Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
Indian Schee)
‘Train Station, Philadelphia, for the purpose of
evaluating the new foundation.
The first sisters reached Avoca on 24
May 1883, the feast of Corpus Christi. They
were welcomed in true Western style. Cannons
boomed and the church bells rang. The house
was indeed large, but oh so dirty! It was lucky for
them that they had time before school was to
open. Scrubbing, painting, papering became the
order of the day during that first summer. In
June Bishop Ireland arrived for a visit, said Mass
for the sisters, promised them the parochial
school and gave them permission to use
the convent building for a private school. The
people came to stare and marvel at the sisters’
hard work. They also brought butter, eggs and
milk. One farmer gave them a sack of potatoes,
beans and pork, while another farmer brought
the sisters several cows and pigs.
Avoca was a beautiful place with a lake
nearby. Fr Jenkins built a little harbor by the lake
and gave them a boat. In the evenings the sisters
could be heard singing hymns while rowing on
the lake.
The weather begins to be mentioned in
the Journals by September. Cold days were often
accompanied with thunder and lightning storms.
The first snow fell on 21 October, but before then
the sisters had managed to pick their first potato
crop.
Weather, more than food, was to become
an increasing concern. The people taught the
sisters how to use the corn to make bread and
cereal. Gifts of cows, chickens and turkeys
supplemented their meat supply, while the rich
56
soil had yielded a good potato crop. High winds
on the open prairie often fed fires so fearsome
that the superior, M M St Anthony Maloney and
the cook, Sister Hilda Lynch, sat up all night to
make sure that the house would not burn to the
ground. In November the wind was so high and
the cold so intense that the Journal notes: “No
Mass. Great storm of wind, and the cold
something terrible. Sister Hilda has to knead the
bread on the stove, as the cold being so great the
bread will not rise anywhere else.” By Christmas
of that first year the weather was —-40 degrees.
The cruets froze. The clothes froze on the line.
The kitchen became the main gathering place for
work and meals. Fresh eggs, butter and milk
were kept on the top of the stove so they could be
kept edible.
froze to death. On a particularly cold day the
day scholars stayed at home and not even the
train could get through to Avoca.
Most of the chickens and turkeys
The long winter turned into spring and
the sisters assessed their condition. They had too
few pupils, and no hopes for the many students
that the bishop had promised them. Avoca was
not growing as hoped. When the bishop visited
them he purchased for them a large kitchen
stove, heated by gas, to alleviate the fears of the
wooden embers setting fire to the house. While
the large gas stove would help them through the
next cruel winter, the sisters had to assess their
situation. They could not survive another year
without more pupils and a steadier source of
income. Bishop Ireland’s solution was to obtain
50 Indian girls from the Government
Reservations. M M Aloysius Hughes, a gentle
soul, was prefect and econome. Her skills were
greater in the first occupation and so it was she
who welcomed the first Indians to Avoca. To her
surprise she learned that all Indians were not the
same. Some of them were mixed race, some very
“primitive”, some were well-spoken and came
dressed in silk with lace collars, for their mothers
had been taught by Mother Duchesne, the
Sacred Heart Sister. Much was accomplished in
a short time, and Sioux, Crows and Chippewas
learned, as contemporaries put it, to be clean,
honest, and friendly to other tribes. The
Director of the Indian Bureau came to inspect
the Indian School and was amazed to learn that
the girls had not only learned English, but were
\