching experience. She applied for jobs in this area using her real name, and the schools turned down her applications, telling her that there were no jobs. She tried again, but this time she used a less traditional Indian name on her application. She got a job.
There were heavy snows over the past few days. There was a snowplow out covering all the most traveled roads in Hays. The plow came up to our trailer because we are teachers. We have high priority for the snowplow so that we can get into the school.
I have some spectacular stories of driving the school bus during the winter in Hays. The cold was brutal, at times getting down to 40 below zero. I don’t remember school being called off. We got into the bus early in the morning, started it and then let it warm up before we left to get the kids. Often, I went into the kitchen and smoked a couple of cigarettes and had coffee with Beatrice and Mary in the kitchen while the bus was running.
Visiting with Beatrice in the kitchen before my bus duties. She was such a good friend and I learned so much from her. Beatrice was a kind and gentle soul with a spectacular sense of humor. May her memory be a blessing.
Another common scene, Mary (Beatrice's daughter) and Susie visiting in the all-purpose room of the school. Also a kind and gentle soul and a wonderful friend. Her passing hurt Susie and I to the core. May her memory be a blessing.
It was amazing how much snow we got in the winter. During the second winter we were in Hays, the snow piled up so high on our front steps (that I never shoveled) that we ended up with a ramp from the trailer down to the ground. I’ll save the bus driver stories for another blog.
These are some very snowy photographs from November 1976. This is our home next to the canyon.
Susie's dad took this photograph. He came back up to the mission with us after we had Thanksgiving together in Billings.
This has nothing to do with the price of fish, but I had a photograph of the infamous
DY Bar on this roll of slides.
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