Seventeen Real Photo Postcards of the Chemawa Indian School.
Oregon and California: Patton Bros., Edward H. Mitchell, Portland Post Card Co., and others, 1908–1940s. Seventeen real photo postcards with five completed. Excellent. Item #List3426
A collection of seventeen real photo postcards showing the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. Chemawa, opened in 1880, was the second of its kind established after Pennsylvania’s Carlisle. Its early students were from Indigenous tribes in the Pacific Northwest, including Puyallup, Nisqually, Nez Perce, and Wasco; it would later host a large proportion of Native Alaskan students as well. It became an accredited high school in 1927 and is still open today, with a number of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also one site of probable mass unmarked children’s graves, discovered in 2016 using ground penetrating radar.
Many of the postcards are colorized. Shots are mainly building exteriors; several show the girls’ dormitory with a large group of girls in Euro-American clothing on the lawn; one shows the parade grounds with boys in uniform lined up for a military-style parade; and one is the gated entrance to the school, with a large group of boys in uniform standing behind it. One completed Chewama postcard seems to be from a student, Agnes Jaeschke, who writes to her brother: “My dear Bertram: hope to see you soon. I hope [you] are well contended [sic] and happy as I am. My school is so much better here than in Mont. Much love and happiness to all.”
Of interest to historians of US residential schools.
Price: $450.00