Category: 1880s

Categories
1880s Cats Dialogue Education Native American Poem

The Kittens’ Lessons

The Kittens’ Lessons

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Cat and Kittens, by Clementine Nielssen. Oil, late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Public domain. 
“Now children,” said puss as she shook her head,
	“It is time your morning lesson was said,”
So her kittens drew near with footsteps slow,
	And sat down before her, all in a row.

“Attention, class!” said the cat mamma,
	“And tell me quick where your noses are.”
At this all the kittens sniffed the air
	As though it were filled with a perfume rare.

“Now, what do you say when you want a drink?”
	The kittens waited a moment to think;
And then the answer came clear and loud—
	You ought to have heard how the kittens meow’d!

“Very well. ’Tis the same with a sharper tone,
	When you want a fish, or a bit of a bone.
“Now what do you say when the children are good?”
	And the kittens purred as soft as they could.

“And what do you do when the children are bad?
	When they tease and pull? Each kitten looked sad.
“Pooh! said the mother, “that isn’t enough;
	You must use your claws when the children are rough.”

“Now sptiss as hard as you can,” she said;
	But every kitten hung down its head.
“Sptiss! I say,” cried the mother cat;
	But they said: “O mammy! we can’t do that.”

“Then go and play,” said the fond mamma;
	“What sweet little idiots kittens are!
Ah, well! I was once the same I suppose,”
	And she looked very wise and rubbed her nose.
Anonymous. “The Kittens’ Lessons.” The Youth’s Companion 16, no. 2 (September 1882): 104.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this poem was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. The poem provides some basic natural history lessons about cats. It may also offer advice to students that as they get older, they should reject ill treatment by others.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Education Farm life Humor Native American Poem

Mary’s Goat

Mary’s Goat

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
The Goat. Colored engraving. Compte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, c. 1749.
Mary had a William goat,[1]
	And he was black as jet;
He followed Mary round all day,
	And liked her? you just bet!

He went with her to school one day;
	The teacher kicked him out;
It made the children grin, you know,
	To have that goat about.

But though old Whack’em kicked him out,
	Yet still he lingered near;
He waited just outside the door
	Till Whack’em did appear.

Then William ran to meet the man—
	He ran his level best;
He met him just behind, you know—
	Down just below the vest.

Old Whack’em turned a summersault;[2]
	The goat stood on his head,
And Mary laughed herself so sick
	She had to go to bed.
Anonymous. “Mary’s Goat.” The Youth’s Companion 19, no. 2 (December 1882): 196.

[1] A male goat. The author plays with the common term “billy goat.”

[2] A somersault.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this poem was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. Here the author eludes a moral by parodying “Mary’s Lamb,” which was a popular nineteenth-century endeavor. This form also enables the author to indirectly criticize—and imaginatively injure—someone who punished students regularly and without cause: “old Whack’em.”

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Birds Dialogue Native American Poem Seasons

The Seasons

The Seasons

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Indian Canoe Parade in Tulalip Bay, c.1912. Photo. Ferdinand Brady. Courtesy University of Washington Libraries.
	MARY.
How I love the blooming Spring,
When the birds so gayly sing!

	JOHN.
More the Summer me delights,
With its lovely days and nights.

	EMELY.
Autumn is the best of all,
With its fruits for great and small.

	RICHARD.
Nay! old Winter is the time!
Jolly then the sleigh-bells’ chime!

	GRANDMOTHER.
Every season will be bright,
Children, if you’ll live aright.
Anonymous. “The Seasons.” The Youth’s Companion 14, no. 2 (July 1882): n.p.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this poem was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. Student newspapers frequently published work by students, but it’s often difficult to identify authorship even if contributions included the author’s name. The moral that ends the sketch may be an addition by one of the school’s teachers.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Dogs Education Native American Short Story Sketch

The Dog and the Shadow

The Dog and the Shadow

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
The Old Dog Looks like a Picture. Engraving, 1853, by Thomas Landseer. Courtesy New York Public Library.

