Shoemaking class at work in the Indian Training School

Title

Shoemaking class at work in the Indian Training School

Description

A posed photograph of Native American boys in the Forest Grove Indian Training School performing shoemaking skills. The names of the children are not identified. The white man is their instructor, Samuel A. T. Walker, who noted the occasion in his diary on June 6, 1881: 'I went out to the Indian School to work before noon and had my picture taken in front of the shop with my shoe maker boys.' The caption notes that this was number 41 in a series of photographs by I.G. Davidson, a photography studio based in Portland. The series shows how the school taught the children to behave according to the norms of white society, including the teaching of vocational skills such as this one. This photograph was reproduced alongside several other images of the school as an etching in a popular magazine, Harper's Weekly, in 1882.

Creator

I. G. Davidson, photographer

Subject

Off-reservation boarding schools
Native American Studies
Chemawa Indian School

Place

Forest Grove, Oregon

Identifier

PUApic_008614.jpg

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

Source

Forest Grove Indian School Collection, Pacific University Archives

Type

Still Image

Other Media

[front] No. 41. Davidson, Photo. Shoemaking. Portland, Oregon. [back] Indian Training School, Forest Grove, Oregon. Capt. M. C. Wilkinson ,U.S.A., in charge. Davidson, photo. Shoemaking. Portland, Oregon.