Matrons and Maids: Regulating Indian Domestic Service in Tucson, 1914–1934

8. “—For a time, at least”: History and the Outing Matrons

157 8 “—For a time, at least” History and the Outing Matrons On the eve of Doris Weston’s appointment at Tucson in July 1934, the state supervisor of Indian education, Richard Tisinger, expressed the hope that the planned arrangement for Mrs. Pablo to assist Weston would go ahead: “They should make a good pair.” But if Jose X. Pablo’s wife, a senior woman who had helped Janette Woodruff in the 1920s, did in the end take over the responsibility for supervising Indian domestic employment, Weston does not appear to have been anxious to give her the credit. Instead, Weston soon became enthusiastic about developing a career in Indian domestic placement work herself, envisioning “unlimited possibilities ahead for a permanent business of increasing growth and value.”1 Weston quickly observed that Indian women were “fast becoming the main support for both children and husband,” apparently unaware that this had been the case since at least the start of the Depression.2 A report she made on employment in 1935 revealed that other patterns continued unchanged. Most of the Indian women earned their livelihood through paid housework; married women with homes in the village preferred day work, while “single girls” usually lived on their employers’ premises. Tucson’s Jewish families liked to employ Indian girls, Weston noted with interest, and even had their own representative who contacted her with their requests, but there were also “many white women who prefer the Indian over all others. . . . The better class of women is of course interested in her social and economic advancement, aiding and advising her whenever she can. . . . any race prejudice is reduced to the minimum. Working chapter 8 158 girls should recognize their opportunities and realize that all about them are helpful individuals and city organizations ready to boost them when they themselves are ready to be boosted.” Weston had in mind introducing a system of “training” for the young women, enabling them to demand higher wages. “As a committee of one, I am personally going to see what can be done to further the training of these girls who go so unprepared into the homes of their employers. Some opportunity will present itself this year,” she wrote hopefully.3 Weston’s faint tone of admonition toward the Indian women suggests her ongoing struggle to control them. Her card files revealed another pattern that continued—the girls’ determination to suit themselves. Eliciana G——, for instance, who “walked out” of a job Weston had found her after only three days, telling Weston that from now on “she would find work in town by herself,” was not untypical.4 Where once Woodruff had railed against those young women who refused to “mind” her, Weston had no option but to accept their assertiveness and independence without complaint. With no record of how and what Mrs. Pablo was doing in regard to helping the young women find employment, we can only assume that many of the girls saw offers of assistance, from Weston at least, as unnecessary and irrelevant. Nevertheless, Weston evidently found the work of placing the Indian girls and women stimulating and rewarding. So much so, in fact, that after only one month at Tucson she approached the Indian Office’s regional employment supervisor in Los Angeles, E. L. Compton, about the possibility of taking the newly established position of social worker in Los Angeles in place of the outing matron there. Refused partly on the grounds of her lack of university qualifications , Weston then drew up an ambitious “Indian Employment Expansion Plan” for Tucson. Weston’s plan could be seen as an assertion of the importance of women’s work, both her own and that of the Indian domestic workers . It entailed setting herself up in a downtown business office, from which she could arrange and organize positions for Indian women with white employers as a professional, modern agency. It would have meant a strong endorsement and recognition of the economic contribution made by O’odham women workers, as well as establishing a key authoritative role for herself as an employment agent.5 History and the Outing Matrons 159 But neither Tisinger nor the new superintendent at Sells, Theodore Hall (he had replaced Jasper Elliott in September 1934), were at all impressed, and both were distinctly opposed to Weston relocating downtown. Forwarding her plan to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier’s new director of education, Willard W. Beatty...