A dog, with a piece of meat in his mouth, was crossing a stream on a plank, and saw in the water what he took to be another dog, with a piece of meat twice as large as his own. Letting go what he had, he jumped at the other dog to get the larger piece from him. He thus lost both,–the one he grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and his own, because the swift current swept it away.

Moral. Greediness is a bad fault, especially in children. Always avoid it, dear little friends. Be satisfied with the little you have, and never envy or covet the greater possessions of others.

Anonymous. “The Dog and the Shadow.” In “Our Little ONes’ Corner.” The Youth’s Companion 12, no. 1 (May 1882): 304.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this sketch was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. Student newspapers frequently published work by students, but it’s often difficult to identify authorship even if contributions included the author’s name. The moral that ends the sketch may be an addition by one of the school’s teachers. If an older student wrote the sketch and added the moral, the advice to avoid coveting others’ possessions carries heavy irony, given that settlers appropriated Native lands and belongings from the beginning of the settlement era.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Birds Farm life Native American Poem Seasons

Spring’s Return

Spring’s Return

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Tulalip Indian School and Bandstand, 1910 photo.
Tulalip Indian School and Bandstand, 1910. Photograph. Ferdinand Brady. Courtesy UW Special Collections (NA1464).
Icy winter has departed,
	And the balmy spring has come,
The birds sing forth their melody,
	And the bees begin to hum.

The bobolink now sounds his note,[1]
	His song so clear and sweet,
He tells us of the balmy spring,
	We’ve longed so much to greet.

The fields have changed their dark gray robe
	For one of loveliest green, 
And on the hills and in the vales
	The flocks and herds are seen.

Out on the fresh green sward
	The hen now leads her tender brood, 
And seeks for them with anxious care
	The choicest bits of food.

The gentle river now is studded
	With many a white-sailed craft,
That swiftly o’er its bosom
	The genial breezes waft.

But summer soon will come,
	And to us she will bring
More blessings and more pleasures
	Than did the welcome spring.

Now let us well remember,
	That their beauty cannot last,
For when cometh bleak December,
	He’ll destroy it with his blast.
Anonymous. “Spring’s Return.” The Youth’s Companion 11, no. 1 (April 1882): 272.

[1] Notable for its song, the Bobolink is a black and white bird with a yellow “cap.” ItDuring migration it occupies much of the southeastern quarter of the United States, and it summers (and breeds) in the U.S. Northeast, upper Midwest, and much of southern Canada. It rarely appears in the Tulalip region. Mentioning the bird here suggests that a teacher who came from the eastern part of the country may have described it to the author, or that the author read about it.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this poem was published anonymously.Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. In describing the spring, this poem mirrors much of the nineteenth century’s natural history writing for children. Its emphasis on agriculture indirectly demonstrates the U.S. official policy of eliminating these tribes’ traditional lifeways of fishing, hunting, and gathering.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Essay Farm life Harvest Native American Seasons Sketch

The Four Seasons

The Four Seasons

By William Lear
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
The Four Seasons, by William Clarke Rice. Oil on fabric, 1923. Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Spring is a very lovely season. Everybody delights to be out doors, to enjoy the pure air. In the fields some of the farmers are plowing, others are sowing their crops or preparing the ground for their vegetables. We see the birds in the trees flying about. They seem very happy, and are singing their sweetest songs. In the woods spring up beautiful wild flowers which we pick, some for our church, and others for our little oratory of St. Aloysius in our schoolroom.[1]

Then summer comes; it is the hottest of all the seasons. The berries are ripe and people, old and young, are picking them for their use. When it is very hot, no one likes to work outside in the sun, but the hay and grain must be cut and stored away. This is a very busy season for farmers.

After this we have autumn. The heat of the summer is gone, and we must now provide wood and fill up our sheds as much as we can, to keep us warm in the cold winter days, for we already feel the cold a little in the morning. Besides this we gather our vegetables and fruits, and keep them in a safe place, but sometimes the rats and mice have a good time with them.

