New book tells story of American Indian girls basketball team's unlikely road to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
BY CHUCK CLARINO Staff Writer
Linda Peavy was researching a book at the Montana Historical Society in Helena when a striking photograph caught her eye. The old black-and-white image showed eight American Indian girls clad in buckskin dresses standing in a semicircle.
When Peavy read the scrawled inscription on the back, "Girls basketball team, 1903 Fort Shaw Indian School," she knew she'd stumbled across a great story. On the phone with her collaborator Ursula Smith, the exuberant Peavy announced, "I've got the subject of our next book."
And with that, the team of Peavy and Smith, independent scholars in women's history and the American West, were off and running on what would be a decade-long mission to identify 10 American Indian girls and their unique place in history.
Peavy and Smith have learned to trust their instincts. Over a span of nearly 30 years, the team has collaborated on 10 books, countless magazine and scholarly articles, several television documentaries and other literary endeavors. They have found, as in this case, that often one project leads to another.
Peavy was conducting research for a previous book, "Frontier Children," when she discovered the photograph of the young women that led to their latest book, "Full Court Quest: The Girls from Fort Shaw Indian School Basketball Champions of the World," published by the University of Oklahoma Press, which will be released this weekend.
"We lived in Montana for nearly 20 years and had never heard of this team or this school," Peavy said in a recent interview around the kitchen table at their home in Middletown Springs. "I knew that I had to find out more about these girls."
"We've learned over the years … that serendipity is the researcher's greatest tool," Smith added. "Why else would that picture have fallen into our hands?"
That accidental discovery was the first step on a journey that would hold as many twists and turns as did the lives of the girls in the archival photo. Eventually they learned that the girls, once residents of the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School, formed a basketball team, playing "boys rules," and became a member of a loose-knit league that included high school and college teams in the state of Montana.
After they won the "state championship," they were sent off to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and continued playing basketball, eventually beating every team they met on the hardwoods. The fairgrounds included a model Indian school (set up as a exhibit by the Bureau of Indian Affairs) where the Fort Shaw team lived that summer and as a sidelight took on all comers in playing the game of basketball.
The girls captured the imagination of the Montana press, and their teamwork, speed and verve became something of a phenomenon in the state. Newspaper accounts in 1903 described their play metaphorically: "Like a wall of fire through a cane break," or "Like lambent flames … across a polished wood floor."
As they researched the girls' moment of glory, Peavy and Smith felt as though they had been working all their lives to tell this story. Their previous books - "Women Who Changed Things," "Dreams Into Deeds," "The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls," "Women in Waiting in the Western Movement," "Pioneer Women and Frontier Children" - revealed untold stories of the American West, its people and their lives. Here was another hidden tale from the West yet to be told.
Even so, the writers came to their subject with considerable trepidation.
"Was it our story to tell?" Smith asked. "It's a story you wish a Native American author would tell. We brought to it our own skills as women, writers, historians and researchers. Yet we were still two white women. We didn't know if we should pass up trying to get these girls into history."
In the end they decided the story was too alluring to ignore, and there was no guarantee that anyone else would tell it. During the decade they worked on the book, Peavy and Smith tracked down more than 70 descendants and tribal kin of the Fort Shaw players, 25 to 30 of whom collaborated on the project.
As they began to write the book, they realized the narrative encompasses more than the triumphs of a single basketball team at the turn of the last century. It is the story of displaced Indian children who were plucked from reservations in Montana and Idaho to attend distant boarding schools where they could speak English only and were taught to abandon their customs. The children represented different tribes and were forced to live together and learn academic lessons as well as master domestic skills, such as sewing and baking, animal husbandry and carpentry.
Meanwhile, Dr. James Naismith was developing the sport of basketball. The thread of learning and playing the game of "basket-ball," including introducing it to American Indian children, runs throughout the book and weaves its way through the daily life of the Indian girls and in the ambitious plans of the Fort Shaw Indian School superintendent and coach - Fred C. Campbell. The girls on the team - Nettie Wirth, Katie Snell, Minnie Burton, Sarah Mitchell, Genie Butch, Belle Johnson, Emma Sansaver, Josephine Langley, Delia Gebeau and Gen Healey - were all students at the school.
"This was not only a cross-cultural story but an interdisciplinary one," said Smith. "We had spent years writing about women and families in the American West, but we were neophytes in the field of American Indian studies, the history of sports, cultural history, especially as it pertained to international expositions."
Peavy and Smith also had to find a way to tell a complicated story in a straightforward manner. Their previous books were historical non-fiction but they believed that this book needed to be told with more narrative to make the girls' stories come alive on the page. To do this, they decided to riff on the facts and dates the way a jazz musician expands a melody.
They asked themselves, what were the girls thinking when they boarded the train to make their way from Montana to the World's Fair in St. Louis? What were they feeling, how would they act? How did they relate interpersonally as people as well as teammates?
