American Historical Ephemera and Early Photography, including The Larry Ness Collection of Native American Photography

Extraordinary album of drawings presented by children of the Immaculate Conception Mission School at Stephan on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota to Reverend George Pius Boehm (1852-1935). 12 x 9 in., 100pp, brown leather boards with gilt on covers and spine. Front pastedown with crimson fabric to which is adhered scrapbook corner mountings enclosing a typed letter signed from Reverend Boehm ("Rev. P. Boehm / O.S.B.") to his niece, "As a sacred Remembrance to my dear / Niece Mrs. Petronilla (Bromm) Douglas / this bokk [sic] of drawings is presented." Opposite flyleaf features matching crimson fabric on which is adhered a 3 3/4 x 5 1/4 in. portrait photograph of Reverend Pius in a heavy winter coat, surrounded by hand drawn decorative gold "frame" and manuscript identification "May 5th / 1901" and "Rev. Father Pius O.S.B." Book includes drawings accomplished in a mix of pencil and watercolors, each separated by thin tissue, and six photographs of the school and/or its students adhered to respective pages. Drawings feature traditional Native American culture, item emblematic of European-American culture, Christian themes, nature, and activities of daily life at the boarding school. Front and back boards completely detached from spine, some modern adhesive and adhesive residue present on covers and spine. Many drawings heavily toned and with losses at edge lines. Some drawings with larger tears, and/or fully loose from binding.

As with other Indian boarding schools around the nation, the Immaculate Conception Mission School was part of the federal initiative to assimilate Indigenous children, often forcibly removing children from their homes and cultures. The drawings contained within the book reflect a late nineteenth-century Native American culture in transition. On one hand, drawings recall traditional Native life with images of the hunt, tipis, and traditional attire, and on the other hand the drawings demonstrate (sometimes simultaneously) the ways in which Native children were immersed in European-American culture while at the school. Drawings include: a vignette of students learning from a nun and young boys working in the garden; a vignette of students engaged in leisure activities including baseball, tennis, and on a see-saw; Native men on horseback wearing traditional headdresses; "Picnic" featuring students marching, a tipi, and a formal table prepared in an outdoor setting; men engaged in horse racing on track; flora and fauna; and renderings of Catholic iconography such as the cross and the birth of Jesus. Drawings are unsigned.

"Father Pius, O.S.B." ["Order of Saint Benedict"] was a Benedictine monk who from 1887-1935 served as a Catholic missionary at the remote Immaculate Conception Mission School on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. Born in Indiana, Father Pius was ordained in 1877. After working at parishes in Indiana and at Fort Smith, Arkansas, he came to the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. Founded in 1862, the reservation was [and remains] the home of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. Under the auspices of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, Washington, D.C. the Immaculate Conception Mission School was established on the reservation in the spring of 1886 by Rev. George S. Willard. Father Willard had two successors, who were then succeeded as superintendent by Rev. Pius in 1889. Given the date of this book, it is possible the book was compiled as a gift for Father Pius to commemorate his 10th year as superintendent of the school.

Father Pius would serve the mission for nearly fifty years. The early years of the school were marked by hardship for both Father Pius and his students, with poverty, disease, food scarcity, the tardiness of the government to pay the quarterly dues, and the extreme climate posing great challenges. An August 1890 letter from Father Pius to the Hon. T.J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs in D.C., outlined details of the school's history, as well as the expectations placed upon the students, including cultivating tillable land, gardening, and tending cattle for the boys, and milking cows, and training in housekeeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, and laundry for the girls. "In the school room was taught to boys and girls, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, U.S. and Bible History and singing. To religious training and exercises was given three-quarters of an hour every day. The order of the day was: half day school and half day work. The smallest of pupils, of whom no work could be expected, were occupied in the school rooms...."

Today, the Immaculate Conception Mission School operates on the reservation as the Crow Creek Tribal School.