Indian Play: Indigenous Identities at Bacone College

7. Being Indian at School

217 CHAPTER SEVEN Being Indian at School STUDENTS AT BACONE COLLEGE, 1927–1957 Missionaries come to Oklahoma, Find Indians need much knowledge, Build big school on hill-top, Call ’em Bacone College. — RUTH HOPKINS, Choctaw (1928) In the spring of 1928, Baconian Ruth Hopkins—the niece of the founder of Johns Hopkins University1—wrote a poem that cleverly revealed the complex feelings that many Indian students had about their experiences at Bacone. Hopkins’s poem is one of many examples of student writings, theatrical and musical performances , and artistic creations produced by Baconians from the 1920s through the 1950s that directly commented on the meanings of being Indian and being educated. Through their frequent use of Indian play—humor and inventive wordplay—students articulated the often contradictory meanings of being educated Indians in mid-twentieth-century America. In the pages that follow I give an overview of peer relationships and student life on campus and examine what being educated meant to Bacone’s Indian students, paying particular attention to how peer relationships shaped students’ views of the relationship between attending Bacone and their Indian identities. I focus on Being Indian at School 218 the creativity and inventiveness of students, who often used Indian play to articulate and negotiate the complex meanings of being educated and being Indian in mid-twentieth-century America. PEER RELATIONSHIPS AND STUDENT LIFE AT BACONE During the years from 1927 to 1957, students came to Bacone for many different reasons. Some were orphans, and others were the children of single parents who could no longer care for them. Some came to Bacone from other Indian schools, after being directed to Bacone by school administrators or hearing about Bacone from other Indian students. Others were recruited from their hometowns or reservations by one of Bacone’s presidents, by Bacone alumni, or by missionaries and pastors. Some had been drawn to Bacone after hearing the performances of the Singing Redmen on tour; others were drawn to the Christian atmosphere of the school. Many had parents who wanted them to go to Bacone; as one former student put it, “Our father wanted us to attend an Indian school.”2 Some had relatives or friends who attended Bacone. For some, attending Bacone provided an opportunity to earn an athletic scholarship or a chance to go to school at a time when finding employment was difficult. For others, Bacone was a gateway to further college studies and economic opportunities; according to one alumnus, “I wanted to go to college and this was the first opportunity I had.”3 Alumni vividly remember the details of their arrivals at Bacone and their first encounters with administrators and fellow students. Some students were dropped off on campus by a guardian or parent. Other students took the train or bus to Muskogee—then a couple of miles from campus—and were met at the station by a staff member from Bacone. In some cases, students hitched a ride or walked to campus. In the early days, a trolley line ran from campus to Muskogee; the Being Indian at School 219 car—affectionately dubbed “Leapin’ Lena” by students—delivered many new students to campus. When students first arrived on campus, they met immediately with the president. One Choctaw alumnus recalled his meeting with President Weeks: “You’d go to his office and talk. You went there when they’d accept you. The old cotton picker’d meet you on the campus three months later and call you by your first name. I don’t know how he did that!”4 Students often experienced homesickness during their first weeks at school. One Cherokee alumna, who grew to love Bacone, recalled: “I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t unpack my suitcase until November.”5 In many respects, students at Bacone modeled their peer relationships after those of white students at elite preparatory schools and coeducational colleges in the eastern United States. High school and junior college students often divided themselves according to gender and year in school. In 1928, Harry Frost, a college sophomore and editor of the Bacone Indian, wrote a poem about the young men in the incoming college class: They strive in vain, They’re dumb, they’re lame, In that portion above the neck. They’re green, they’re fresh, Their gears don’t mesh, They’re truly an awful wreck6 In turn, the women of the college sophomore...