Autobiography of ah-nen-la-de-ni

(Daniel La France)

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When I was thirteen a great change occured, for the honey-tongued agent of a new Government contract Indian school appeared on the reservation, drumming up boys and girls for his institution. He made a great impression by going from house to house and describing, through an interpreter, all the glories and luxuries of the new place, the good food and teaching, the fine uniforms, the playground and its sports and toys.

All that a wild Indian boy had to do, according to the agent, was to attend this school for a year or two, and he was sure to emerge therefrom with all the knowledge and skill of the white man.

My father was away from the reservation at the time of the agent's arrival, but mother and grandmother heard him with growing wonder and interest, as I did myself, and we all finally decided that I ought go to this wonderful school and become a great man - perhaps at last a chief of our tribe. Mother said that it was good for Indians to be educated, as white men were "so tricky with papers."

I had, up to this time, been leading a happy life, helping with the planting, trapping, fishing, and basket making, and playing all the games of my tribe - which is famous for lacrosse - but the desire to travel and see new things and the hope of finding easy ways to new knowledge in the wonderful school outweighed my regard for my home and its joys, and so I was one of the twelve boys who in 1892 left our reservation to go to the Government contract school for Indians, situated in a large Pennsylvania city and known as the ---- Institute.

Till I arrived at the school I had never heard that there were any other Indians in the country other than those of our reservation, and I did not know that our tribe was called Mohawk. My people called themselves "Ga-nien-ge-ha-ga," meaning "People of the Beacon Stone," and Indians generally they called "On-give-hon-we," meaning "Real-men" or "Primitive People."

My surprise, therefore, was great when I found myself surrounded in the school yard by strange Indian boys belonging to tribes of which I had never head [heard], and when it was said that my people were only the "civilized Mohawks," I first thought that "Mohawk" was a nickname and fought any boy who called me by it.

I left home for the school with a great deal of hope, having said to my mother "Do not worry. I shall soon return to you a better boy and with a good education!" Little did I dream that that would be the last time I ever saw her kind face. She died two years later and I was not allowed to go to her funeral.

The journey to Philadelphia had been very enjoyable and interesting. It was my first ride on "the great steel horse" as the Indians called the railway train, but my frame of mind changed as soon as my new home was reached.

The first thing that happened to me, and all other freshly caught young redskins when we arrived at the institution was a bath of particular disconcerting sort. We were used to baths of the swimming variety, for on the reservation we boys spent a good deal of our time in the water but this first bath at the institution was different. For one thing, it was accompanied by plenty of soap, and for another thing, it was preceded by a haircut that is best described as a crop.

This little newcomer, thus cropped and delivered over to the untender mercies of the larger Indian boys of tribes different from his own, who laughily attacked his bare skin with very hot water and very hard scrubbing brushes, was likely to emerge from the encounter with clean skin but a perturbed mind. When, in addition, he was prevented from expressing his feelings in the only language he knew, what wonder if some rules of the school were broken.

After the astonishing bath the newcomer was freshly clothed from head to foot, while the rainment in which he came from the reservation was burnt or buried. Thereafter he was released from his torturers, and could be seen sidling about the corridors like a lonely crab, silent, sulky, immaculatly clean and most disconsolate.

After my bath and reclothing, and having had my name was taken down in the records, I was assigned to a dormitory, and began my regular school life, much to my dissatisfaction. The recording of my name was accompanied by a change which, might seem triffling to my teachers, was very important to me. My name among my own people was "Ah-nen-la-de-ni" which means in English, "Turning crowd", or "Turns the crowd," but my family had had the name "La France" bestowed on them by the French some generations before my birth, and at the institution my Indian name was discarded, I was informed that I was henceforth to be known as Daniel La France.

It made me feel as if I had lost myself. I had been proud of myself and the possibilities of "Turns the crowd," for in spite of their civilized surroundings the Indians of my reservation in my time still looked back on the old warlike days when the Mohawk were great people, but Daniel La France was to me a stranger and a nobody with no possibilities. It seemed as if my possibility of a chiefship had vanished. I was very homesick for a long time.

The dormitory to which I was assigned had twenty beds in it, and was under a captain, who was one of the advance scholars. It was his duty to teach and enforce the rules of the place in this room and to report to the White authorities all breaches of discipline.

Out in the school yard there was the same sort of supervision. Whether we were at work or at play, we were constantly watched, and there were those in authority over us. This displeased us Mohawks, who were warriors at fourteen years of age.

After the almost complete freedom of reservation life the cramped quarters and dull routine of the school were maddening to all us strangers. There were endless rules for us to study and abide by, and the hardest of all was the rule against speaking to each other in our own language. We must speak English or remain silent, and those who knew no English were forced to be dumb or else break the rules in secret. This last we did quite frequently, and were punished if detected, by being made to stand in the "Public Hall" for a long time or to march around the yard while the other boys were at play.

There were about 115 boys at this school and three miles from us was a similar Government school for girls, which had nearly as many inmates.

The system when I first went to this school contemplated every Indian boy learning a trade as well as getting a grammar school education. Accordingly we went to school in the morning and to work in the afternoon, or the other way about.

There were shoemakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, farmers, printers and all sorts of mechanics among us. I was set to learn the tailoring trade, and stuck at it for two and a half years, making such progress that I was about to be taught cutting when I began to cough, and it was said that outdoor work would be better for me. Accordingly I went, during the vacation of 1895 up into Bucks County, Pa, and worked on a farm with benefit to my health, tho I was not a very successful farmer - the methods of the people who employed me were quite different from those of our reservation.

