In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

159 chapter 7 Unforgettable Lives and Symbolic Voices: The Sherman School Cemetery Clifford E. Trafzer and Jean A. Keller Lorene Sisquoc sat on a bench at the east end of Sherman Indian School Cemetery, the sun setting slowly behind her. A cool October breeze blew through the cemetery from the Pacific Ocean fifty miles away. The whirling wind stirred up tiny, broken, brittle leaves of the black and red sage, white sage, and the leaves of an elderberry bush that stood near Sisquoc. Behind her were several small arched headstones, all the same, bearing the likeness of a Native American man and the message, “Rest in Peace.” From her seat, Sisquoc explained the significance of the cemetery. This was the final resting place for many American Indian students who came to Sherman Institute and were never able to return home. When they died and were buried in Riverside, they never returned home, except, perhaps in spirit. It is a quiet place, a place where Sisquoc and others have come over the years to show respect and compassion for young lives cut short and families unable to visit their child’s final resting place. The headstones marking graves of Sherman Indian School students serve as stark and symbolic reminders of the government’s forced assimilation policy. The children buried at the cemetery are a testament to the great price paid by American Indian students, families, and communities as the government sought to destroy their languages and cultures while offering an industrial education that sometimes contributed to accidental deaths. Yet the continued existence of the Sherman Indian School Cemetery presents the symbolic voices of the students, so that contemporary people may begin to understand the emotional and cultural consequences of an off-reservation American Indian boarding school. Cemeteries have always played a tragic part at off-reservation boarding schools, beginning with the establishment of the first school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1879, to the 1970s. The cemeteries at off-reservation boarding schools became integral to each school’s built environment. By 1902, when Sherman Institute opened its doors, the government of the United States had 160 The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue already established twenty-four off-reservation boarding schools and student morbidity and mortality were significant problems at every one of them. Lessons about student health that had been learned at the early off-reservation boarding schools shaped the design and organizational structure of Sherman Institute, and at first there seemed to be no reason to create a school cemetery. So confident of the school’s inherently healthful environment, Sherman Institute’s first superintendent, Harwood Hall, chose to build a five thousandseat auditorium instead of a hospital, erroneously believing that the former would be of greater use than the latter.1 Unfortunately, Hall’s optimism proved misplaced. On January 1, 1904, a fourteen-year-old Rogue River boy named Chester Moore died at the school, and with his death Hall was faced with the very real dilemma of creating a school cemetery.2 Despite the fact that all previous off-reservation boarding schools had cemeteries, space for a cemetery had not been included in the design of Sherman Institute—in fact, to have done so would have been antithetical to Hall’s vision of the school. He saw Sherman Institute as a cultural Mecca, a place where the successful assimilation of Indian youth could be showcased through student plays, concerts, and sporting events for the enjoyment of dignitaries, donors, and other non-Indian guests. A place of death certainly did not figure in Hall’s original vision of the school, so he decided to establish the school cemetery at the southwestern corner of the school farm, approximately five miles west of the main campus on Indiana Avenue, as far away as one could go from it and still be on school property. There, on a one-acre plot of land, in the shadow of a small mountain and adjacent to Riverside Water Company’s Lower Canal, Hall created a space for the school cemetery. A grove of eucalyptus trees planted around the cemetery provided a peaceful setting, while at the same time shielding it from view, an important consideration from Hall’s perspective. By the end of 1904, ten more children had died at Sherman Institute; Hall buried eight of them in the school cemetery. Though often described as a compassionate man, Hall chose to downplay student deaths, and even the existence of a school cemetery. He believed that any attention...

Share