Life at School

Life and Studies at PSIG

Life at School 

Sara N. Beam and Cecilia Gutierrez 

Preface: the Robertson and Worcester Collection includes relatively few PSIG artifacts from daily school life, such as grade books, student work, financial records, and the like. As research proceeds, we anticipate that we will discover more details about daily life at school and will update this page as findings emerge. In the meantime, we often fill in the gaps by referencing artifacts from related Muscogee (Creek) Nation Presbyterian schools in the 1870s-1890s, in order to create a composite picture of PSIG students’ general experiences.  

Within the constellation of Presbyterian mission schools, PSIG was comparatively a very small institution, with a student body of only around twenty in some years, closer to forty in others, and in its later years an enrollment of 110-115. 1 PSIG was part of a network of Indian Territory Presbyterian schools directed by members of the Robertson family, a network including Tullahassee Mission School (est. 1848) as well as Nuyaka Mission (1882-1922). Alice’s parents, William S. Robertson and Ann Eliza Worcester Robertson, served at Tullahassee, and Alice’s sister Ann Augusta Robertson Moore was appointed by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation (hereafter MCN) to serve as superintendent and principal of Nuyaka. Ann Augusta’s and Alice’s sister Grace also worked at PSIG.2 

Alice Mary Robertson’s leadership roles in multiple schools formed a bridge between the MCN government and the colonizing U.S. government. She had complex and apparently shifting views of Native education. Though Miss Alice also worked at Carlisle Industrial School, notorious for its cruel policies, her pedagogical philosophy within the Presbyterian network of schools did not always align with that of General Richard Pratt, the founder and superintendent of Carlisle. Pratt’s philosophy is infamously summed up in his saying, “Kill the Indian, save the man.”3 On one hand, in an 1880 letter, Alice writes to her sister Augusta, "When I was [at Carlisle] before, I did not think this would be a good place for our Creek children to come but I have been studying it very carefully since I came, and I think now it would be a most excellent thing."4 On the other hand, in 1902, Robertson cautioned, “We should not try to make the Indian too much of a white man,” emphasizing that “Instead of tearing up the native plant by the roots and planting entirely anew, we should endeavor to take it as it is and graft upon it a new life that shall blossom and bear rich fruit.”5 Reverend Duncan Burns, great-grandson of Robertson’s adopted daughter Susanne Barnett Strouvelle, asserts that Alice did not approve of Carlisle’s method of removing children from their families and homes to strip students of their cultural heritage and to teach against traditional ways.6 At the same time, evidence also exists that "By 1923, the Robertsons, like many other

assimilators, had dramatically revised their views on the curricular needs of Indian students," adapting "the popular attitude that Indians students required very different courses and training than did white children"-- meaning industrial and manual labor education suitable for working class non-white populations.7

PSIG experienced much change over its twelve years of operation from 1882-1894. The institution originated in 1876 as a Presbyterian school operating within the First Presbyterian Church building in Muskogee, IT, attended mainly by white students. The school developed into a day school that enrolled both white and Muscogee girls.8 In 1883, Stoddard Hall was built to house residential students, while the church, which had been “fitted with desks[,]... continued to be used as the schoolroom, and behind the boarding house was added a small box house that would serve as the kitchen for the lifetime of the school.”9 Robertson was hired as the new director and lead educator of the school in 1885, and in that same year the school shifted to a completely residential model for indigenous girls, specifically Muscogee (Creek) girls until 1890, when it returned to a blended day and residential model.10  

Though PSIG served Muscogee (Creek) girl students, we have not found evidence that PSIG enrolled Creek Freedmen descendants or other Black or Afro-Indigenous students. After Tullahassee Mission burned in December of 1880, it was rebuilt as Tullahassee Manual Labor School, an institution specifically for Creek Freedmen students, and reopened in 1883.11 Creek Freedmen students attended Tullahassee, while non-Afro-Indigenous Muscogee (Creek) students attended institutions like PSIG, Wealaka, and Nuyaka.  

