Not a lot going on today here on the hill. Ed & Bonnie went to Iowa this morning and will be back late on Friday night. We did some cleaning and I did a small job and got it in the mail this afternoon and that is about all that we did.

Yesterday, however we had a really nice day and visited the US Indian school. Originally it was quite a large facility with many buildings and dorms for the boys and girls as well as faculty housing. There were horse barns as well as cow barns. There were many garden plots where they raised their food. The students had long days, 10 and 12 hours. some would work in the fields during the morning and then go to school in the afternoon. After a period of time they would change and go to school in the morning and work in the fields during the afternoon. If it was as hot then as it was yesterday and today, I would not want to be working outside all morning or all afternoon. Upstairs, there were classrooms with desks, sewing machines where the girls learned to sew, shops where the boys learned to make harness and become tailors and other vocations.
It is difficult to understand why they took these children off of the reservations, away from their people
and their way of life and bring them far away to learn them to work and do the things the white man does. Apparently it did not work out as they closed all of the schools in the mid 1930's. At one time there were 599 students at the school.

Downstairs there were displays of the things that they learned to make as well as photos and newspaper clippings of activities of the time. There are beautiful banners of all the tribes that had students in the school. They even have a reunion each year at the school of those that attended and their descendants. A very interesting place to visit and study the way things were done in years past.