13 Life at the Mohawk Institute During the 1860s

Thomas Peace and the 2018 Huron University College Students in HIS 3201E

In 1859, the Mohawk Institute reopened with a newly constructed building, and the decade to come offered much promise for the school’s principal. Anglican missionary Abraham Nelles, who had overseen the school for nearly two decades, saw in these years a moment for institutional expansion. Though the number of teachers remained just a few, the 1860s saw the school’s population more than double from between forty and fifty students to near one hundred by the early 1870s. Reflecting on the work of the New England Company (NEC) at Six Nations, the school principal was convinced “that the most, if not only effectual way of imparting a useful education is by taking the children entirely under our own control, as is done at the Mohawk Institution; and therefore I hope the Company will not think me unreasonable in indulging the hope that I may see the Institution enlarged so as to accommodate a much larger number of children.”¹ For Nelles, success in this work was marked not only by increasing student numbers, but also the achievements of his students, who trained to replicate the mission’s work. Throughout the decade he pointed to the handful of children, such as Isaac Powless and Isaac Bearfoot, who left the school to become teachers, clergy, or prosperous farmers. By the time of his retirement in 1872, Nelles had overseen one of the school’s most significant periods of expansion and growth.

Much of what we know about this period in the school’s history comes from the reports Nelles filed with the NEC. We therefore know much about the school’s general operation, administrative structures, and students who Nelles or the Company considered successful, or sometimes, troublesome. The experiences of most students at the school remain difficult to recover, however. Few students recorded their memories about the school during these years and the institutional records that have stood the test of time focus more on the operational nature of the school than the day-to-day lives of the students and staff.

In 2018 and 2019, my students and I were involved in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council–funded Documenting Early Residential Schools project. In partnership with the Woodland Cultural Centre, the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, and the Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives at Huron University College, we studied and transcribed the Mohawk Institute’s only surviving nineteenth-century attendance register. The document spans the years 1860–73, which corresponds with the opening of the school’s second building and the end of Abraham Nelles’s superintendence. The book provides us with periodic glimpses into everyday life at the school during this decade. What follows is a summary of the findings in the register, combined with information filed in the NEC annual reports. Taken together, these documents paint a more specific picture about what life was like for children at the school during this transformational decade in the Institute’s history.²

Though imperfect, both in its recording and its authorship (likely by Nelles or teacher Thomas Griffith), the register provides unique insight into daily life at the school just after its second building opened in 1859. Within the register’s pages we find recorded the days that students were absent from their classes, when they got sick or died, some of the activities in which they participated, how they performed academically, and when they ran away from the school. In addition to the day-to-day log, the book also contains records related to boys’ examinations, as well as observations made by visitors to the school. Taken together, the information transcribed and studied by the students in this class provides a window into what life was like for the over four hundred boys and girls who attended the school during the 1860s. Though upon his retirement Nelles might have celebrated the successes of his expanding school, the pages of the register reveal a much more complicated picture of everyday life at the Mohawk Institute during the mid-nineteenth century.

The Register

The register has four distinct parts. The core of the document is the daily attendance register, listing students by name and annotating each date when something unusual happened to them. Annotations include basic school-related activities, such as when a student missed their classes, received new equipment, or were sick, as well as more exceptional circumstances such as when a student ran away or was vaccinated. In addition to this daily log, the book also records students’ entry into the school, their departure, and their age. In most years, the register also takes account of student examinations and their level of achievement. Each of these three sections are periodically annotated with tidbits of additional information about life at the school. The register’s final section is a record of remarks left by visitors, revealing several of the broader networks in which the school was situated during this decade. Though more detailed than any other source from the period, the information in the register was not kept in a systematic way, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions.

Though carefully laid out, the differences between these attributes of the register demonstrates well its own weaknesses. The log of students’ arrival and departure at the school records fewer students, for example, than the daily attendance records. In the daily records, 415 students are noted as having been present in classes at the school, while the enrolment information in the register records only 323 students. Part of this can be explained because the first page of the enrolment list is missing, suggesting that there were as many as 47 more students enrolled at the school than we have enumerated using this part of the register. Even so, without any explanation, there remain 45 students in the day-to-day records who do not appear in the other records. More research needs to be done to explain this discrepancy, but it seems likely that this was the result of inconsistent record keeping.

There is another major discrepancy between the enrolment log and the day-to-day attendance register. According to enrolments, only thirty-one students ran away from the school. In our analysis of the day-to-day register, nearly four times as many students (n = 104) are listed as having run away at some point during their time at the school. We must therefore assume that the information in the register provides us with a window into life at the school but not one that is complete or transparent. However, though an imperfect source, given the absence of other documents from this period in the school’s history, the register is an important one with which to engage and understand.

Attendance

Perhaps the most important window this document can provide onto the school’s operation is its recording of student enrolment and attendance. Over its entire span, from late 1859 to early 1873, 415 children attended the school. For the most part, children were selected from day schools at Six Nations, but some children also came from much farther away. In the register, there are children from Munsee-Delaware Nation, just west of London, Ontario, and Bkejwanong Unceded Territory (Walpole Island) on the St. Clair River.³

Students stayed at the school for varying lengths of time. In the mid-1860s, Florence Nightingale surveyed schools for Indigenous children across the British Empire. The information provided to her about the Mohawk Institute suggested students stayed between five and six years.⁴ The information seems to be misleading, though. Of the 235 students for whom the register provides arrival and departure dates, the average length of stay was just over two and a half years. Even this statistic masks significant differences between students. Only 100 students (one-quarter) stayed longer than this, with 69 students staying less than one year. Most children during this period stayed only for a few years, choosing to leave themselves or departing after being called home by their parents. A handful of students (2 in 1868) were sent home for disobedience. The successes Nelles pointed to in his reports, whereby students completed the school’s curriculum and then moved on to further study, were not typical of the average student who attended the school.