School Supplies and Materials 

PSIG and its sister schools bought supplies from the same vendors, shared teachers who were assigned then moved from one school to another as need arose, and employed alumni within the network. Notable among those alumni are Reverend T. W. Perryman, who attended Tullahassee Mission School then served as pastor at Nuyaka Mission, and Rachel Checote Goat, who similarly attended Tullahassee Mission School then worked at Nuyaka Mission.12  

The schools presumably used similar textbooks, such as McGuffey First Eclectic Reader and Creek language primers co-authored by W. S. Robertson and David Winslett.13 Centering middle-class white children’s experiences and perspectives, the McGuffey readers were common among nineteenth-century schools.  

The 1885 McGuffey's New First Eclectic Reader: For Young Learners teaches English vocabulary and spelling, using examples of a girl playing with a doll with blue eyes.15 It also presents lines reminiscent of Sunday school lessons, like:  

When the sun ri-ses, it is day; when it sets, it is night. 

Do you know who made the sun? God made it. 

God al-so made the moon, and all the stars. They give us light by night. 

God gives us all we have, and keeps us a-live. 

We should love God, and o-bey his ho-ly will.16 

Notably, “the heavy focus on English literacy did not negate the use of the Muskogee language,” and students within the network of Indian Territory Presbyterian sister schools were also instructed on Mvskoke language literacy.17 The Muscogee (Creek) Nation Council House in Okmulgee, OK, has reproductions of Creek language primers, one of which is pictured below: 

For writing and grammar purposes, writing tablets were used for students to exercise their developing language skills. Here are examples of paper writing tablets used at the time:  

While the Robertson Collection is short on classroom artifacts from PSIG, it does contain artifacts from the closely-related Tullahassee Mission School, like the “Creek Boys’ and Girls’ Monthly” newsletters and an 1874 Examination Program, as well as artifacts from Nuyaka including a roster of students living in Robertson Cottage.20 Analyzing those sister school artifacts alongside oral histories and memoirs from Anna Peterson Shortall, Susan Hampton Tiger, and Nellie Riley Woodward provides a sketch of daily life at school. Information from scholar Rowan Faye Steineker provides further context for that vision, explaining that a similar curriculum was deployed across Muscogee (Creek) Schools.21 

Within the classroom itself, the desks used by the students may have been similar to the desks currently inside the school room exhibit at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Council House, which the research team visited in February 2024:  

The desks had a cavity for an ink well positioned at the top. Underneath the desk were slots for the students to store their school materials. Students would share a bench and desktop as they listened to instruction and watched their teacher write on a chalkboard at the front of the room.  

A Day in the Life of a PSIG Student 

School sessions began in September, as the summer heat began to dissipate, and ran through early June.22 Monthly board and tuition cost $10.00 in 1891, with extra monthly charges for music and painting; day pupils could attend for $1.50-2.40 per month, “depending on studies taken.”23 Notably, students did not have to wear uniforms; students could wear clothing from home and while at school learned to “cut and make their own clothing” as part of the school curriculum.24 What they were fed is not yet known; however, it is reasonable to presume they ate food similar to that which Tullahassee students were fed, including dishes comprised of venison, corn, eggs, honey, pork, potatoes, bacon, peas, pumpkin, apples, dried fruit, and more.25 A typical day in the life of the school followed this schedule: 

5 a.m. - Rise and prepare for the day. Older students help younger students get ready by dressing them and combing their hair.26  

7 a.m. - Breakfast and chores.  

9 a.m. to lunch time and afterward - Classes begin. Students studied reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as homemaking, music, “Latin, French, drawing, stenography and typewriting,”27 painting, and “plain and ornamental needlework.”28 Students with more English language fluency supported those with less fluency. 

9 p.m. - Following dinner and evening chores, students prepared for bed by saying prayers and receiving good night affections from Alice. 

Weekly - Students attend church 3x weekly, including twice on Sundays - Sunday school and night service.29 

PSIG did not function in a vacuum. Student enrollment and accomplishments were advertised regularly in the Muskogee Phoenix. Students’ visits with family members, social events, and grades were shared with the community in the local newspaper for the public to review and congratulate. Here is one example, from 1888:  

The announcement shares social visits to and from the school, indicating that students were not restricted from visiting family and friends: “Miss Susie McCombs, of Eufaula, spent Monday with friends at Minerva [House]” and “Miss Ida Nash paid a brief visit to her brother at Wagoner.” The piece also notes that working professionals came to study or deliver lectures, and it shares student achievements, such as Emma McDonald and Tooka Sixkiller winning a “stocking darning contest,” and Addie Starr, Ella Harvison, and Belle Nunnallee earning high marks in spelling.  

