Vol. XI Number 3
Labriola National American |
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In response to faculty requests, and in order to support numerous classes being taught at ASU, the Center has much new material in its collections. Some are gifts or are tucked away in manuscript collections, while other material is purchased with the generous endowment from the Labriola family.
In addition, we will announce a web site or two, and a collection in a California repository to which we can order copies on customer demand!
Research papers require primary resources and the Center has concentrated much of its collection activity in that area.
Some examples are: dissertations; oral histories; microfilm collections from the National Archives and elsewhere; published autobiographies; transcriptions of interviews; photographs; some rare books; and more.
Dissertations
In addition to dissertations published by ASU graduates, the Center purchases every dissertation dealing with a Native topic, which was produced during the previous year. A great help in this endeavor, is the Western Historical Quarterly, published for the Western History Association. Each year, it lists dissertations awarded by other institutions. Here are a few examples from our 2002 list of purchases:
- “The Cherokee National Female Seminary: Higher Education for Cherokee Females in the 20th Century,” Lou Ann Herda, University of Houston, 1999.
- “ Formal Education Among the Siberian Yupik Eskimos on Sivuqaq, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska: An Ethno-Historical Study,” Pam Powell, University of North Texas, 1998.
- “ Hidden Nation: Nez Perce Identity and American Indian Sovereignty,” Janice Ann Johnson, University of Tulane, 1999.
Lake Mohonk Conferences
The Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, was held annually between
1883 and 1916, to express the concern many felt about the condition and treatment
of our aboriginal people by invading Euro-American culture. In 1929, after
13 years of inactivity, a 35th conference was called to discuss many of the
same topics as before: education; health care; job training, missionary activity,
law and order on the reservation; and assimilation into American society.
Eleven days after the adjournment of the 1929 conference, the stock market
crash ushered in the Great Depression. The conference was not revived.
One hundred years from the first meeting, a conference on “Reform and the American Indians,” was called to celebrate the Mohonk Centennial on October 30, 1983. The conference was held in the now historic Mohonk Mountain House, at New Paltz, New York.
The Mohonk Mountain House began in 1869 when Albert and Alfred Smiley, twin brothers and Quaker school teachers purchased a 10-room tavern on land in the beautiful Shawangunk Mountains and converted the building to accommodate guests. Within a year, some 30 rooms were added and as the brothers’ resort gained in popularity, many more changes were made. By 1983, the old Victorian house had become a rambling building an eighth of a mile long and capable of housing 500 guests.
The Labriola Center is pleased to announce that it has received all but two volumes of the Annual Report from each Lake Mohonk Conferences beginning with 1883. A gift of Regents’ Professor Peter Iverson, the books are being cataloged and will soon be available for research.
References: 1) The Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian: Guide to the Annual Reports , Laurence M. Hauptman. Clearwater Publishing Company, Inc., 1975. 2) Mokonk Mountain House, brochure from the Papers of Regents’ Professor Peter Iverson.
Oral Histories
The Center holds a number of collections of interviews and oral histories,
with guides to each. Some are:
The American Indian Oral History Collection contains thirty one-half hour interviews on audio cassettes. These offer a broad account of experience from recollections of 19th Century Indian-white relations and indigenous Indian culture to the experience of today’s young Indians struggling to survive in white America without sacrificing their ethnic identity.
American Indian Oral History Collection, 1967-1972, contains transcripts from some 800 interviews, and include topics such as education, religion, politics, medicine, crafts, songs, land management, hunting, as well as personal histories and life stories on 11 microfilm reels. Reels 1 through 6 contain Navajo oral histories, while tapes 7 through 11 include oral histories from Pueblo Indians. Informants are identified along with the date of the interviewer.
University of South Dakota Oral History Collection, from the American Indian Research Project, Vermillion, South Dakota, contains some 172 interviews conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s with Plains Indians and those non-Indians working actively with them. Nearly all the Native informants belonged to the various bands of Sioux tribes. Most were elderly, thus providing first-hand accounts of events going as far back as the 1862 uprising to the 1972 presidential election. The interviewees are identified, along with date of birth and subjects covered in the interview.
Ethnic Studies: Indian Urbanization Project, from California State University at Fullerton, contains hundreds of taped interviews of Native people, most born in the early to mid-1900s. Many tribes are represented including Cherokee, Haida, Cahuilla, Arapahoe, Cayuga, Blackfoot, Chiricahua Apache, Paiute, Oneida, Kiowa-Apache, Navajo, Rosebud Sioux, Sauk and Fox, Pima, Choctaw, and Hopi. The Center will purchase tapes or transcripts on demand. There is a guide in the Center, or search: coph.fullerton.edu/NativeAmericanProject.htm
ASU Graduate Student Donates
Interviews |
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Each history contains information on three generations: parents’ boarding school experience; the interviewee’s experience in Phoenix elementary and high schools in the 1960s and 1970s; and their own children’s experience in Phoenix high schools.
