Editor’s Note: This is the last story in a three-part series that explores the history of the federal Indian school on the Western side of the Navajo Nation in Arizona -- and a man who taught there and in other Indian schools for more than two decades.
The 1901 Course of Study for the Indian Schools reflects the federal mission to turn Native Americans into farmers and housekeepers: Children were to spend half the day in classrooms, learning basic reading, writing and arithmetic, and spend the remainder of the day working in kitchens, fields, blacksmith shops or print shops.
There was little time for leisure: “One evening in the week should be a social hour, when the pupils may spend the evening in conversation, grand marches, etc., under the direction of the teachers,” the guide states.
On remaining evenings, teachers from various departments lectured students on farming, shoemaking and cooking so that “each child shall grasp a practical thought that may be applied in the work to be done.”
Detail from the Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1925.
In the summer, schools were encouraged to send children on “outings” in non-Native homes and farms in the summer, where they would gain “practical experience” for their future occupations.
Some Tuba City boys were sent to work as seasonal labor in Colorado beet fields. Others remained behind to tend to the school farm.
Overworked and overtired, it is little wonder they were vulnerable to infection and disease.
Notice in the Illustrated Current News, October 18, 1918, shows Red Cross nurse wearing mask and advice on protections against the Spanish flu.
‘Frothing at the mouth’
Students and staff were hit hard during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Brigham Young University anthropologist Albert B. Reagan visited Tuba City and pitched in to care for stricken students. The Kansas Academy of Science later published his harrowing account:
“Twenty-three of my boys were frothing at the mouth, and some were delirious … sanitary conditions had gotten very bad, as many of the children were wholly helpless…” he wrote. “Two of the girls died, both at night, and on account of the Navajos’ fear of death and the dead, we had to carry them out of the dormitory … with lights darkened so the other pupils would not see what we were doing.”
My great-grandfather was detailed to the Hopi day school at Moenkopi and was “overwhelmed” with caring for sick students and their families. Reagan noted that he was “heroically aided by Mr. Curn [sic] in every way possible.” They purchased sheep from a local herder and made a 75-liter (20-gallon) pot of soup which they distributed by car to the families.
“Of the 300 who were sick, only 16 died,” Reagan wrote.
1917 advertisement for Karo brand syrup encouraging corn syrup as a wartime sugar.
In 1922, the American Red Cross (ARC) sent nurse Florence Patterson to visit several Southwestern reservations to determine whether there was a need for public health nurses.
In November 1928, Patterson told a Senate subcommittee on Indian Affairs that children at the Tuba City school were served bread, coffee and syrup for breakfast and bread and boiled potatoes at midday dinner and supper. Though the school had a dairy, only a small amount of milk was made available and was given only to “the big boys.” Children as young as 5 were given only coffee or tea.
The children were not given any of the fruit or vegetables they grew, Patterson said. These were sold to help keep the school funded.
During the same hearings, Stella Atwood, a California advocate for Native rights, testified that 11 out of 44 little boys sent to work in Colorado’s beet fields came back with typhoid; two died on the road back to school; the fate of the others isn’t known.
Farm Training or Forced Labor?
Over the next 20 years, Keirn bounced from the Tuba City boarding school, teaching Navajo, Hopi and Paiute children, to the nearby Hopi day school at Moenkopi. Records alternately describe him as teacher, principal or “headman.”
A family photo dated July 20, 1915, shows my great-grandfather, his wife and two older children descending the Grand Canyon by mule.
John A. Keirn (lower left wearing hat), wife Clara and family members descend the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Trail by mule.
John divorced Clara in 1918, but they would be together at the newly established Theodore Roosevelt Indian School on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, where Clara contracted and died of diphtheria.
John left the Indian service in the mid-1930s and moved to California, hoping to stay with his son and daughter-in-law, who was my grandmother. Years later, she told me that the aging Keirn was demanding and ill-tempered, and they asked him to leave.
In 1941, at the age of 81, he died from complications of surgery.
An aging John A. Keirn poses with son Donald John, Hamilton Army Airfield, Novato, California, ca. 1935-36.
Reconciling the past
I am still processing everything I have learned and hope that the ongoing Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, which launched in June 2021, will tell me more.
It is stunning to me that newspapers and genealogical and government archives were able to tell me the life story of my ancestor — a white man — but nothing about the hundreds of children he taught or the emotional, physical and spiritual hardships they may have endured.
Photograph of John A. Keirn and two unidentified Hopi children which appeared in the Good Roads Automobilist magazine, January, 1918. Clipping and original courtesy of USU Special Collections, Merrill-Cazier Library.
I scan his face in the photograph above but I can’t find any clues to his personality and cannot trust the glowing description of him in the clipping above as "loved by Indians and whites alike."
The little girls' expressions speak for themselves.
Most teachers didn’t last long in service, but John Keirn stayed in Arizona for more than two decades. I would like to believe that he was one of those idealistic reformers that historian Williams writes about, but instinct tells me otherwise.
Today, Americans are locked in debate over what — if any — responsibility they hold for the racist policies of the past and whether that history should be taught to future generations.
As a reporter covering Native American issues, I have had several conversations with boarding school survivors and heard heartbreaking stories about the physical, sexual and psychological abuses they endured. Discovering that a family member was complicit in a scheme to undermine Native cultures has further strengthened my resolve to learn more about how historic policies impact tribe members and their communities today.
Today, the Tuba City Boarding School is a modern facility operating under the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education. Its stated mission is to educate Navajo and Hopi children from kindergarten through eighth grade “in a safe and culturally competent environment.”
“We are running a lot of good programs here, and parents are excited about what's going on,” principal Don Coffland told me by phone. “So, we're really proud of what we do here.”
To learn more about the school, watch this student-produced video.