The 1952 description of Nellie Riley’s experience in the school (in a memoir penned by her daughter Helen Slemp), provides useful information about the students’ religious education and experiences at PSIG. The memoir states that the “Students attended the Presbyterian Church three times a week,” illustrating that religion was a significant aspect of their education.31 The students who attended PSIG were routinely subjected to Presbyterian Christianity theology as “Religion was greatly stressed upon their minds.”32  

While reading, writing, and arithmetic instruction was common to most Indigenous boarding schools at the time, the girls at PSIG also engaged in gendered industrial education. Instead of the farming or mechanical workshop instruction that boys typically received, the girls “learned to sew and work in the kitchen and dining room and make the beds.”33 PSIG was an institute for girls, after this gender-segregated model, but it was unusual in its added emphasis on clerical instruction; young women were not only trained in housekeeping but also in stenography and typing. This progressive gendered education allowed the girls to pursue careers as teachers within the network of Indian Territory Presbyterian sister schools to give back to “their fellow community members and [serve] as models of educated Creek citizens.”34  

At PSIG students could participate in extracurriculars such as “voice and piano.”35 The girls also performed duets and participated in recitals to showcase their talents. In Indigenous boarding schools throughout the U.S., “Other school activities, such as choir, dance, and arts and crafts, also provided outlets for student expression.”36 Schooling at PSIG encouraged the development of the whole person and prepared young women to serve as wives and helpmeets of judges, politicians, and diplomats — and to serve as teachers, translators, and leaders in their own communities.  

Other Mvskoke publications, such as Our Brother in Red, shared news of school happenings in articles or announcements, such as this one from June 6, 1891: “The closing exercises of the Presbyterian school for girls took place last Wednesday evening. The Presbyterian church was crowded with the friends of the pupils. The exercises were reported as interesting and entertaining by all who were in attendance.”37 Multiple publications and large portions of the community continuously followed the students’ social events and academic successes at this on-reservation residential school during its years of operation leading up to June 4 and 5, 1894, when the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls held its final closing programs. In September of 1894, and after a major curriculum change decided by the Presbyterian Synod of Indian Territory, the school would reopen its doors as Henry Kendall College. 

Bibliography 

Burns, Duncan. Interviewed by Laura Stevens, Midge Dellinger, and Sara Beam, McFarlin Library Special Collections Classroom, February 16, 2024.  

Debo, Angie. The Road  to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941.

“Closing Exercises.” Our Brother in Red, June 16, 1888.  https://www.newspapers.com/image/658955161.   

“Locals.” Our Brother in Red, June 6, 1891. https://www.newspapers.com/image/584568379.   

Logsdon, Guy Williams. The University of Tulsa: A History, 1882-1972. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.  

McGuffey, William Holmes. McGuffey's New First Eclectic Reader: For Young Learners. New York, New York: American Book Company, 1885. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=GfoAAAAAYAAJ.  

Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, 1931-001. Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.   

Pratt, Richard H. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867- 1904, edited by Robert M. Utley Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. 

“Presbyterian School.” Muskogee Phoenix, December 13, 1888, https://www.newspapers.com/image/611428898.     

“Presbyterian School for Girls, Muskogee Indian Territory.” Cherokee Advocate, August 22, 1888, https://www.newspapers.com/image/611430232.  

“Presbyterian School for Girls,” Muskogee Phoenix, Sept. 12, 1889. https://www.newspapers.com/image/611268766.   

Robertson, Alice. “Training the Pupils To Be Better Indians,” Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1902, https://mvskokenationallibraryarchive.org/digital-heritage/annual-reports-commissioner-indian-affairs.

Slemp (Woodward), Helen. Early Day School Teaching, From Andy Lupardus, Personal Collection, Oct 12, 1952.   

Steineker, Rowan Faye. “‘Fully Equal to That of Any Children’: Experimental Creek Education in the Antebellum Era.” History of Education Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2016): 273–300. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26356302.  

Susan Hampton Tiger, Interview by Grace Kelly, June 11, 1937, Henryetta, transcript, The Indian Pioneer Papers Collection, The University of Oklahoma Digital Collections, https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/ref/collection/indianpp/id/5339.  

Thompson, Elizabeth. "The princess, the convert, and the schoolgirl: Indian girls and Anglo desire in American literature, 1595–1934." PhD diss., University of Tulsa, 2008.