The interviews touch on the issues of minority representation on the school board and in the classroom, and the interaction between various minority groups in the schools. Community life, activism, and the role of the Central Presbyterian Church are major themes. Speakers mention Indian Club (a student organization) and the Citizens Advisory Group/Committee that was formed as an addition to the school boards. Please see the American Indian Index through the Labriola web site for further details.
Dr. Amerman is currently Assistant Professor of History, Southern
Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT.
Joyce Martin
New Film from
the National Archives
The Center has completed the series, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
Central Classified Files, 1907-1939. Holdings are: Series A - Indian Delegations
to Washington; Series B - Indian Customs and Social Relations; and Series C -
Health and Medical Matters, part 1 contains reports on medical and nursing activities,
while part 2 covers diseases. The set comprises 90 reels of microfilm.
The Reports of the Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes is presently on order.
Indian-Pioneer Papers
The Indian Pioneer History Papers is a collection of interviews done in 1937
and 1938, which includes biographical data on both living and deceased persons
of Indian and pioneer heritage whose lives have been important in the history
of Oklahoma. There is also a collection of information on family customs,
tribal histories, social organizations, folklore, legends, cemeteries, old
trails, ferries, forts, trading centers, and other unrecorded facts known
only to oral tradition.
The original project, out of the Oklahoma Historical Society, was carried out under a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Writers’ project grant. On completion, there were some 45,000 pages assembled in 112 volumes. There are only two bound volumes of originals. The Center has the microfilm edition.
Papers of the Society of American Indians
Here is an extensive array of source materials generated by the Nation’s
earliest Pan-Indian organization. It was first organized at Ohio State University
in 1911. By 1913, there were some 619 members. Individual memberships were
offered to American Indians, while Associate memberships were offered to non-natives.
Many tribes were represented, particularly from the Great Lakes and Plains
area, and New York. Members included
BIA employees,
academics, politicians, representatives of reform groups, clergy, along with
a number of opinion-makers.
Some important Native women were among the society’s leaders, and included: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin; Emma D. Johnson Goulette; Marie L. B. Baldwin, Rosa B. LaFlesche, and Laura M. Cornelius Kellogg. The papers, therefore, become a significant source of history of early 20th -century Native American women.
The collection includes roughly 5,600 items of correspondence, minutes, memoranda,
reports, legal documents and news clippings. In order to provide a comprehensive
view of the Society, the papers were collected from some 45 institutions nationwide.
The largest and most comprehensive part were found in the New York State Museum
in Albany, with smaller portions coming from Rochester Museum and Science Center.
The microfilm edition is in the Labriola Center call number FILM 9653. There
is a printed index located in Labriola call number E77 .S6 L3.
What Was Life Like In Those 1903
BIA Schools?
A little treasure in our collection was published by the U. S. Office of Indian
Affairs in 1903: Statistics of Indian Tribes, Schools, and Agencies. For the
most part, they were difficult to reach with downright miserable conditions.
Let’s try and get there. For example. If one wanted to go to the Neah Bay Training School, 6 miles east of Cape Flattery, it would be necessary to catch a train to Seattle, then hop on a steamer for the last 188 miles. Now, the Lower Brule School is on the Missouri River, 35 miles North of Chamberlin, South Dakota. There is no railroad, telegraph, or telephone communication nearer than Chamberlin. On the other hand, Fort Belknap was easy to reach via the great Northern Railway; it was just four miles by stage to the agency. In stepping off the Rio Grande Western Railway in Price, Utah, one faced a 110-mile stage ride to the Unita-Ouray Agency.
| Dr. Charles Newton was assigned to the Algert Training School on the Navajo Reservation, in 1903. “Ninety miles from nowhere,” he wrote. Stepping off the train at Winslow, he was met by a government wagon pulled by mules. On the first day, they made 12 miles, unloaded the food box, water, and made a fire. He slept on a tarpaulin using blankets for cover, “the tent was the blue canopy of heaven.” Night temperatures were down to freezing and he shivered all the way to Algert, where they arrived after three nights on the road.* |  Charles Newton letter LAB MSS-140:4 |
Now for the weather. At the Pima Training School, one was told to expect a mild climate – except for summers of “extreme heat.” At the Blackfeet Agency Boarding School some three miles from Browning, Montana, the school was built on the east side of the Rockies in a “high, windy, desolate, and extremely cold section of the country.”
On a visit to the Arapahoe School in Darlington, Oklahoma, a visitor would find a pure water supply, though hard, and though the well water came from the river, it dried up when the river dried up. At Fort Berthold, water came from the Missouri River into which all refuse was thrown.
Most schools were lighted by kerosene or oil lamps and heated by wood or coal
stoves. Ventilation system was by means of windows and doors. The bathing facilities
consisted of wash tubs and basins. Of fire protection, there was none except
for pails of water in strategic places. Very often, there was no sewage disposal
system except for nearby rivers. Need we say more?
*The Papers of Charles Newton, 1901-1903, Labriola Center, University Libraries,
LAB MSS-140.