Nonetheless, as Nelles hoped, the overall school population increased significantly over this decade. In fact, while his reports to the NEC indicated rising student numbers, often there were more students listed in the register than were filed in Nelles’s reports. Between January and March 1860, someone has noted in the register that 40 boys and 19 girls were at the school. The year before, Nelles applied to the NEC to increase the school’s enrolment from between 40 or 50 to 60 students.⁵ Even after this approved expansion, he continued to lobby for further growth. By September 1867 there were about 80 students, according to the report filed with the NEC, but there are 104 names listed in the daily log of the register. Indeed, generally, there seem to have been about 100 or more children recorded annually at the school during the late 1860s and early 1870s, despite the NEC capping enrolment at 90.⁶ In any given year, enrolment could be variable. On average, the school enrolled about 20 new students per year, with outlying years, such as 1867, seeing the enrolment of as few as 12, and the year following 44.

Students came to the school at all ages. The enrolment log notes the ages for 294 students. If we assume that this entry marks a student’s age on entry, the average age that students arrived at the school was about 11.6 years. The youngest students, though, were 8 years old (n = 23) and the oldest were 19 years old (n = 3); only 18 students began their studies when they were 15 years or older. Even if they met the age threshold, the school’s physical requirements could send them home, as it did for a student who, in 1866, was sent home for “being thought too small.”⁷ The student returned to the school in 1868 and remained until at least 1871.

Like the duration students spent at the school, absences are similarly variable. If we look at the aggregate data there were 12,965 full-day absences noted in the register, or about 1,000 per year; broken down over the eleven-month school year, this amounted to about 91 absences per month. Though it is hard to determine the exact number of students at the school in any given year, this works out to be about one or two days absent per student per month.

It was not unusual for students to run away. The school’s administration considered these students as “fugitives” and noted an “f” on the days when they had run away. Generally, running away was more common in the first three months of the school year than during other times of the year, though May was the second most common month for students to leave the school. It is important that these cases be treated carefully. What caused students to run away is never clearly stated. Some students likely missed their families, while other students likely sought relief from the school’s relatively harsh living conditions. Testimony from later survivors of the school also testify to cultures of abuse at the school, which may have also caused students to run away.

Not all “fugitive” students resented the school, though. One boy, who attended the school for eight years between 1859 and 1867, for example, ran away on three occasions, once in 1860 and twice in 1863, but he also went on to study at the Brantford Grammar School and returned to Six Nations to teach “school in the woods during vacation.”⁸ Though it is clear that the student was motivated to leave the school without permission—especially in 1863, when he ran away twice within two weeks—his continued attendance at the school and later teaching work suggests some degree of nuance is needed when thinking about these “fugitives.”

This nuance noted, it seems most likely that students who ran away were missing their families and/or using their bodies to express displeasure with how the school was being run. It is hard not to think that there was some sort of crisis at the school in the fall of 1860, when, between late September and early October, sixteen students ran away, some of them more than once, and eight of them ran away on 6 October. In addition to these “fugitives,” six students were also sent home, or kept home by their parents, during these weeks; one student is noted on October 1 as having died. All of this suggests there were visceral problems at the school during these months.

The incidents in 1860 point to an additional consideration about students who ran away. Though sometimes students would be listed as running away alone, it was not uncommon that groups of students would leave together, as did two separate groups of three students in mid-October 1863 and in 1867. Though it is impossible to know for sure, it seems reasonable to conclude that such collective action was a symbol of friendship or kinship between specific students.

Routine at the School

The schedule of classes was not recorded in the register and is somewhat difficult to piece together. The information provided to Nightingale claimed that students attended classes five and a half days per week. Their days were roughly broken into six hours of instruction, two hours of play, and four hours of outdoor work; a noted contrast with the well-known “half-day system” that came to define the Indian Residential School system.⁹ Reports to the NEC set out the following daily schedule a little more specifically: School began at 9:00 a.m. with prayer; it adjourned at 12:15 p.m. for a forty-five minute lunch period; at 4:00 p.m. school closed with the reading of Christian scripture, catechism, and prayer.¹⁰ On Sundays this routine was broken up by church. Usually, the students attended at the Mohawk Chapel, which was only a short distance away; in the early 1870s, however, the church was closed for repair and Christian services were likely held at the school and led by the teacher Thomas Griffith.¹¹ All of this, of course, must be read with the recognition that survivor testimony often points to ways in which the official schedule—drawn on here—was not actually followed in practice.

The language of instruction at the school was English. A December 1859 report, however, indicates that it was difficult for the children to practise the language. It seems likely that, among the students, their first languages were more commonly used.¹² By 1868, however, the NEC reported that “Both boys and girls talk more English among themselves than they ever did before.”¹³ Contrary to this assessment, in 1872, one former student was praised for their fluency in “five Indian dialects”;¹⁴ another report that year emphasized that students’ first languages were used outside of class time and that English was encouraged but “without compulsion.”¹⁵ When Upper Canada College master John Martland visited the Institute in 1872, he reported that the boys “did not wish to speak English.”¹⁶ It is important to note—as Alison Norman has—that for much of the nineteenth century, teachers’ use of Haudenosaunee languages in the classroom was encouraged in order to support student learning.¹⁷

The curriculum was varied. Examinations, however, were regularly held every June or July. For the most part, the students were examined by Nelles, under the supervision of clergy members or the Indian agent. More work needs to be done to understand the curriculum. Based on the students’ examination records, the school was divided by sex and into five different classes. In the second class, students studied reading and spelling as well as multiplication. In the third class, students would focus on similar tasks, though geography was added. In some years, at this level, familiarity with the Anglican catechism and Lord’s Prayer was also noted. The fourth class seems to have been similar. One student, though, was noted as having satisfactory “ciphering and book keeping,” suggesting that some degree of accounting knowledge was being taught at the school. The fifth class is harder to determine. When examined, the girls in that class in 1868 could “read & spell very well and answer question in Roman history” as well as ciphering in fractions. In 1872 the girls were noted as “writing & ciphering satisfactory answers in grammar & geography . . . this class also study Ancient and Modern History & human physiology.”

