Comments about the Fort Hall Boarding School

It's been interesting hearing the different perspectives on the old Indian boarding schools this week. It is obviously a mixed bag, but it is heartening to know that locals seem to be open and ready to talking about it.

One of the people I was led to talk to was Fort Hall old timer Rusty Houtz. His mother, Effie Diggie, attended Carlisle along with Lillian and Lawrence. Effie met her future husband Herbert Houtz on the train she was on headed for Carlisle, Penn. Herbert was a sheep rancher from Rockland going to Omaha to sell his lambs. Rusty says his mother alway defended the school and the lessons she needed to learn to make it in the changing community. At Carlisle, she learned to cook, sew and farm. She also worked as a housekeeper for a local family there.

I visited with Alene Menta, whose father attended the Fort Hall Boarding School. She said he never said much about his experience, and when he did, it was oftentimes bitter. He recalls being spanked with a rubber hose down in the basement when he didn't follow the rules.

Sandra Eschief shared with me that her father, Ed Boyer, and my grandfather, Harrison Baker, learned carpentry at the school and used those skills to build their homes on the reservation, which still stand today. My grandfather passed before I had the chance to talk to him about his experiences at the boarding school. The only things that tell me he was there is his presence in the school band and baseball team pictures. A Bannock, he was always one of the tallest guys in the group pictures.