Peavy and Smith have an unusual collaborative style. They write alternating chapters, then edit each other's chapter. This process provides unity. They intentionally wrote the book in scenes, hoping to create the atmosphere of the place where the story unfolds.
The reader can feel the cold Montana winter, the rigors of boarding school life and experience the thrill of winning.
The chapters are short and broken up into shorter scenes to advance the narrative.
"The only way we could tell the complicated story was through the use of scenes," said Peavy, who has written fiction.
This was a radical twist for Smith. While Peavy is eager to take chances and by her own admission is prone to "overwrite," Smith is more reserved, a rock-solid editor, who chooses to underwrite. Together they become the near-perfect writer.
Peavy and Smith spent years sifting through archives in various libraries and institutes in Montana and also at the Redd Center for Western Studies in Utah and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Although the tale is complex, they wanted the 10 girls to be their main characters. Once they had their archival data in hand, they took the story to the families and tribal kin to get the story behind the story.
"It was the enthusiasm and support of these descendants that kept us going for the 10 years it took to write this book," Peavy said. "They had heard their grandmothers talk about playing basketball at Fort Shaw and heard stories about the summer they spent in St. Louis (at the World's Fair)."
"They became our collaborators," Smith added. "Their memories and memorabilia helped us get to know the individual players, their personalities, their cultural heritage, their family ties, their experiences both before and after their years at the Fort Shaw school. Without those insights, we could never have brought the story alive."
In 2004, Peavy and Smith gathered the descendants and kin together for the first time. They came from all over Montana and represented many different tribes. Many of the girls on the team were of mixed blood and some of the descendants didn't acknowledge or have any knowledge of their American Indian heritage. The family of Belle Johnson, who was captain of the girls basketball team, brought the 1904 World's Fair trophy. The other descendants didn't know it existed.
They met on the porch of what was the home of Superintendent Campbell, the only remaining structure at the Forth Shaw Indian Boarding School, which folded in 1910 due to declining enrollment and a drastic shift in the Bureau of Indian Affair's educational policy. It is currently the headquarters of the Sun River Valley Historical Society.
The only vestige of 1904 World Champions at the site of the old school is a monument, a metal and stone tribute under the big sky on the windblown plain.
Peavy and Smith will return to Montana to give what they call "readings and recognitions" at the tribal colleges associated with the various reservations flung across Montana. They are also collaborating on a forthcoming documentary whose working title is "Champions of the World," currently in production at Montana PBS.
"When we gave presentations on the team in Montana and at various conferences all of the excitement and enthusiasm would come rushing back," said Peavy. "Seeing, hearing and sensing the audience's interest in and excitement about the story never fails to fire us up."
Contact Chuck Clarino at chucl.clarino@rutlandherald.com
http://www.ndnsports.com/...MS/article.php?storyid=36
BY CHUCK CLARINO Staff Writer
Linda Peavy was researching a book at the Montana Historical Society in Helena when a striking photograph caught her eye. The old black-and-white image showed eight American Indian girls clad in buckskin dresses standing in a semicircle.
When Peavy read the scrawled inscription on the back, "Girls basketball team, 1903 Fort Shaw Indian School," she knew she'd stumbled across a great story. On the phone with her collaborator Ursula Smith, the exuberant Peavy announced, "I've got the subject of our next book."
And with that, the team of Peavy and Smith, independent scholars in women's history and the American West, were off and running on what would be a decade-long mission to identify 10 American Indian girls and their unique place in history.
Peavy and Smith have learned to trust their instincts. Over a span of nearly 30 years, the team has collaborated on 10 books, countless magazine and scholarly articles, several television documentaries and other literary endeavors. They have found, as in this case, that often one project leads to another.
Peavy was conducting research for a previous book, "Frontier Children," when she discovered the photograph of the young women that led to their latest book, "Full Court Quest: The Girls from Fort Shaw Indian School Basketball Champions of the World," published by the University of Oklahoma Press, which will be released this weekend.
"We lived in Montana for nearly 20 years and had never heard of this team or this school," Peavy said in a recent interview around the kitchen table at their home in Middletown Springs. "I knew that I had to find out more about these girls."
"We've learned over the years … that serendipity is the researcher's greatest tool," Smith added. "Why else would that picture have fallen into our hands?"
That accidental discovery was the first step on a journey that would hold as many twists and turns as did the lives of the girls in the archival photo. Eventually they learned that the girls, once residents of the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School, formed a basketball team, playing "boys rules," and became a member of a loose-knit league that included high school and college teams in the state of Montana.
After they won the "state championship," they were sent off to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and continued playing basketball, eventually beating every team they met on the hardwoods. The fairgrounds included a model Indian school (set up as a exhibit by the Bureau of Indian Affairs) where the Fort Shaw team lived that summer and as a sidelight took on all comers in playing the game of basketball.