This trajectory is a little different from what was described to the NEC in June 1869 by teacher Thomas Griffith. By that time Griffith had taught at the school for eighteen years.¹⁸ In this report he breaks down the boys into six classes and the girls into five. Table 13.1 lays out his description of their studies.¹⁹ One of the subjects missing in this description is physical education, which, according to Nightingale, was part of the school’s curriculum; it and the Jesuit school at Wikwemikong were the only schools in Canada mentioned in her report to provide physical education curriculum for Indigenous students. Contrary to Nightingale’s report, in 1872, the school claimed to the NEC that “no special gymnastics are provided,” suggesting that perhaps physical education was more aspirational than a curricular reality.²⁰

Source: Compiled from Nelles, NEC Report, 18 May 1872, in Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools (Heffle Publishing, 1997), 67.

The information in this table is a bit misleading because just a few years later the school reported five classes of boys and seven classes of girls.²¹ There seems to have been considerable variation in the school’s structure from year to year. Progress was not necessarily by year. As you can see by the range of ages in table 13.1, there was quite a spread between the students’ ages in each class. Some students remained in the same class for several years. One, for example, was enrolled in the second class in 1864 but was only in the fourth class by 1868.²²

There does not seem to be a significant difference between what the boys and girls learned in their studies. Far less attention, though, was paid to the girls in the register. Generally, school administrators were more interested in boys’ progress than they were that of the girls. The records here, therefore, are quite incomplete.

All the instruction focused on book learning, though one source describes the school’s walls as covered with illustrations and maps.²³ The books were numbered (first book, second book, third book, etc.) and paralleled the class in which the student was enrolled. The handful of books noted in the register are as follows:

• Canadian Series (Old and New)²⁴
• Watt’s First Catechism
• Sangster’s “Elementary arithmetic”²⁵
• Possible: Carpenter’s Spelling Assistant
• Lovewell’s General Geography²⁶

It is unclear just how many books the school had in its possession. In late September 1861, Nelles took receipt of 12 copy books, 10 slates, 356 hymn books, and 12 grammars; the hymn books, I suspect, were for his work at the chapel. More work needs to be done comparing these texts with those used in the public school system. Though these texts do not align entirely with those approved in 1870 for use in the Ontario public school system, the common use of the Canadian National Series of Reading books and Lovell’s General Geography suggests the school tried to follow the new province’s curriculum.²⁷

The academic curriculum was paired with training in agriculture and other skills. Farmland was only acquired in late 1859, and much of the food at that time seems to have been purchased rather than grown; Nelles expressed hope, however, that the school would become self-sustaining.²⁸ In an 1870 report, Nelles claimed that the school “teaches the large boys general farming.”²⁹ According to the register, students mostly spent time digging potatoes, turnips, and other root vegetables.³⁰ In 1860, the school produced 1,000 bushels of potatoes, 1,000 bushels of turnips, 200 bushels of wheat, and 200 bushels of oats and peas.³¹ Much of this was likely produced for sale, rather than consumption at the school. There are occasional references to students tending other crops, such as two days of pulling flax in late July 1866, threshing in 1867 and 1871, and husking corn.³² These activities were mostly carried out by the boys, though in late July 1866 both boys and girls were involved in pulling flax. The only livestock mentioned was the periodic “washing of sheep,” and one later reference to hogs. At various times of the year, these activities were all-consuming. From 16 October to 6 November 1872, for example, it is clear that every boy was working in the fields rather than completing their academic work, except when “this day being wet boys at school.” As would become common at the school, it seems that even in these early years, agricultural work took priority over classroom learning.

Girls’ work was focused mostly on domestic tasks. One of their biggest responsibilities was making and mending the children’s clothing. In 1872 it was reported that all the clothing, except winter coats, was made at the school by female students.³³ This was significant. Over the year prior, the girls had made 155 smocks and coats, 212 pants, 193 shirts, 140 socks, 205 dresses, 104 chemises, 43 skirts, 46 petticoats, 105 stockings, 14 aprons, 87 sheets, 74 pillow slips, 22 bed ticks, 37 towels, 2 suits, 2 pairs of drawers, and 2 night dresses. At that time there were about thirty-eight girls at the school, meaning that if evenly distributed, each girl had produced about thirty-eight items each over the prior fifteen months.³⁴ All of this work was conducted under a guise of skill building, but, ultimately, it saved the school money by drawing upon the students’ unpaid labour.

