They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School 
K.  Tsianina Lomawaima.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
205pp., maps, illus.

Frederic W. Gleach  fwg1@cornell.edu
Dept. of Anthropology, McGraw Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

In recent years there has been a flurry of presented and published works on
Indian schools, ranging from autobiographical accounts by alumni through
histories of particular schools to analytical works on the institution
itself.  Tsianina Lomawaima is the daughter of a graduate of Chilocco
Indian Agricultural School, and a professional anthropologist.  From this
one might guess, correctly, that her work combines elements of personal and
analytical approaches.  The greatest strength of this work lies in
Lomawaima's use of personal narratives from former Chilocco students,
gathered through interviews.  Winner of the 1993 North American Indian
Prose Award, _They Called It Prairie Light_ makes an excellent introduction
to the historical realities of U.S. Indian schools in the early twentieth
century.

Off-reservation boarding schools were established by the United States
government beginning in the late nineteenth century, reviving a notion that
dates at least to the early years of the Jamestown colony in Virginia: that
the best way to "civilize" the native peoples of America was to remove
their children from tribal and familial contexts and educate them in "the
whiteman's ways."  In theory, those children could then become productive
members of society, leaving behind their uneducated forebearers, or
returning to help raise them up.  The practice seldom lived up to the
rhetoric, however, in the seventeenth or the twentieth century.

The nineteenth-century cultural and philosophical underpinnings of the
boarding schools are surveyed in the first chapter of this book, with notes
referring the reader to some of the more important preceding works on the
subject; the early history of Chilocco is sketched in this context.  The
name "Chilocco" is of uncertain etymology, but was retained in all of the
forms of the school's name; "Prairie Light" is a short form used here for
"Light on the Prairie," the name of the first building for the school.

Successive chapters draw more heavily on the personal narratives of former
students, used with archival sources, to examine life at Chilocco over the
period 1920 to 1940.  Recruitment and general living conditions, vocational
training for both men and women, administrative relations and discipline,
and free-time activities are each represented by a chapter.  The discussion
of maintenance of individual and tribal identity in the face of what was
intended to be a uniform "civilizing" experience is particularly useful,
showing how individual experiences could vary greatly, with some
differences due to tribal affiliation and full- or mixed-blood status.
Male and female views are well represented, but since earlier works on
Indian schools have tended to emphasize the male experience it is the
extensive treatment of the women's perspectives that stand out here.

An epilogue provides a brief biographical sketch of Lomawaima's father, who
attended Chilocco from 1927 to 1935; this personal note further helps the
reader recognize the place of a Chilocco education in the context of a
life.  Three appendices describe the methodology employed in the study.

While Lomawaima treats political and historical issues, causes and effects
of policies and institutions, and implications in the realm of power
relations, these are not the center of this work, and occasional references
to Bourdieu and Foucault almost seem out of place here.  _They Called It
Prairie Light_ does articulate with those theoretical frameworks, but its
real home is in the body of literature on personal narrative,
autobiography, and memory.  Barbara Myerhoff and Julie Cruikshank, also
cited here, are closer theoretical kin.  Even so, linguistic
concerns--structure of narratives, use of language, etc.--are not the
focus.  Rather, Lomawaima has chosen to emphasize here the content of the
narratives, the meanings of remembered experience for her narrators.

The organization and writing of this work are clear and coherent, and the
selections from interviews flow nicely in the text.  Some readers would
wish for more complete, unedited transcriptions, but that would result in a
different work.  _They Called It Prairie Light_ is an important work,
gathering narratives to reconstruct a view of boarding-school life beyond
the official, showing how even an institution such as this, imposed by the
federal government, was transformed into an _Indian_ experience.