Woolford, Andrew. This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. 

1 “Closing Exercises,” Our Brother in Red, June 16, 1888. https://www.newspapers.com/image/658955161; Susan Hampton Tiger, Interview by Grace Kelly, June 11, 1937, Henryetta, transcript, The Indian Pioneer Papers Collection, The University of Oklahoma Digital Collections,  https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/ref/collection/indianpp/id/5339, 113; Logsdon, Guy Williams. The University of Tulsa: A History, 1882-1972 (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 29.   

2 Logsdon, The University of Tulsa, 27.

3 Richard H. Pratt, Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904, ed. Robert M. Utley (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 261.

4 Elizabeth Thompson. "The Princess, the Convert, and the Schoolgirl: Indian Girls and Anglo Desire in American Literature, 1595–1934," (PhD diss., University of Tulsa, 2008), 233.

5 Alice Robertson, “Training the Pupils To Be Better Indians,” Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1902, https://mvskokenationallibraryarchive.org/digital-heritage/annual-reports-commissioner-indian-affairs.

6 Duncan Burns, interviewed by Laura Stevens, Midge Dellinger, and Sara Beam, February 16, 2024.

7 Thompson, "The Princess, the Convert, and the Schoolgirl," 232-233.

8 Logsdon, The University of Tulsa, 20.

9 Ibid., 21.

10 Ibid., 24 and 30.

11 Ibid., 12; Angie Debo, The Road to Disappearance: A History of the Creek Indians, (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), 249-250.

12 “Board of Home Missions.” The Presbyterian Monthly Record, vol. 37, no. 7, 1886, 247, https://books.google.com/books?id=ZW80AQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA247&ots=L6tAM3vpm6&dq=t%20w%20perryman%20nuyaka&pg=PA245#v=onepage&q&f=false.

13 "Examination of Muskogee Institute, Thursday June 25, 1874" document, 1931.001.3.9.7. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK; John Beaver, Cultural Center and Archives - Curator, Muscogee (Creek) Nation Council House Tour and Interview, February 23, 2024, Presbyterian School for Indian Girls Project, Tulsa, Oklahoma.   

14 William Holmes McGuffey, McGuffey's New First Eclectic Reader: For Young Learners, (New York, New York: American Book Company, 1885), 65-66.

15 McGuffey, McGuffey's New First Eclectic Reader, 38.

16 Ibid., 57.

17 Rowan Faye Steineker. “Winner of the Barnard Prize: ‘Fully Equal to That of Any Children’: Experimental Creek Education in the Antebellum Era.” History of Education Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2016): 286, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26356302.

18 "The New Handy Pencil Tablet", 1931.001.1.2.1. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.

19 “Writing Book: New York, Daniel Burgess and Co.” 1931.001.3.9.1. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.

20 "Creek Boys’ and Girls’ Monthly” newsletter," 1931.001.3.9.2. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK; “Examination of Tullahassee Manual Labor School - For July 16, 1874,” 1931.001.4.4.7. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK; "Names of the Girls of "R.C." 1886," 1931.001.3.4.2. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.  

21 Steineker, “Fully Equal,” 285.

22 “Locals,” Our Brother in Red, June 6, 1891. https://www.newspapers.com/image/584568379.

23 Logsdon, The University of Tulsa, 30.

24 Ibid., 29.

25 "Ledger from Tullahassee Manual Labor School 1871-1880,” 1931.001.5.3. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.

26 Helen (Woodward) Slemp, Early Day School Teaching, From Andy Lupardus, Personal Collection, Oct 12, 1952. On file with PSIG Project Group. 

27 “Presbyterian School for Girls, Indian Territory” Cherokee Advocate, August 22, 1888,  Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/611430232. 

28 “Presbyterian School for Girls,” Muskogee Phoenix, Sept. 12, 1889. https://www.newspapers.com/image/611268766.

29 Slemp, Early Day School Teaching.

30 “Presbyterian School,” Muskogee Phoenix, December 13, 1888, 4, Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/611428898.  

31 Slemp, Early Day School Teaching.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Steineker, “Fully Equal,” 293.

35 Slemp, Early Day School Teaching.

36 Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent Experiment: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide, and Redress in Canada and the United States (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 164.

37 “Locals.”