Religion was pervasive and thoroughly Anglican. Confirmation and baptisms of children were commonly noted.³⁵ Students studied the Anglican catechism.³⁶ In 1872, in a report to the NEC, the school claimed that Anglican teachings were part of daily instruction and that, though “there are some Roman Catholics and some pagans . . . , happily, no objection to the religious teaching has ever yet been made by any.”³⁷

Other types of activities at the school were variable and seem to have been carried out on an idiosyncratic schedule likely timed around the agricultural and material needs of the school. For example, on 11 June 1860 four girls were noted as spinning wool, while six boys were busy cleaning up the graveyard, likely at the Mohawk Chapel (though this is unspecified). On 25 April 1867, seven students went with a “Mr. Wilson” to have their photo taken as a group.³⁸ On 8 December 1871 there was a “concert in Brantford . . . to buy an organ for the Tuscarora church”; it is unclear whether the students participated in or attended the concert. A few months later, in April, the students and teachers visited the “menagerie” in Brantford. All these activities are typical of later student experiences at the school whereby students visited the nearby town for fundraisers and other events.

It is hard to think that the students were well supervised. In his report on the school in 1870, NEC Commissioner A. E. Botsford reported that the school accommodated ninety students in residence, as well as the superintendent and his wife.³⁹ That said, space was tight in the building. Martland’s inspection reveals how rooms in the school building served several purposes: “Mr. M was shown the room in which the boys had their classes, and in which they sat in the evening, and in which also, in the winter time, they washed. The room was very little better than a cellar in an ordinary house; not so good as a laundry.”⁴⁰ The space, it seems, was crammed and, given the large number of students—and minimal adult supervision—poorly supervised, at least by today’s standards.

Students had time away from the school. The information provided to Nightingale claimed that the students had forty days of holiday each year.⁴¹ Generally, the school closed for the month of August, with most students returning home, while a handful remained to tend the fields.⁴² One student, in 1871, is noted as having gone to “camp,” though it is unclear what exactly the word “camp” means in this context.

During the school year, students would also take breaks. Sometimes students would have a day’s vacation down to the river or a trip into Brantford.⁴³ Other times, the students were given a free morning or afternoon to play.⁴⁴ Holidays were also observed. On Victoria Day 1863, for example, the following is noted: “Kept in memory of the queen’s birth no school no thought—a day for nought.”⁴⁵ Christmas was also a day without classes, though it seems that most students stayed at the school rather than returning home.⁴⁶ An important caveat here, though, is that in the 1870 NEC report, a break for Christmas was noted, with two girls remaining with Nelles over the holiday.⁴⁷

Sickness and Health

Student health and well-being are hard to determine from this source because entries related to this aspect of student life seem to have been somewhat haphazard. For example, in 1870, hair cutting is noted in both early January and mid-March. Though it only appears here and a few times elsewhere, we can assume that this activity happened regularly at the school, perhaps in the two-month interval noted here.

Periodically, students were injured while at the school. There are seldom specific details about the injuries; usually just “sore” body parts are listed. Occasionally, though, we get a glimpse into the type of work the students were doing. One student, for example, ran a pitchfork through their foot in July 1867; another, in July 1870, cut off the top of one of his fingers. Given how the school capitalized on student labour, it is hardly surprising that many of the injuries noted can be linked to manual and agricultural work.

Disease visited the school from time to time. The experiences of the students can only be inferred from the records. One of the most common sicknesses in the school was “sore eyes.” It is also tempting to think about this as the common childhood ailment of “pink eye” (conjunctivitis). We must be careful, though, not to rule out more serious illnesses. Trachoma, a bacterial infection that can lead to blindness, was a well-documented health issue in residential schools. It spread in overcrowded conditions where children shared water, towels, and bedding.⁴⁸ In July 1871 at least sixteen students were afflicted with “sore eyes.” Even more seriously, a girl who attended the school in 1869 stayed home with “sore eyes” for September and October but died later that month or in early November. It seems that whatever was causing her eye problems was more serious than either conjunctivitis or trachoma.

Occasionally we catch a glimpse of how disease spread through the school. In January 1872, scarlet fever and diphtheria were noted;⁴⁹ a few days after this annotation a local doctor—Egerton Griffin—visited, noting that “Almost every boy and girl is ill with cough and sore throat.”⁵⁰ Measles was another common ailment that threatened student well-being, with outbreaks recorded in 1867 and 1870. Other periods of widespread disease can be inferred from the annotations. Between April and June 1868, for example, the doctor attended the school on twenty occasions, visiting at least five students. What is important about these visits is that some students are marked as having mumps, another student with St. Vitus’s dance (Sydenham’s cholera), and two students were noted as having died. Several other students, including one of the students who died, were only noted with a generic “s” for sickness, a symbol that was also used for injury. Given the gravity of the situation, it seems like the school was facing some sort of outbreak, though the specific cause is unclear from the records.

It is easy to understand how disease could have travelled quickly through the school. In the fall of 1868, a report filed with the NEC claimed that for the thirty-seven boys at the school, there were only sixteen beds, requiring three boys to share a bunk. Because of this report, Nelles was authorized to purchase ample beds to ensure that each student could sleep alone.⁵¹ A year later he reported that he had separate beds for each girl, but his facilities were not big enough to accommodate a bed each for the boys.⁵² Mattresses were filled with straw and, at least on one occasion in the register (29 February 1867), the students are noted as having to replace the straw themselves. It seems baffling today to know that Nelles pushed to increase the number of students at the school knowing full well there was not enough space for all to safely sleep. More students, however, meant more funding for the school and greater approval from the NEC.

As we saw earlier in reference to the classroom that tripled as a social space and winter wash house, the general hygiene in the school seems to have been poor. In Martland’s inspection of bathing facilities he noted that the girls had only tubs and pails, no wash basins. He was told that “Indian children were dirty in their habits, and if supplied with basins, etc. would use them improperly.”⁵³ In that same report, Martland found that in the summer the boys washed in a shed with a single tub and pail. This claim is interesting because a month before Martland visited, the register marked 5 June as the “first day for the boys to bathe in the river,” suggesting that this is where the boys bathed in summer. Later that year, just after a serious bout of scarlet fever, a visitor to the school reported that its heating was also insufficient.⁵⁴ No answer could be given when Martland asked about the “privies.”⁵⁵ Taken together, it seems that the overall health and well-being of the children was not a very high priority at the school.