Now comes the terrible and dreaded winter. How we like to have warm clothes, and fire is a precious thing. But there are many poor people who have no homes, and no fire to keep them warm. On the western coast of North America the winters are milder than on the eastern coast. We have snow in December and January. It does not stay long, but people make good use of it while it lasts.

Lear, William. “The Four Seasons.” The Youth’s Companion 6, no. 1 (November 1881): 143.

[1] St. Aloysius (1568-1591) was an Italian-born nobleman who relinquished his wealth to become a Jesuit priest in the Roman Catholic church. White religious leaders considered him to be an important spiritual model for students in the Tulalip Indian School.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Unlike many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this conversation was published with an author’s name. William Lear (Lummi) appears in the 1885-1940 Native American Census Rolls in 1901, when he was thirty-six, so he would have been about fifteen when he composed “The Four Seasons.” He was the father of thirteen-year-old Clara and fifteen-year-old Florance, who are listed in 1910 school census. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. In describing the seasons, this story mirrors much of the nineteenth century’s natural history writing for children. The sketch of winter veers from convention, focusing on the region’s poverty and ending with a hint of pleasure.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

urrent significance.

Categories
1880s Birds Farm life Native American Short Story Sketch

The Farmer and the Parrot

The Farmer and the Parrot

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Carolina parrot. Late 18th-century colored engraving. Courtesy Getty Images.

There once lived, in a small village, a farmer who kept a parrot, which was in the habit of keeping bad company. One day, after the farmer had finished planting his corn, the crows, together with the parrot, soon occupied themselves with feasting upon it. The farmer, seeing this, resolved to punish the black robbers. Seizing his gun, he crept slyly along the fence until he came within a few yards of them, and then fired. Walking over to the corn to see what effect the shot produced, to his great surprise, he found that he had wounded his parrot. Poor Polly was taken home and kindly cared for. The children asked their father how the parrot came to be shot. “Bad company,” answered the father; “Bad company,” repeated Poll.

Afterwards, whenever the parrot would see the children quarreling and wrangling among themselves, Poll would cry out, “Bad company! Bad company!”

Thus, dear young readers, when you are tempted to associate with bad companions, remember the story of the parrot and its punishment.

American crow. Lithograph. Birds of Pennsylvania, 1897. Public domain.
Anonymous. “The Farmer and the Parrot.” The Youth’s Companion 5, no. 1 (October 1881): 112.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the tribe’s website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American newspapers, this sketch was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. This story typifies the didactic texts that students were expected to compose. Its humor, however, suggests the author may be resisting the “parroting” of conventional morality.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Fable Insects Native American Poem

The Conceited Grasshopper

The Conceited Grasshopper

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Detail of oil painting of insects. Jan van Kessel the elder, 17th century. Public domain.
There was a little grasshopper
	Forever on the jump;
And as he never looked ahead
	He often got a bump.

His mother said to him one day
	As they were in the stubble,
“If you don’t look before you leap,
	You’ll get yourself in trouble.”

The silly little grasshopper 
	Despised his wise old mother,
And said he knew what best to so,
	And told her not to bother.

He hurried off across the fields,
	An unknown path he took,
When oh! he gave a heedless jump,
	And landed in a brook.

He struggled hard to reach the bank,
	A floating straw he seizes,
When quickly a hungry trout drops out,
	And tears him all to pieces.

MORAL. Good little boys and girls, heed well
	Your mother’s wise advice;
Before you move, look carefully;
	Before you speak, think twice.
Tulalip Indian Boarding School, 1917. Courtesy Aurelia Celestine.
Anonymous. “The Conceited Grasshopper.” The Youth’s Companion 3, no. 1 (August 1881): 57.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the tribe’s website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American newspapers, this poem was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. This poem suggests the kind of didactic texts students were expected to compose.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Birds Dialogue Drama, dialogue Education Native American Sketch

[A Mathematical Conversation]

[A Mathematical Conversation]

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Tulalip Indian School Classroom, May 1914.
Courtesy J. A. Juleen / Everett Public Library’s Northwest History Room.

