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Show 148 X. DINE BIKEYAH reservation to the Presbyterian Board of Missions. For thirty years, this group would nominate agents for the reservation and largely control the education of the tribe. Judging by the rapid turnover of agents, the Presbyterians did not choose the right men for the post. And they were hardly more successful at teaching the Navajos. The Home Mission Board sent Miss Charity Gaston, the Navajos' first teacher, to a ramshackle dayschool at Fort Defiance. But she seldom had more than a few pupils. The People could see little reason to take their children away from chores and pastimes where they had a chance to learn something useful. Fears about this unknown book learning may also have hurt attendance. And, from the first, the People saw that the real goal of this education was to teach the Navajos to be whitemen and not Indians. So parents sent only sick or weak children to the Fort Defiance school. At first no one tried to enforce the treaty provision that all Navajo children attend school. It was not until 1880 that a real school was placed on the reservation. Then the Presbyterian Home Mission Board sent J. D. Perkins to Fort Defiance to direct the building of a boarding school that would house 150 to 200 students. But when the school was built, few Navajo children attended it. Boarding-school life did not appeal to Navajo youths. In 1885 only 33 students went, and the agent had to station a policeman at the door to prevent them from running away. The police were a chilling hint of things to come. In 1887 Congress passed the Indian Education Law to force Indians to go to school. Along with the bill came funds for new schools. A new boarding school went up in 1892 at Fort Lewis, Colorado. A special agent made the rounds, trying to convince parents to send their children. The area's tribes acted as any parents would act. The Utes, Apaches, Pueblos, and Navajos had little desire to send their children miles away from home for months or years at a time. Nothing short of kidnapping could fill the schools with children. So the agents and their deputies took on this task. The officers grabbed unwary, unguarded children and sent them away to school, sometimes without telling the parents or even learning the names of the children. Mothers came home to find that their sons or daughters were gone. They had no way of knowing what had become of their children. Methods were no kinder at the boarding school. As the children had been taken from their parents, they would be removed |
