The Bearer of This Letter: Language Ideologies, Literacy Practices, and the F

2. Creating Boundaries: English Literacy in the Early Reservation Era

2. Creating Boundaries English Literacy in the Early Reservation Era “I am in receipt of a communication from the Indians of People ’s Creek. . . . The letter is in the form of a petition.” — Maj. Morris Bridgeman in a letter to James Sample, August 15, 1901 “As a matter of fact the Government is very particular about signatures.”—Maj. Charles McNichols in a letter to Fr. Charles Mackin , June 24, 1902 On June 2, 1893, Fr. Balthasar Feusi, a priest at St. Paul’s Mission at Fort Belknap Reservation, wrote a lengthy letter to the director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, Reverend Stephan: About three weeks ago a boy of the Gros Ventres and Assiniboines chief[,] Jerry Running Fisher[,] died. He was taken away from this school since February. After his death the father [of the boy] wrote a letter to the agent complaining that the doctor had neglected the boy. The agent was much displeased with this letter, he suspected, as he told to me, that it was written by the father at the Mission. This, though it would not have been in any way wrong, was not the case. The agent, in consequence of this letter wrote to the Gros 44 creating boundaries Ventre in the Little Rockies requesting them to put up a petition, that Washington should oblige the Mission to keep its own doctor for the school; he promised to endorse the letter.1 Although Father Feusi describes a very sad event that was an all-too-common occurrence on reservations in the late nineteenth century, what stands out is the notable space he dedicates to discussing written communications. In his account a distraught father sends a letter to the agent in charge of the reservation. However, the agent questions the authorship of the letter and therefore sends a letter in reply . He recommends that the community corporately author a petition, which he promises to endorse. Simply put, there is much writing about writing, as the agent and the priests discuss letters, debate the letters’ validity, and call for the production of yet more letters. This small episode (captured in a letter itself) provides a vantage point to looking into the workings of daily reservation life, where every action had to be documented and documents mediated interactions between people. English-language documents played a critical role in developing the reservation system, and their use illuminates the power structures created by those in authority to monitor the local community. Treaties, leases, and vouchers were used to restrict access to land and the Áow of goods along the northern territories. Passes issued by the local Indian agent regulated the movement of tribal members and helped the government track the activities of individuals . Documents such as marriage and birth certiÀcates, wills, and adoption afÀdavits also reconÀgured social relationships and maintained reservation hierarchies. This profusion of documents is tied to the emergence of the 45 creating boundaries bureaucratic state during the late nineteenth century and, ultimately, to the federal government’s ability to transform individuals into subjects.2 The fact that these documents were written in English exacerbated the disproportionate amount of power held by the government within the reservation system, as non-English-speaking adults found virtually all aspects of their personal and public lives redeÀned through the use of documents. Despite this power disparity, reservation community members began to use documents to exert some control within the reservation system. In meetings with the local agent, tribal members invoked the written authority of treaty signers to secure provisions and services granted within the treaties. Residents of Fort Belknap, many of whom did not speak English, began to use written English to explicitly resist actions by the government. Tribal members frequently used various types of petitions to argue for changes in reservation life, from resolving stafÀng issues to gaining increases in rations and disbursements. As tribal members became more adept in English, the appearance of petitions grew in frequency in the early decades of the twentieth century, resulting in competing petitions from the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre communities regarding the contentious issue of allotment. The petition, as an act of supplication and as a demonstration of consensus, became a strategically important form of resistance for tribal members in the early twentieth century. While the federal government used documents to support a system that limited and conÀned tribal members, individuals turned the...