Blacksmithing and Carpentry class at the Forest Grove Indian School

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Description

A posed photograph taken in 1881 of Native American boys in the Forest Grove Indian Training School performing blacksmithing (left) and carpentry skills (right). The names of the children are not identified. The white man is their blacksmithing instructor, William S. Hudson. The building in the background is the school’s workshop, which was on the main campus of the school in Forest Grove. The caption notes that this was number 33 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. The Pacific University Archives' copy of this photo is a black-and-white reproduction of the original, which would have been a sepia-toned albumen print.