A Special Salute: Phoenix Indian School

PHOENIX INDIAN SCHOOL

A century-old landmark-worn and weary and no longer fashionable-will soon pass from the scene in Phoenix. Few in this exploding metropolis with its hundreds of new arrivals weekly will note the demise. Fewer still will mourn.

On the evening of October 12, 1890, Indian Commissioner Thomas Morgan told a large crowd in Phoenix that it was "cheaper to educate Indians than to kill them." Local worthies agreed and, after searching for an appropriate site, supported a plan to open a boarding school for local Pima and Maricopa Indians on the outskirts of their growing city.

Reasons for this generosity were mixed. Sincere reformers, such as founding Superintendent Wellington Rich, believed the answer to "the Indian problem" was education and assimilation into Anglo society. Less altruistic souls recognized that a federal institution would bring a market for local goods, offer employment opportunities, and provide a pool of cheap labor for nearby citrus orchards.

Whatever their motives, city fathers put up $3,000 to help organizers acquire the 160acre Frank C. Hatch ranch, located three miles north of town at what is now the intersection of Central Avenue and Indian School Road. The federal government provided an additional $6,000 for the property. Today, appraisers estimate the land is worth $1.5 million an acre.

The Phoenix Indian Industrial Training School welcomed its first students, 31 Pima boys, on September 3, 1891. By 1903, the school had 700 students between the ages of 6 and 18. In the early years of the 20th century, the school's 34 buildings occupied about 10 city blocks. A green oasis, the grounds became a tourist attraction and popular gathering place for local residents. An accomplished band, founded in 1894, regularly performed before large audiences. President William McKinley, touring the West, visited the school in May, 1901, as did Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 on his way to dedicate Roosevelt Dam.

Over the years, administrative theories shifted but always emphasized vocational training. In the school's early period, government educators believed the best way to "civilize" the Indians was through work training. Children were often removed from uncooperative parents by force or subterfuge and sent to live in boarding schools until they reached adulthood. Robert A. Trennert, Jr., author of The Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891-1935, quotes a young Papago girl about her first night. "I got up there in that strange dorm, with a whole bunch of tribes and everything, and I laid down and boy, the tears came out. It seemed like every time I waked up my tears would comeall night long.

Military discipline, complete with uniforms and marching drill, was enforced at the Phoenix Indian School in an attempt to "de-Indianize" the youngsters.

This policy met with mixed results. Some youngsters took to the military routine, and

Monica Mix and Fred Molina (OPPOSITE PAGE, FAR LEFT) study a cat skeleton in a seniorlevel biology class. (OPPOSITE PAGE, CENTER) History teacher Robert Perea joined the faculty in 1951. A published author, he says he learns as much from his students as he teaches them. (NEAR LEFT) Principal Milford Sanderson's parents met when they were attending the Phoenix Indian School. While be cherishes the school's traditions, emphasizing quality education is his main concern. (THIS PAGE, ABOVE) The 1988 Phoenix Indian School Braves exult after winning the last game of the baseball season-27 to 14 against Verde Valley. (RIGHT) After Susie Hyeoma graduated in 1940, she and ber busband, Lucius, continued to live and work on campus. A cafeteria employee, she remembers the days when all students wore uniforms and girls were not permitted to speak to boys.

Students jubilantly throw their caps in the air (LEFT) after the 1988 graduation.

(LEFT, BELOW) Sophomores Mary Talkalai and Fred Norman at the 1988 junior-senior prom. Both are Apaches from San Carlos, Arizona.

(THIS PAGE, BELOW) Benjamin Leon has taught English and coached football, wrestling, and track since 1969. In 1988 he had five or fewer students in his classes.

(RIGHT) Chairs and stands seem lonely in the empty music room.

Continued from page 4 indeed, an elite company of youths drilled with the Arizona National Guard. Most alumni who found jobs ended up working for the government. Many returned to the reservation, where they abandoned their new-fangled ways or met with hostility from their traditionally minded peers. Nevertheless, many Indian students remembered their school days with nostalgia; for some, it was the only home they knew.

"Father," wrote one lad in a letter Trennert unearthed, "I am so thankful to God for the beautiful school I am in and the good chance we are having to learn, for we will sometime go out into the wide world and find something to do which God intended us to do." These unchildlike remarks of course reflected the official line. However, Trennert notes, "decades later many former pupils still expressed the same sentiments and would not have materially disagreed with their classmates."

In 1928, a study by Lewis Meriam of the Brookings Institution set the stage for a halt to forced assimilation. Meriam and his staff of experts condemned the federal government as inhumane and insensitive in its treatment of Indian children, and attacked overcrowding, unhealthy conditions, and noneducational use of student labor. The Meriam Report recommended that younger children be educated closer to home, while non-reservation schools be limited to the higher grades. As a result of this report and strains brought on by the the Great Depression and World War II, enrollment dropped and was limited to high-school age students.

By 1935, professional educators had been hired, the military discipline stopped, and the jail razed. A standard high-school curriculum was offered, including four years of English. A 60-bed hospital opened on campus in 1930, and most students were permitted to return home for summer vacations.

Over the years, the school developed an outstanding athletic program. During the first quarter of the century, several championship long-distance runners attended the Phoenix Indian School, and the football team often won against Tempe Normal School, Phoenix Junior College, and Mesa High School. The annual "big game" was with Phoenix Union High School. Girls as well as boys excelled at basketball and tennis; by 1930, Indian coaches were working with those sports and swimming, track and field, and baseball.

After the Depression and World War II enrollment losses, the school revived; in 1949 the enrollment rose to 700. Still, a slow erosion began. In 1947, Congress eliminated Indian boarding schools from the federal budget and then reinstated them. In 1949, a corner of the school property was taken for a Veterans Administration Hospital. Two years later, the City of Phoenix annexed the campus, and the dairy was closed. And in 1951 another 40 acres were sold as "surplus land." Yet the student body continued to grow, reaching a record high in 1961 of 1,043. Students were crammed into buildings that had they not been exempt because they were on federal land-would have been condemned under city fire codes.

Then, in 1969, a Senate report castigated Indian education, finding that nearly a third of Navajo children were functionally illiterate and the Indian dropout rate was twice the national average. By the '70s, the national mood was to revamp educational programs, permit Indian "self-determination," and concentrate federal school efforts on the reservations. In 1982, the Reagan administration announced that off-reservation schools, including the Phoenix Indian School, would be phased out for economic reasons.

The school will close its doors forever in the late spring of 1990. Congress has approved a land exchange that will transfer most of the site to the Collier Companies, Florida commercial builders. In return, they will add 128,000 acres of wetlands to the Big Cypress National Preserve and the Florida Panther Preserve in the Everglades. The Arizona Indian tribes will receive $35 million for educational purposes. The City of Phoenix will retain 20 acres of the erstwhile campus as a park and exercise unprecedented control over the remaining development. And a familiar island of peace in the middle of Phoenix's uptown business district will disappear beneath another high-rise complex, marking the end of yet another era.