Despite these crowded and poorly built conditions, some medical care was provided to prevent disease from spreading. Students were vaccinated periodically against smallpox.⁵⁶ It is unclear exactly how this was carried out, and it seems that only some students received vaccinations, but in 1862 (two), 1864 (twenty-four), 1871 (eleven), 1872 (ten) some students received their inoculations at the school. The 1871 vaccination was conducted by Dr. Robert Dee, a full-time and long-serving physician at Six Nations.⁵⁷

Death was not uncommon. Between 1860 and 1873, 24 students out of 415 (5.7 per cent) are listed as having died, though it is not clear that all died while attending the school. Few details were recorded about students who died. Rarely, it seems, did a student die at the school itself.⁵⁸ Only a single student, in 1869, is noted as having died on the school premises. Others, though, clearly went home to die. An eleven-year-old boy—part of the possible outbreak in 1868—“went home and died on Saturday”; he had only been at the school for three and a half months.⁵⁹ A girl had died three months earlier, in April, under similar circumstances. Another girl in 1872 was noted in a Company report as “dying of consumption” (tuberculosis).⁶⁰ At the time of writing, only 7 of the 24 children whose deaths are noted in the register have been included in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s Memorial Register.⁶¹ More work needs to be done to reconcile these lists.

All of this supports the conclusions Florence Nightingale reached in her study of student health at boarding schools across the British Empire. Supported by the British Colonial Office, Nightingale was charged with determining “the precise influence which school training exercised on the health of native children.”⁶² The celebrated nurse found that, across the empire, the mortality rate in colonial schools was about twice as high as it was in England; in Canada the mortality rate was about 12.5:1,000 for boys and 25:1,000 for girls.⁶³ Most children in these schools died of tuberculosis (consumption) or scrofula, which is a related symptom of tuberculosis. Neither disease appears prominently in the register. For her study, Nightingale received information from the Mohawk Institute for the period 1856–61. There were fifty-five students included in her study, one of whom—a boy between the ages of ten and fifteen—died. Echoing what we find in the register and reports to the NEC, Nightingale blamed these elevated statistics on students not being given enough time outdoors and the problem of overcrowding and poor ventilation in the buildings.⁶⁴

As Nelles focused on expanding the school, he created unsanitary conditions that likely made day-to-day life unusually difficult and unsafe for the children entrusted to his care. Sleeping two to three to a bed, with little access to washing—and perhaps toilet—facilities, it is surprising that children were not sick more often.

Visitors

Visitors to the school were relatively common and seldom critical of the school. Over the thirteen years covered in the register, almost ninety people left a record of their visit. Many were from the area around Brantford, but others came from overseas; places like England, Ireland, and New Zealand. Almost all of them were men—though there were a few women too—and most adhered to the Anglican, or an allied Protestant, faith. Each of these people left short comments in the back of the register. Their comments followed a common theme: Visitors applauded the school for its sense of order and the progress that the students had made in their studies. As it belonged to a model institution, this guest book of sorts was not the place for criticism.

That there is little sign of critique is hardly surprising. Being responsible for the Institute’s reputation, it is unlikely that Nelles would have permitted someone critical of the school to write their comments in the book. We would expect, therefore, that the perspective on the school provided in this document is rosier than what the students or faculty might have experienced; it likely worked to support Nelles’s efforts toward school expansion. When read alongside the rest of the attendance register, however, we can develop a deeper and more critical understanding of what it was like at the school during the mid-nineteenth century.

A good illustration of just how misleading these visitor comments can be is the report by James H. Vidal, who was visiting from England in September 1872. In his comments, Vidal wrote, “I am much pleased with a brief inspection of the writing and ciphering books of the scholars in the Mohawk Institution.” Reviewing the daily attendance register for the day he visited, however, reveals a more nuanced picture of what Vidal might have encountered. On the day that he reviewed the students’ academic work, a student had run away from the school, and several others were busy “cutting corn.” On these activities, about which he probably had no knowledge, Vidal is silent. Similarly, earlier that year, in May, a person named Shogesjowaueh from Stratford complimented Nelles on his “untiring kindness” and the “comfort and prosperity of the institution.” Meanwhile, according to the register, the students spent the day “picking up stones off the meadow.” It is clear, when the day-to-day records are compared with visitors’ observations, that life at the school involved much more than the academic pursuits recorded by outsiders.

Perhaps more to the point, one wonders exactly what visitors must have experienced at the school. Was the Reverend James McDowall being ironic, for example, when—as two runaway students had still not returned to the school at the time of his visit—he wrote that “the school is well attended and the conduct of the boys of [goodness] and attention is to me a matter of agreeable wonder, considering that they are naturally of restless temperaments”? Another runaway student had been gone for three days when visitor Alex H. Heron observed that he was much pleased with the school’s scholarly attainment; a student also ran away the day that F. C. Gamble and F. C. Stanton visited in 1871. It seems odd to hear of the school’s successes while the attendance records list some students as “fugitives or runaways” on the very days these visitors were present. Although it is likely that visitors were not informed about “fugitive” students, the absence of comments about this suggest that there was little sign of disruption to school routines.

