"They Call it Prairie Light" Chapter 1

Chilocco Indian School, historic view
Originally uploaded by bretac

i found this lovely picture of a painting of the Chilocco Indian School on flickr.com!

The first chapter of the book descibes some of the other boarding schools in america and the mentality the government had when they opened the boarding school (to make the indians civilized). Then it goes into the history of Chilocco when it first opened, when it became popular (during the Great Depression), and who were some of the administrators while the school was opened.

One part i thought was interesting is on page 3. The paragraph reads
"Mission schools and the government schools that followed them were often situated close to the communities they served. Many educators viewed this proximity as a disadvantage. Attempts to teach children English, Christianity, and the moral superiority of a clean life of honest labor were constantly undermined by the so-called bad influences of family and tribe."
These words instantly struck an image in my head of how true this is!! Although in today's modern times things are a little different and native americans are trying their hardest to keep up with the rest of the world there is still a little bit of that undermining going on. It seems as if they were on to something by deciding to open schools that were not so close to home like Carlisle, Haskell, and Chilocco.

Another part i thought was interesting is on page 12.
"The school lost students all year, through illness, desertions and transfers to toher schools. In order to keep the average daily attendance at levels necessary to retain congressional funding, new students were constantly enrolled. Thus an annual enrollment figure of 800 students might mask an average daily attendance figure of 640. It was not the SAME 640 students attending all year long."
Were the other indian boarding schools constantly recruiting and enrolling new students just as Chilocco was?

Alost another part i found interesting is when they mention how Chilocco was the only school who escaped the influenza epidemic because they placed the whole school on quarantine. "D