In
Stealing Little Moon, author Dan Sasuweh Jones explores the legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools within .
Chapter One Kill the Indian In Him explores how the Indian residential boarding school school system came about. Jones traces the origin of the boarding schools to the early mission schools set up by the Spanish in the 1600's. This was followed by the establishment of Harvard University by the British and then the addition of the Indian College to bring Christianity to the surrounding Native people." The idea was to expose Indian students to English ways and have them bring this knowledge back to their tribes.
The end of the Civil War and the migration west of "settlers", led to war between the U.S. government and the Indians living on the land. The U.S. government took away the ancestral lands of the Indians and forcibly removed them. But the idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children.
Pratt's first off-registration school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which took in only young children and opened in 1879. It was located on an old military base near Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt's motto came to be "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." The goal was to mold Indian children so that they "could become part of white society", leaving behind their own cultural traditions, thus solving what the U.S. government had termed "the Indian problem."
The first group of children were taken from the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota, travelling fifteen hundred miles to Carlisle, arriving on October 6, 1879. The children were "ripped from their families" and entered a strange world that was run like a military institution. "Carlisle required the Indian students to cut their long braids, to take 'American' names, to dress in drab U.S. military uniforms to speak only English, and to march wherever they went around campus...."
Before and after photographs show the changes in the young Indians' appearances. These pictures along with those of "classroom experiences, concerts, sports, and happy interactions with the staff." were used to promote Pratt's project. Chemawa Indian School opened in 1880, taking in children from the Puyallup Indians from Puget Sound in Washington. The number of schools soon mushroomed, with boarding schools in New Mexico, Nebraska, Arizona, California and Kansas. The children were forcibly taken and if families refused, the government withheld rations, clothing and even jailed fathers. Some tried to hide their children but few escaped.
In Chapter Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight, the author tells the story of his grandmother, Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight and how she came to the Indian boarding school, Chilocco, which played a large part in his own family history. The school that educated the author's family members was built on the banks of the Chilocco Creek, "in the middle of empty, tall grass prairie." One hundred children from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kowa tribes arrived in 1884. Author Dan Sasuweh Jones' grandmother's family, the Little Cooks, were members of the Ponca tribe. His grandmother's name in Ponca was Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight but she came to be known as Elizabeth Little Cook. Little Moon's father (the author's great-grandfather) was Sam Little Cook. He was Head Chief of their clan, called the Rain Clan. Her mother was Esther Broken Jaw Little Cook. There were six children in the family ranging in age from four to eighteen. They included daughters Creth, Annie, Fannie, and Elizabeth (Little Moon), and sons David and Henry.
Life before the boarding school for Little Moon was simple and slow. Her family had built a farm and they lived by "...eating foods that were either home grown or harvested." They had cattle, chickens and pigs. There was no electricity or plumbing. The family was close-knit, practicing their Ponca customs and values. This all changed in 1885, when Little Moon was forcibly taken from her Ponca family by the Indian agent. She was four years old. Sam Little Cook, noticing that there were intruders near his home, ordered his wife Esther to hide their children. However, the Indian Agent was determined that four-year-old Elizabeth was to attend the boarding school. The women accompanying the Indian Agent saw where little Elizabeth had been hidden, took her, and forcibly placed the screaming little girl into the wagon.
For Elizabeth the trauma was just beginning. She along with the other children in the wagon were taken to the community of White Eagle. White Eagle was set up like a Ponca summer/winter encampment but instead of a semicircle of buffalo-hide teepees, there were wooden homes. The community also had a sawmill, a trading post, and in the middle a three-storey school. Initially this school had been for Ponca orphans, but now children like Elizabeth, who had families, were forced to attend.
Once in the school, Elizabeth underwent a physical transformation to start the process of losing her Ponca identity: her braids were cut, her clothes changed and she was stripped of any personal possession like a small medicine bag. At White Eagle, at least her family could still visit her. But then one day, Elizabeth, along with all the other students were packed off far way to Chilocco. It was 1886, and the school had already been open for two years. Elizabeth Little Cook, formerly Little Moon was the first of four generations of her family to be connected intimately to the Quaker boarding school, either as a student or an employee. Chilocco would forever change Little Moon and her family in ways they did not anticipate and which were to affect the generations to come.
Discussion
Stealing Little Moon is a long overdue book, written for younger readers, about the Indian boarding school era in the United States. Stealing Little Moon covers four generations of author Dan Sasuweh Jones' American Indian family during what is now referred to as the boarding school era, from 1884 to 1980. During the boarding school era, U.S. government agents forcibly seized young Indian children and transported them, far from their families, to boarding schools. The purpose of his book is to "...tell their stories and those of my own family members." It also "...explores what it was like to be an American Indian child during the boarding school years...as well as the depth and richness of our heritage."
As he traces his family history through the boarding school era, Jones also provides many details about the schools themselves, the relationship between the American Indians and the U.S. Government, the significant contributions of American Indians to American culture and society, and the struggle for equality, justice, reparation and healing.
He begins by offering readers with background information on the boarding schools. "The network of government schools was designed to wipe out American Indian culture and replace it with white ways...Forced to leave their families to attend the schools, children had to disown their language and rituals and they were brainwashed into adopting white ways. Whether or not they obeyed the rules, the children were abused emotionally and physically by the administrators and teachers. After they returned home and married, many passed on this abuse to the next generation." In effect, the function of these schools was "cultural genocide": stripping "Indian children of their heritage and cultural practices."