Though mostly straightforward and alike, occasional entries shed light on other important aspects of life at the school. When Major General Burrows visited in February 1867, for example, he noted the challenges with which teachers contended “as regards the Indian language.” Five years later, four Americans stopped at the school and “were entertained by the young ladies of the institution with several songs both indian + English.” Both comments demonstrate that students continued to use their first languages at the school in addition to English; a point that historians Elizabeth Graham and Alison Norman have elaborated on in their respective work about the Mush Hole and schooling at Six Nations. This was a reality that ended following the close of Nelles’s tenure in 1872.

On a more concerning note, R. Doherty painted a carceral picture of the school three months earlier when he expressed his pleasure with the “order, neatness, and comfort which prevailed” in the boys’ dormitory after passing through it “after the boys had retired.” It is important to take a moment and think about the implications of these comments. Though his comments place a greater emphasis on order in the boys’ sleeping accommodations than the comments of other visitors, as a stranger to the school, we must ask why Doherty was invited into the children’s quarters as they slept. The stranger’s comments suggest that he felt his surveillance was a good and natural thing for a visitor to do at the school. Given what we know about the horrors of residential schooling, his comments about visiting the boys while they slept point to—at the very least—an unwillingness to ensure student privacy and safety from visitors.

Two former students left their own comments in the book:

Having spent four years at this School. I am glad to record my gratitude for the instruction received from Mr. Griffith [his teacher] also my thankfulness to the Revd Canon Nelles for his untiring kindness to me whilst here.

My first five years were spent at this School from ’64 to ’69, I am now in my third year at the Hellmuth College. L. O. and during vacation I always consider this place as only second to my own father’s home. Every time I come here thoughts of the past occur to me. I am glad to see so much improvement in the place, and the children seemingly so contented and happy.

Written within five months of each other, these entries feel more contrived, and for privacy reasons I will not name the students here. Unlike the other entries, for these, lines have been drawn onto the page on which the students could write their letters evenly. In the first entry, the student—though noted as absent for much of 1871—had not yet departed from the school. His formal date of departure was the same day, in April 1872, that the other entry was written, suggesting some degree of connection between the two entries. Also, reviewing his student record, it is interesting to note that the second student, who attended Hellmuth College in London, Ontario, after leaving the Mohawk Institute, had initially run away after his first two months at the school; his subsequent academic career serves as an interesting contrast with this event early in his life. Though it is important to honour the memories these students recorded, we might also ask why they are the only two student voices included in the book and why they were written so closely together.

What is important to note, relative to these two students, is that, of the register’s thirteen-year span between 1860 and 1873, 78 per cent of the comments were written either during or after 1870. There seems to have been a reason for adding comments after 1870. In his comments about how neat the school was kept, Shogesjowaueh alluded to concerns about the school that might have been raised during the late 1860s. He began his 1872 comments by expressing his “utmost gradification [sic] for the improvement made in this Institution since A.D. 1868.” Further, most of the names listed during 1870 were for journalists visiting the school from Bowmanville, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, Listowel, Petrolia, and Strathroy, suggesting that Nelles was trying to promote the school’s work through the media. It seems likely that these two student reflections were part of a broader effort to potentially rehabilitate the school’s reputation.

These two students were not the only Indigenous voices to comment on the school. Based on his name, it seems likely that Shogesjowaueh from Stratford was Anishinaabe or Haudenosaunee. The well-known Anishinaabe Episcopalian (Anglican) priest Enmegahbowh also visited the school in 1868, though he did not leave any additional comments in the book aside from his signature. Mi’kmaw Baptist and linguist Basamai Nachecallassootmamk, also known as Benjamin Christmas, visited eight years earlier, leaving these words in the visitors’ log (preserving the original spelling): “My heart his overflowen with gratitude for the progress the Indian boys have made in this school. This school may be the origin of their everlasting blessing. My prayers will be continually offered for them, and for those who have taken so much interest in their wellfare. Some of these boys may meet with my students, and they will mingle their prayers, and offer them to God.” Nachecallassootmamk’s words are interesting because he is often referred to as a helper to the settler Baptist missionary Silas Rand. His life is mostly defined in the historical record by his association with Rand. Here, though, he alludes to being a teacher in his own right, suggesting that the colonial record may mislead us about the life this man led.

The educational credentials of some of the other visitors are also important to note. Martland, for example, visited the school from Upper Canada College in 1872 at the request of the NEC directors. Earlier that year, Henry Newman visited from Balliol College at Oxford University. Spencer A. Jones was listed as a headmaster at the Grammar School in Smiths Falls in 1858 and at Vankleek Hill in 1862. These latter two visitors made interesting comparative observations. Newman noted that the Institute compared favourably with English elementary schools, while Jones made a similar comparison with Canadian students. Their comments indicate that any analysis of this period should be cautious in devaluing the education that was taking place at the Institute as being of a poorer quality than what was available to settlers elsewhere in the province. As Alison Norman’s chapter in this book demonstrates, there was a concerted effort at the school to train students to become teachers.

Leaving School

The Mohawk Institute was not a terminal institution for some students’ education. Several students went on to more advanced studies. The best-known alumni from this period are George Martin and George Hill, brothers-in-law who attended medical school after leaving the Institute.⁶⁵ It was more common, though, for students to leave the school to become teachers or clergy members, usually furthering their studies in colonial schools or colleges.

