Escape is Resistance

In or around the 1st of November 1898, two Papago boys escaped from the Teller Institute (Indian Boarding School) here in Grand Junction. Claude Weyfestermal and Samuel Scabola headed south following the railroads. For more than a month they “walked and begged” trying to make their way back to their tribe. When they were picked up by law enforcement in Santa Fe, New Mexico a month later the pair were “very hungry.” They had covered something like 350 miles in a month and crossed the San Juan mountains in the cold of mid to late November. Claude and Samuel were not the first students to escapee the Teller Institute, nor would they be the last, but their journey illustrates the lengths Native American children would go to escape the boarding school system. (Dec. 5, 1898 Daily Sentinel.)

In November 1902, seven Native American boys escaped, and made it to Olathe on foot before being caught by law enforcement, and returned to the ‘school.’ (Nov. 29, 1902 Daily Sentinel)

“They will return to the school and ……try to be good Indians.”

Daily Sentinel, Dec. 14, 1905

In Fall of 1905, Albert Scobey, Shoshone, and Joe Lamare, Chippewa, escaped. According to a December 14, 1905 Daily Sentinel article, the duo had made numerous escapee attempts previously but had been thwarted. After over four months on-the-run, the pair turned themselves into the police in Denver. “Penniless and tired of waging war against civilization” they ask to be sent back to the Teller Institute. “They will return to the school and take up their studies again and try to be good Indians.”

At least two Ute students made good their escapes in the earliest years of the Teller Institute. In 1887, the Superintendent Thomas H. Breen made an ill-advised and ill-fated recruitment trip to the Uncompahgre and Uintah Ute Reservations in eastern Utah. Breen brought with him two ‘star pupils’ to help in his efforts to recruit new students to the Institute. Breen left Jose Maria, a ‘Southern Ute’ at the Uncompahgre reservation to “soften the feeling of the Indians.”

Breen proceeded on to the Uintah Reservation and there at the “second formal council,” a former student and successful escapee, Turoose, spoke to: “the litany of his wrongs; how, while a pupil here, he was starved and scolded, and how the industrial teacher while superintending the boys at labor, wore a loaded revolver strapped to his waist, how his sufferings became intolerable, and he with others (one of whom was a woman) escaping in the darkness of night had reached the foot-hills north of this school, when they were overtaken by a mounted party, headed by Mr. Griffiths, the former principal, and at the mouth of pistols ‘driven like wolves’ back to the school, and how they were afterwards threatened with imprisonment and even hanging.”

“At the mouth of pistols ‘driven like wolves’ back to the school.”

Superintendent Thomas Breen paraphrasing former student Turoose

Breen concluded, “I am convinced that pupil hunting amongst the Utes….will be vain and fruitless.” On his return trip Breen found “the savage influences that surrounded him there were too powerful,” and he returned without Jose Maria, his ‘star pupil.’ (57th Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1888)

Clearly these are just the escapes that made it into the public record. Many more attempts and successful escapes likely occurred. Escape is one of the most basic forms of resistance. These serve as a counterpoint to all the attention given to the Teller School’s baseball teams, and girls mandolin group.

An incident occurred March 7th 1909, that lays bare the true nature of the institute. On that night three boys form the ‘Indian school’ went into town and procured some whiskey, (this took place just months before Mesa County and later Grand Junction voted in alcohol prohibition), the three boys came back to the school, where a social function was being held. Students and staff quickly realized that the boys were drunk. “The disciplinarian was notified. He ordered the boys to leave the room, they refused in a very ugly manner and force was made necessary in order to carry out the order. It was determined to take the three boys to the school jail. One of the drunken youths was taken to the jail without much trouble. The second put up a fierce fight, attacking the disciplinarian in a tiger-like manner.” It took “several men” to overpower the second youth. The third youth quietly disappeared. The two jailed youths were not done yet, as they proceeded to set the jail on fire.

The Teller Indian School, was a prison and a tool in the genocidal efforts to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

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