Tho I was homesick soon after coming to the Institute I afterward recovered so competely that I did not care to go back to the reservation at vacation time, tho at first I was offered the opportunity. I spent my vacations working for Quaker farmers. All the money I earned at this and other occupations was turned in to the Institute bank credited to my account, and I drew from thence money for my expenses and special occasions, like Christmas and the Fourth of July.

When I returned from Bucks County in 1895 I found that some of the boys of my class were attending the public school outside the Institution, and on application I was allowed to join them, and finally graduated there from the grammar department, tho held back by the fact I was spending half my time in some workshop. I never went back to tailoring, except to finish a few suits that were left when the Institute shop closed, but I worked for a time printing and afterward making cooking apparatuses.

After I had finished with the grammar school I got a situation in the office of a lawyer while still residing in the institution. I also took a course of stenography and typewriting at the Philadelphia Young Men's Christian Association. So practically I was only a boarder at the Institute during the later part of my eight years' stay there.

Nevertheless, I was valuable to the authorities there for certain purposes, and when I wanted to leave and go to Carlisle school, which I had heard was very good, I could not obtain permission.

This Institute, as I have said, was a contract Government school for teaching Indians. The great exertions made by the agent, who visited our reservation in the first place, were caused by the fact that a certain number of Indian children had to be obtained before the school could be opened. I do not think that the Indian parents signed any papers, but we boys and girls were supposed to remain at the school for five years. After that, as I understand it, we were free from any obligation.

The reason that I and others like me were kept at the school was that we served as show scholars - as results from the system and evidences of the good work the Institute was doing.

When I first went to the school the superintendent was a clergyman, honest and well meaning, and during the first five years thereafter while he remained in charge the general administration was honest, but when he went away the school entered upon a period of changing administrations and general demoralization. New superintendents suceeded each other at short intervals, and some of them were violent and cruel, while all seemed to us boys more or less dishonest. Boys who had been inmates of the school for eight years were shown to visitors as the results of two year's tuition, and shoes and other articles bought at Philadelphia stores were hung up on the walls at public exhibition or concert and exhibited as the work of us boys. I was good for various show purposes. I could sing and play a musical instrument, and I wrote essays which were thought to be very good. The authorities were also fond of displaying me as one who had come to the school a few years before unable to speak a word of English.

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Over the superintendent of the Institute there was a Board of Lady Managers and a Lady Directress, and these visited us occasionally, but there was no use laying any complaint before them. They were arbitary and almost unapproachable. Matters went from bad to worse, and when the Spanish-American war broke out, and my employer, the lawyer, resolved to go to it in the Red Cross service, and offered to take me with him I greatly desired to go, but was not allowed. I suppose that the lawyer could have easily obtained my liberty, but did not wish to antagonize the Lady Managers, who considered any criticism as an attack on their own infallibility.

While waiting for a new position after the young lawyer had gone away, I heard of the opportunities there were for young men who could become good nurses, and of the place where such training could be secured. I desired to go there, and presented this ambition to the superintendent, who at first encouraged me to the extent of giving me a fair recommendation. But when the matter was laid before the Head Directress in the shape of an application for admission ready to be sent by me to the authorities of the Nurses' Training School she flatly refused it consideration without giving any good reason for doing so.

She, however, made the mistake of returning the application to me, and it was amended later and sent to the Training School in Manhattan. It went out through a secret channel, as all the regular mail of the institution's inmates, whether outgoing or incoming, was opened and examined in the office of the superintendent.

A few days before the 4th July 1899, the answer to my application arrived in the form of a notice to report at the school for the entrance examination. The communication found me in the school jail, where I had been placed for the first time in all my life in the institution.

I had been charged with throwing a nightgown out of the dormitory window, and truly it was my nightgown that was found in the school yard, for it had my number on it. But I never threw it out of the window. I believe that one of the official underlings did that in order to found upon it a charge against me, for the school authorities had discovered that I and other boys of the institution had gone to members of the Indian Rights Association and had made complaint of conditions in the school, and that an investigation was coming. They, therefore, desired to disgrace and punish me as one of the leaders of those who were exposing them.

I heard about the letter from the Training School, and was very anxious to get away, but my liberation in time to attend that entrace examination seemed impossible. The days passed, and when the 4th July arrived I was still in the school jail, which was the rear part of a stable.

At one o'clock my meal of bread and water was brought to me by the guard detailed to look after my safe keeping. After he had delivered this to me he went outside, leaving the door open, but standing there. The only window of that stable was very small, very high on the wall and was protected by iron bars - but here was the door left open.

I fled, and singularly enough the guard had his back turned and was contemplating nature with great assiduity. As soon as I got out of the inclosure [sic] I dashed after and caught a trolley car, and a few hours later I was in New York.

That was the last I saw of the Institute and soon afterward it went out of existence, but I heard as a result of the demand for an investigation the Superintendent of Indian Schools had descended on it upon a given day and had found everything beautiful - for her visit had been announced. But she returned the next day, when it was supposed that she had left the city, and then things were not beautiful at all, and much that we had told about was proven.

I had $15 in the Lincoln Institute bank when I ran away, but I knew that was past crying for and I depended on $3 that I had in my pocket and with which I got a railroad ticket to New York.

I was assisted in my escape by a stedfast [sic] [steadfast] friend and had comparatively plain sailing as I passed the entrance examination easily and was admitted to the Training School on probation.

The Institute people wrote and wrote after me, but could not get me back or cause the Training School to turn me out, and they soon had their own troubles to tend to. The school was closed in 1900 as the Government cut off all appropriations.

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