Jones outlines the origin of the Indian boarding schools from the Spanish mission schools in the early 1600's to the establishment of the Indian College at Harvard, to bring Christianity to the native peoples of the Americas. In the post-Civil War era, Indians were stripped of their ancestral lands and forcibly removed for European "settlers". The idea to educate Indian children to white ways, making it easier to assimilate the next generation, came from the work of U.S. Army Captain, Richard Henry Pratt. His successful forced assimilation program on captured Indian warriors, led him to design one for Indian children. Pratt's first off-reservation school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School which took in only young children and opened in 1879. His motto was "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
Dan Sasuweh Jones' family story is intimately connected to that of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, built in Indian Territory which eventually became north-central Oklahoma. The purpose of this school and other boarding schools was that of forcing "young Indian children to abandon their heritage." His grandmother Elizabeth (Little Moon), his mother Velma Pensoneau (Full Moon) and her siblings, Edward, Otilia, Francis and Daniel all attended. Jones' sisters Donna and Esther, his brother Mike and his first cousin Charmain as well as many other relatives experienced Chilocco. Although the author did not attend Chilocco, he worked there for many years. Jones shows how with each generation, the boarding schools improved and the experience was less traumatic, but the goal of achieving cultural assimilation was still successful despite many reforms.
Many parts of Stealing Little Moon are difficult to read. The passage in Chapter Two Little Moon There Are No Stars Tonight describing the forced abduction of four-year-old Little Moon is truly heartbreaking. Jones highlights just how powerless American Indian parents were to protect their children from the Indian agents and how determined the government was to take them, even to the point of starving families and jailing fathers. In Chapter 6 Hateful Things, the acts of unkindness, the punishment and abuse of Indian children for cultural slips, bad manners, disobedience, imprudence and bed wetting are shocking. Jones describes the use of handcuffs, lockup rooms, whips, straps, and even the threat of being sent to the Hiawatha Insane Asylum for Indians. Many survivor stories are recounted. These "...punishments passed from generation to generation. Children who had learned abusive ways at boarding school used them on their own children." In this way, the trauma of the boarding schools passed from one generation to the next.
One very informative and interesting aspect of Stealing Little Moon is the author's in-depth explanation of some Ponca cultural practices and how the loss of them had a profound affect on the Ponca children. When Indian children arrived at a boarding school their hair, which was often braided, was cut. Jones' explains, "The act of braiding our hair is filled with prayer. With each braid we are communicating with Wa KoN Da (God) and asking for mercy, healing, safety, clarity, and forgiveness for our infractions..." Later on he explains, "Through time, many have believed that hair is cut only under high-stress conditions, for instance when a loved one dies. It is a symbol of mourning. Long hair that is cut then disconnects a person from the community for one year, while it grows back. White school administrators may have thought that they were only changing the children's fashion. But for Elizabeth and the children with her, having their hair cut represented death."
Another practice in the boarding schools was the forbidding of Indian children from speaking in their mother tongue. Jones writes, "For every people on Earth, language is our identity and our connection to the world...Your own language carried ancient meanings and connections to Earth and all life..." Like many societies, the Ponca had an oral tradition that was a significant part of their culture. "Lost with language would also be their stories. Some stories hold the key to passing down our tribal values and ethics. They tell Ponca children who they are, what we expect from life, and how we interact with one another. They tell us the history of our people and what we believe in...But the greatest connection to our language and our selfhood is knowledge of our mythology...These stories contain many pearls of wisdom, all told in continuing narratives that are funny, tragic, mystifying, dangerous, and beautiful, oh so beautiful." Ironically, it would be an American Indian language that would help the Americans during World War II, the very language they were trying to destroy.
Besides outlining the many abuses that occurred in the American Indian boarding schools, Jones also focuses on the efforts from the 1950's onward to reclaim pride in American Indian identity and to reclaim Indian cultural practices like the Sun Dance which was one outlawed. Paralleling the Black civil rights movement, the American Indian movement advocated for better education, housing and healthcare, the restoration of stolen Indian land and the repeal of unfair policies and treaties.
Dan Sasuweh Jones' writing is passionate, rich in facts and details. Although he never attended an American Indian boarding school, the boarding school story is his and his family's: its intergenerational impact extending down from his grandmother and mother and her siblings to his own generation. As with many American Indian families, the struggle to reclaim their cultural heritage and identity has been challenging and ongoing.
Jones includes many black and white photographs and also many sidebars which offer addition information on important people and events. Features include the Ponca Trail of Tears, Ponca values, the Returned, Runaways, Code Talkers, Red Power is Born, Wounded Knee Massacre 1890 and many more. Especially poignant are the before and after photographs of various American Indian children. The before photographs show young children, proud and dignified in their traditional clothing with long hair in sharp contrast to the after photographs where an air of sadness permeates their bearing, hair shorn and wearing a uniform. The Ponca Trail of Tear
Stealing Little Moon is both heartbreaking and hopeful: it is a difficult read. What was done to American Indian children and their families is truly difficult to comprehend but Stealing Little Moon is part of truth telling that will hopefully lead to healing and reconciliation.
Book Details:
Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools by Dan Sasuweh Jones
New York: Scholastic Focus 2024
284 pp.