As Norman’s chapter develops in greater detail, the most common path for students leaving the Mohawk Institute for further studies was teaching. Several students left the Institute to attend the Brantford Grammar School.⁶⁶ One of these students returned in 1867 to teach “school in the woods during vacation.”⁶⁷ Another began to work as a teacher in 1869 at one of the day schools at Six Nations.⁶⁸ A third took a similar “teaching” path in 1871, beginning to teach at the Institute itself in 1871.⁶⁹ This path was expected for graduates of the Institute. The 1868 NEC report on the school noted that “The best and cheapest teachers for them would be Indians brought up at the Institution; and perhaps sent afterwards for a year to a good school for teachers, like the Normal School in Toronto.”⁷⁰ Another former student, Isaiah Joseph, who spent most of the 1860s at the Institute, taught school at the “Ojibway Settlement” in the early 1870s.⁷¹

In addition to these boys, who seem to have remained closer to home, others travelled further afield. Susannah Carpenter and Nelles Monture, who were fourteen and fifteen years old at the time, were selected to attend Isaac Hellmuth’s colleges in London. Both teenagers were chosen by Nelles because of their good character. In recommending the two for Hellmuth’s schools, Nelles made it clear that bilingualism was seen as an asset; he asked the NEC whether “it shall be a necessary qualification that the child should speak the Indian language.”⁷² The following year, three students were similarly being prepared to head to London to study under Hellmuth, while another student two years later attended the Canadian Literary Institute, a Baptist college in Woodstock.⁷³ Nelles claimed that seven or eight other students had made applications to be sent to “superior schools.”⁷⁴

The connection to London was important. While Carpenter and Monture were heading to Hellmuth’s colleges, Albert Anthony and John Jacobs, who attended the Institute during the early 1860s, were studying for the Anglican priesthood at Huron College, also in London and run by Hellmuth. Upon their ordination, Anthony returned to Six Nations, while Jacobs became a priest serving the Chippewa communities around Sarnia, Kettle, and Stoney Point.⁷⁵

Neither path to becoming a teacher or priest was particularly unique. Nelles’s report to the Company in June 1859 claimed that “Four of the school teachers at present employed are Indians, who have been educated at this Institution; and another, through the liberality of the Company is pursuing his studies with a view to entering the ministry.”⁷⁶ One of those people was Isaac Bearfoot. Bearfoot attended the Institute in the 1850s and then taught there for several years before attending the Toronto Normal School for accreditation as a teacher. After teaching for many years at Six Nations, Bearfoot was given a teaching appointment at the Institute in August 1869.⁷⁷ In the late 1870s, he attended Huron College and was ordained an Anglican priest.

The experiences of the other students upon leaving the school are more opaque. This is especially the case for girls. Aside from the young women who went to Hellmuth’s Ladies College, we know little about where girls ended up after their time at the school. An 1872 report to the NEC, though, demonstrates that some ended up “sought after as servants by some of the most respectable people at Brantford.”⁷⁸ More work needs to be conducted using census records or family histories to follow the life course of the students about whom the register is silent after they left the school.

Conclusions

What becomes apparent after working with this document is the uneven nature of student experiences during this time in the Mohawk Institute’s history. For many—likely most—the school had little attraction. They stayed a short time and appeared only briefly in the register’s pages. A handful of students met their deaths within the school’s walls. For other students, however, their time at the school was different. Though we cannot be certain about their feelings toward the school, we might interpret the decision by some to return to Six Nations to teach as a tacit agreement with the school’s missions. There was no singular experience that defined life at the Mush Hole during this period.

Despite this diversity of experiences, we can point to two aspects of school life that were common. First, as the subsequent careers of some students demonstrates, Nelles was interested in ensuring that the children in his care were educated at a standard that would allow them to participate in higher forms of education. Though only a minority of students took this path, the register’s attentiveness to examinations points to a scholarly mandate that was not always present in residential schools before or after this period. Second, Nelles’s desire to expand the school took priority over student comfort and health. As Florence Nightingale’s study revealed so starkly, health outcomes at this school were worse than those for children in comparable English schools; we might assume the more positive situation was also similar in Canadian schools.

These contrasting common experiences help explain how the school evolved from the partnership with Six Nations that first brought it about. Absent from the register is any sign of engagement with Six Nations as a political community. Rather than meeting the needs of the community (as was the goal when the school was initially envisioned by prominent community members like Tekarihogen), by the 1860s institutional life at the Institute was being shaped by people like Nelles. With a strong desire to expand, the school put students at risk, focusing more on the institution itself than the well-being of the children or community it purported to serve. In many ways, this is what the register symbolizes. In its idiosyncratic but bureaucratic documenting of these children’s lives, the register points to the developing institutionalization and growing systematization of Indigenous schooling dawning in Canada by the end of the 1870s.

Notes

1. 1 Nelles, NEC Report, 13 August 1860, in Elizabeth Graham, The Mush Hole: Life at Two Indian Residential Schools (Heffle Publishing, 1997), 55.

2. 2 A table and biographical dictionary were produced as part of this project and turned over to the Woodland Cultural Centre. There remains some discrepancy between these documents. I have also caught a few transcription errors while working on this essay. The most important is that seven students were transcribed as having run away on 1 July 1871. Upon revisiting the register, it is clear that these students are listed with a “t” for “town” and not an “f” for “fugitive” beside their name. More work is required on this document. The discussion in this chapter should be considered preliminary.

3. 3 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 59; Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 2 August 1886, Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives, London, Ontario.

4. 4 Florence Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals (London, 1863), 39.

5. 5 NEC Report, 1859, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 53.

6. 6 NEC Report, 9 April 1870, and NEC Report, 16 May 1872 in Graham, 59, 65.

7. 7 Woodland Cultural Centre, Documenting Early Residential Schools, Student Biographies, Student #9.

8. 8 Student Biographies, Student #21.

9. 9 Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 39.

10. 10 Institution Report, 30 June 1859, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 54.

11. 11 Nelles, NEC Report, 15 July 1870, in Graham, 59.

12. 12 Institution Report, 31 December 1859, in Graham, 54.

