St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). Students pose with their handiwork in the work room of the newly-built school at St. Benedict's Mission. Domestic arts were considered important. So before and after school hours, the girls were taught to card wool and spin yarn with which they knitted their own stockings. They were taught plain and fancy sewing and took turns in assisting the sisters in the kitchen, laundry and dairy. Under Sister Philomena Ketten's supervision, the boys worked in the garden and helped on the farm with picking potatoes and raking hay. [SBMA, McDonald, p. 241]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). About 85 boarding students and six sisters posed in the inner court of St. St. Benedict's Mission School in the early 1890s. Record keeping for this large a group of children was not simple. While the churches constructed and operated the schools on the reservations, government policy allowed the schools an annual appropriation of a flat rate for tuition, board and clothing annually; the amount varied from $100 to $150 per pupil. This policy required careful quarterly reports to be sent to Washington. All expenditures had to be accounted for - the number of pounds of meat, sacks of flour, bushels of beans and potatoes, barrels of sugar, pounds of rice, and gallons of syrup and soap These accounts show the frugality of the mission school's fare. For example, the 1886 end-of-year record shows $2.00 for candy and $2.50 for a pair of geese. [SBMA, McDonald, pp. 240-241]
This image was published in "Minnesota History," 49/3 Fall 1984, page 92. Original in the Archives of the Sisters of Mercy Provincialate in Omaha, Nebraska. Record Group 75. Exhibit WCSA 2000-2001.
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). The school at White Earth was so successful that it was noticed by Katherine Drexel who lived in Philadelphia and had devoted her life to working for American Indians and African Americans. (She later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for the education of these minorities.) Katherine visited White Earth with her two sisters and was so impressed by the work of the Benedictines there that she made arrangements for the building of a new school that would house 150 orphaned and dependent children. During the summer of 1890, the bricks for this four-story building were made near the mission and in the winter months, the lumber and other materials were gathered. Two years later, February 10, 1892, the school was opened for 100 children with the expectation that government funds were available to educate and cloth them. By 1895, the enrollment had grown to 150; the number of teachers and helpers grew to eighteen over the years. However, when government funding was rescinded by the turn of the century, the school faced the challenge of survival. The Benedictines turned to the charity of the Catholics of the Northwest Territory, of St. John's Abbey and of St. Benedict's Convent, and most of all, to tribal funds that the government had held in trust for them in lieu of the land they had given up. These funds could be requested by the Ojibwe as needed. In this way, St. Benedict's Mission managed to continue the boardingschool until 1945. When the tribal funds were no longer available, the school became a parochial day school. [SBMA, McDonald, pp. 241-246]