Historian Diana Meyers Bahr has written a new book on Sherman Institute (now called Sherman Indian High School), an off-reservation federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. Unlike other books on Sherman that focus on specific eras or subjects, Bahr’s manuscript is the first comprehensive account of the school. I’ve already read through several drafts, and I’m certain that it will be well received by students, faculty, and others interested in the education of American Indian people. I was especially pleased to read what Bahr had uncovered about the school from the 1960s to the present, which is an often overlooked period in Sherman’s history. Bahr has published other books, including Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living In Two Worlds, and The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey. Her book on Sherman is scheduled to appear in April, but you can pre-order your copy today.
Tag: Sherman Indian High School
Hopi runners article available for download
Over the past year, several people have stumbled across my blog looking for information on Hopi runners. For those who might be interested, I have made my article “Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912-1930” (American Quarterly, March Issue 2010, Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 77-101) available for download. Simply click on the above image to download the article as a PDF document.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Sherman Indian Museum and UC Riverside
I recently returned from the 25th Anniversary California Indian Conference held at the University of California, Irvine. My former graduate advisor from UC Riverside, Cliff Trafzer, organized a panel on Sherman Institute titled “Out of the Vault.” In addition to myself, the panel members included Lorene Sisquoc, Director of the Sherman Indian Museum, Galen Townsend, Sherman Indian Museum Volunteer, Kevin Whalen, a graduate student in history at UCR, and Leleua Loupe of California State University, Fullerton.
Sisquoc began the panel by talking about the unique relationship between UCR and the Museum. For the past 10 or so years, UCR history graduate students have worked alongside Sisquoc as researchers, volunteers, and interns. Beginning with Jean A. Keller, author of the first book on Sherman Institute, Empty Beds, graduate students have utilized the Museum’s collections to write two monographs, and several master theses, dissertations, and articles. Today, the mutually beneficial relationship between UCR and the Museum continues, and provides an excellent model of collaboration and community.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Screening BEYOND THE MESAS at Upper Moencopi
On Saturday September 18, 2010, I had a special opportunity to screen BEYOND THE MESAS and give a presentation to my family at the village of Upper Moencopi’s Community Center. The screening and presentation were part of the Sakiestewa/Honanie Annual Family Reunion. About 60 people attended the event.
I have screened BEYOND THE MESAS at several universities in the United States, and I have shown it at other locations on the Hopi Reservation, but this was the first time the documentary was screened at Upper Moencopi. The film was well received and it led into a discussion on the benefits and negative consequences of Hopi attendance at off-reservation Indian boarding schools.
After the screening I passed out student case files that I collected at the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, California (now located in Perris, California). The files belong to members of the Sakiestewa and Honanie families who attended Sherman Institute or the Phoenix Indian School from 1906 to the 1940s. Most of the files included school applications, report cards, and handwritten and typed letters.
As a Hopi professor at the University of Illinois I am thankful for the opportunities that I have to bring my research back to the Hopi community. This has always been a driving force behind my work.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
A Hopi runner and his marathon trophy
Most people who visit the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, California, see this first place trophy without knowing who won it. Marathon officials did not engrave the athlete’s name on the trophy, but they did include the date and the event, which was the Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon held in California on December 22, 1929.
At one point in the school’s history, the student’s at Sherman Institute knew who won this award. But as time passed, the trophy, one of the largest in the Museum’s collection, became disassociated from its owner.
The trophy belongs to Hopi runner Harry Chaca from the village of Polacca on First Mesa. He was among the great Hopi runners of the twentieth century. Chaca attended Sherman in the 1920s and early 1930s and he earned several marathon honors while a student at the school.
I wrote about Chaca and his victory of the 1929 Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon in my article “Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912-1930” (American Quarterly, March 2010). I note that prior to this event, Chaca had won other prestigious marathons and his reputation as a great runner spread far beyond the United States.
In Japan, for example, a runner named Yoshikio Sudsuki heard that Chaca was the best runner in America and so he traveled to the U.S. for the sole purpose of competing against the Hopi from Polacca. But at the 1929 Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon, Chaca’s speed and endurance proved too much for the forty-nine year old runner from Tokyo. In my article I write that the
Hopi runner ran at a “killing pace to win” the full marathon in two hours, forty-one minutes, and twenty-five seconds, a “full second better than the performance of Alpien Stenroos” in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. One of the fifty thousand spectators of the marathon recalled that Chaca’s “victory” was “all the more noteworthy for his sensational finish. After trailing for twenty-three miles it was at that mark that he applied a final burst of speed that sent him ahead” of Hopi runner Franklin Suhu. In addition to winning the race, Chaca set a new American marathon record, which immediately confirmed his place as the top long-distance runner in the nation. [p. 91]
Shortly after Chaca’s marathon victory, school officials took his trophy and displayed it in a large cabinet located in Sherman’s administration building (now the Sherman Indian Museum). According to school administrators, all individually won trophies belonged to the school.
At times Hopi students attempted to obtain their trophy cups after their terms at Sherman had expired. During the 1940s, for example, Hopi runner Philip Zeyouma asked the school’s superintendent if he could reclaim his trophies (pictured on the front cover of American Quarterly), but school officials refused to honor his request.
More than eighty years after Chaca won the Vallejo Pre-Olympic National Marathon, his trophy remains at the Sherman Indian Museum. Although government officials consider the award to be property of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the trophy will always belong to Harry Chaca and his family.
Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert
Beyond the Mesas 