13. 13 NEC Report, 1868, in Graham, 56.

14. 14 A. Stewart, NEC Report, 2 May 1872, in Graham, 64.

15. 15 Griffith, Institution Report, 30 June 1872, in Graham, 68.

16. 16 Martland notes of verbal statement, NEC Report, in Graham, 69.

17. 17 Alison Norman, “‘Teachers Amongst Their Own People’: Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) Women Teachers in Nineteenth-Century Tyendinaga and Grand River, Ontario,” Historical Studies in Education 29, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 32–56.

18. 18 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 59.

19. 19 NEC Report, 30 June 1869, in Graham, 57.

20. 20 Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 39; Nelles, Elliot, Chance, Roberts, NEC Report, 16 May 1872, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 65.

21. 21 Nelles, Elliot, Chance, Roberts, NEC Report, 16 May 1872, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 65.

22. 22 Student Biographies, Student #7.

23. 23 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 59.

24. 24 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, 59.

25. 25 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, 59.

26. 26 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, 59.

27. 27 Annual Report of the Normal, Model, Grammar and Common Schools of Ontario (London, 1871), appendix D.

28. 28 NEC Report, 3 August 1859, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 54.

29. 29 Nelles, NEC Report, 15 July 1870, in Graham, 59.

30. 30 See Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 20 June 1860; 10 October 1860; 16 October 1860; 15 November 1860; 10 November 1862; 28–9 September 1863; 11 November 1863; 1869; 1870; 9 October 1871.

31. 31 NEC Report, January 1860, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 54.

32. 32 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 30 and 31 July 1866; 26 and 28 February 1867; 6 January 1871; 18 October 1871; 27 October 1871; May and June 1872.

33. 33 Nelles, NEC Report, 18 May 1872, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 67.

34. 34 Griffith, Institution Report, 30 June 1872, in Graham, 68.

35. 35 See Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 6 April 1862; 5 April 1863.

36. 36 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 26 October 1866.

37. 37 Nelles, Elliot, Chance, Roberts, 16 May 1872, NEC Report, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 66.

38. 38 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 25 April 1867.

39. 39 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 59.

40. 40 Martland notes of verbal statement, NEC Report, in Graham, 69.

41. 41 Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 39.

42. 42 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 2 August 1866.

43. 43 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 25 June 1860; 14 September 1860; 1 July 1871.

44. 44 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 2 January 1863.

45. 45 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 25 May 1863.

46. 46 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 25–6 December 1863; 25 December 1867.

47. 47 Nelles, NEC Report, 5 February 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 58.

48. 48 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 1, The History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 446.

49. 49 Nelles, NEC Report, 1 March 1872, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 62.

50. 50 Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 24 January 1872.

51. 51 Lister, NEC Report, Autumn 1868, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 56; NEC Report, 25 February 1869, in Graham, 57.

52. 52 NEC Report, 23 November 1869, in Graham, 58.

53. 53 Martland notes of verbal statement, NEC Report, in Graham, 69.

54. 54 Blomfield, NEC Report, 2 March 1872, in Graham, 62.

55. 55 Martland notes of verbal statement, NEC Report, in Graham, 69.

56. 56 Nelles, NEC Report, 1 March 1872, in Graham, 62.

57. 57 Sally M. Weaver, “The Iroquois: The Grand River Reserve in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 1875–1945,” in Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations, ed. Edward S. Rogers and Donald Smith (Dundurn Press, 1994), 227–8.

58. 58 There are a handful of exceptions to this. See Mohawk Institute Attendance Register, 2 October 1860.

59. 59 Student Biographies, Student #96.

60. 60 Roberts Journal, NEC Report, 13 March 1872, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 63.

61. 61 “Memorial Register,” National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, accessed 17 January 2022, https://nctr.ca/memorial/national-student-memorial/memorial-register/.

62. 62 Nightingale, Sanitary Statistics, 2.

63. 63 Nightingale, 3.

64. 64 Nightingale, 14.

65. 65 Botsford, NEC Report, December 1870, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 59. On Martin, see Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyatekha: Security, Justice, and Equality (Dundurn Press, 2016).

66. 66 Some include Alex Smith, George Bomberry, and Youel Carryer.

67. 67 Student Biographies, Student #36.

68. 68 NEC Report, 31 December 1869, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 58.

69. 69 Student Biographies, Student #58.

70. 70 NEC Report, 1868, in Graham, The Mush Hole, 56.

71. 71 Nelles, NEC Report, 5 February 1870, in Graham, 58–59. George Powless and Daniel Simon were also teachers. See NEC Report, June 1871, Graham, 60. James Powless was considered a candidate for attending the Toronto Normal School in 1872. See Clerk to Missionaries, 6 June 1872, NEC Report, in Graham, 68.

72. 72 Nelles, NEC Report, 30 June 1869, in Graham, 57–8.

73. 73 A. Stewart, NEC Report, 2 May 1872, in Graham, 64.

74. 74 Nelles, NEC Report, 5 February 1870, in Graham, 58–9; Nelles, NEC Report, 9 April 1870, in Graham, 59.

75. 75 For more on these students, see Natalie Cross and Thomas Peace, “‘My Own Old English Friends’: Networking Anglican Settler Colonialism at the Shingwauk Home, Huron College, and Western University,” Historical Studies in Education 33, no. 1 (Spring 2021), https://doi.org/10.32316/hse-rhe.v33i1.4891.

76. 76 Graham, The Mush Hole, 54.

77. 77 Nelles, NEC Report, 30 August 1869, in Graham, 58.

78. 78 Nelles, Elliot, Chance, Roberts, 16 May 1872, NEC Report, in Graham, 65.