Teacher. “Now Mary, my dear, suppose I were to shoot at a tree with five birds on it, and kill three, how many would be left?”

Mary: “Three, ma’am.”

Teacher: “No, two would be left.”

Mary: “No there wouldn’t though. The three shot would be left and the other two would be flied away.” [1]

Anonymous. [A Mathematical conversation.] The Youth’s Companion: A Juvenile Monthly Magazine Published for the Benefit of the Puget Sound Indian Missions 2, no. 1 (July 1881): 39.

[1] Presumably the observer uses “flied” to indicate that Mary is very young. We should assume that the teacher is white and that Mary is a Tulalit student.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

Like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, this conversation was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. This story represents a significant change from the didactic texts that students were normally expected to compose. It showcases Native intelligence in a period when most white Americans regarded the nation’s Indigenous people as inferior or even subhuman. The conversation also emphasizes how the Tulalip child sees the world differently, and in some ways more clearly than her white teacher. Humorous sketches like these were common in Native American texts.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe.

“Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

Categories
1880s Cats Education Native American Sketch

A Knowing Cat

A Knowing Cat

By Anonymous
Annotations by Karen Kilcup
Detail, cat with game. Oil painting, Alexandre-François Desportes,
late 17th-early 18th century. Public Domain.

A blind girl in a hospital had learned to feed herself, and at meal times a tray containing her dinner was placed on her knees. One day while she was eating, the pet cat of the establishment placed herself before the girl and looked long and earnestly at her, so earnestly that the attendant, fearing the animal meditated some mischief, took her out of the room. Again, the next day, at the same hour, the cat entered the room, but this time walked quietly to the girl’s side, reared herself on her hind legs, and noiselessly reached out her paw to the plate, seized a morsel that pleased her, and, silently as she came, departed to enjoy her stolen meal. The girl never missed her loss, and when told of it by her companions laughed heartily. It is evident that the cat, from observation, had entirely satisfied herself that the girl could not see, and by a process of reasoning decided she could steal a good dinner by this practical use of knowledge.

Tulalip Indian School Classroom, May 1914.
Courtesy J. A. Juleen / Everett Public Library’s Northwest History Room.
Anonymous. “A Knowing Cat.” The Youth’s Companion: A Juvenile Monthly Magazine Published for the Benefit of the Puget Sound Indian Missions 2, no. 1 (July 1881): 39.

Contexts

Begun in 1881, The Youth’s Companion—a name that many nineteenth-century publications shared—was a monthly student magazine that published articles written by pupils of the Catholic-run boarding school located on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. A federally recognized tribe located in the mid-Puget Sound area, the Tulalip Tribes received reservation lands—22,000 acres—in 1855, with its legal boundaries established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. According to the Tulalip Tribes website, “it was created to provide a permanent home for the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, and Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands living in the region.”

Nineteenth-century Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. They separated children from their families, required students to dress like white Americans, and prohibited them from speaking their language. They also emphasized so-called “industrial” training: boys learned agricultural and industrial skills, while girls learned how to cook, sew, and clean a household. Students were often expected to become servants or to provide manual labor help for whites.

“A Knowing Cat,” like many contributions to Native American student periodicals, was published anonymously. Students living on reservations during this time often received educations governed by white religious authorities who emphasized moral training. This story represents a significant change from the didactic texts that students were normally expected to compose. It showcases feline intelligence, a common theme in nineteenth-century American children’s writing.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

“Tulalip History Minute 04—The Tulalip Indian School presented by Mary Jane Topash,” the Tulalip History Project. Provides Tulalip-sponsored background on the tribe. “Editorial: Getting to the truth of Tulalip boarding school,” September 26, 2021, HeraldNet (Everett, Washington). Caution: includes information about abuses at the school.

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