The girls captured the imagination of the Montana press, and their teamwork, speed and verve became something of a phenomenon in the state. Newspaper accounts in 1903 described their play metaphorically: "Like a wall of fire through a cane break," or "Like lambent flames … across a polished wood floor."
As they researched the girls' moment of glory, Peavy and Smith felt as though they had been working all their lives to tell this story. Their previous books - "Women Who Changed Things," "Dreams Into Deeds," "The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls," "Women in Waiting in the Western Movement," "Pioneer Women and Frontier Children" - revealed untold stories of the American West, its people and their lives. Here was another hidden tale from the West yet to be told.
Even so, the writers came to their subject with considerable trepidation.
"Was it our story to tell?" Smith asked. "It's a story you wish a Native American author would tell. We brought to it our own skills as women, writers, historians and researchers. Yet we were still two white women. We didn't know if we should pass up trying to get these girls into history."
In the end they decided the story was too alluring to ignore, and there was no guarantee that anyone else would tell it. During the decade they worked on the book, Peavy and Smith tracked down more than 70 descendants and tribal kin of the Fort Shaw players, 25 to 30 of whom collaborated on the project.
As they began to write the book, they realized the narrative encompasses more than the triumphs of a single basketball team at the turn of the last century. It is the story of displaced Indian children who were plucked from reservations in Montana and Idaho to attend distant boarding schools where they could speak English only and were taught to abandon their customs. The children represented different tribes and were forced to live together and learn academic lessons as well as master domestic skills, such as sewing and baking, animal husbandry and carpentry.
Meanwhile, Dr. James Naismith was developing the sport of basketball. The thread of learning and playing the game of "basket-ball," including introducing it to American Indian children, runs throughout the book and weaves its way through the daily life of the Indian girls and in the ambitious plans of the Fort Shaw Indian School superintendent and coach - Fred C. Campbell. The girls on the team - Nettie Wirth, Katie Snell, Minnie Burton, Sarah Mitchell, Genie Butch, Belle Johnson, Emma Sansaver, Josephine Langley, Delia Gebeau and Gen Healey - were all students at the school.
"This was not only a cross-cultural story but an interdisciplinary one," said Smith. "We had spent years writing about women and families in the American West, but we were neophytes in the field of American Indian studies, the history of sports, cultural history, especially as it pertained to international expositions."
Peavy and Smith also had to find a way to tell a complicated story in a straightforward manner. Their previous books were historical non-fiction but they believed that this book needed to be told with more narrative to make the girls' stories come alive on the page. To do this, they decided to riff on the facts and dates the way a jazz musician expands a melody.
They asked themselves, what were the girls thinking when they boarded the train to make their way from Montana to the World's Fair in St. Louis? What were they feeling, how would they act? How did they relate interpersonally as people as well as teammates?
Peavy and Smith have an unusual collaborative style. They write alternating chapters, then edit each other's chapter. This process provides unity. They intentionally wrote the book in scenes, hoping to create the atmosphere of the place where the story unfolds.
The reader can feel the cold Montana winter, the rigors of boarding school life and experience the thrill of winning.
The chapters are short and broken up into shorter scenes to advance the narrative.
"The only way we could tell the complicated story was through the use of scenes," said Peavy, who has written fiction.
This was a radical twist for Smith. While Peavy is eager to take chances and by her own admission is prone to "overwrite," Smith is more reserved, a rock-solid editor, who chooses to underwrite. Together they become the near-perfect writer.
Peavy and Smith spent years sifting through archives in various libraries and institutes in Montana and also at the Redd Center for Western Studies in Utah and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Although the tale is complex, they wanted the 10 girls to be their main characters. Once they had their archival data in hand, they took the story to the families and tribal kin to get the story behind the story.
"It was the enthusiasm and support of these descendants that kept us going for the 10 years it took to write this book," Peavy said. "They had heard their grandmothers talk about playing basketball at Fort Shaw and heard stories about the summer they spent in St. Louis (at the World's Fair)."
"They became our collaborators," Smith added. "Their memories and memorabilia helped us get to know the individual players, their personalities, their cultural heritage, their family ties, their experiences both before and after their years at the Fort Shaw school. Without those insights, we could never have brought the story alive."
In 2004, Peavy and Smith gathered the descendants and kin together for the first time. They came from all over Montana and represented many different tribes. Many of the girls on the team were of mixed blood and some of the descendants didn't acknowledge or have any knowledge of their American Indian heritage. The family of Belle Johnson, who was captain of the girls basketball team, brought the 1904 World's Fair trophy. The other descendants didn't know it existed.
They met on the porch of what was the home of Superintendent Campbell, the only remaining structure at the Forth Shaw Indian Boarding School, which folded in 1910 due to declining enrollment and a drastic shift in the Bureau of Indian Affair's educational policy. It is currently the headquarters of the Sun River Valley Historical Society.
The only vestige of 1904 World Champions at the site of the old school is a monument, a metal and stone tribute under the big sky on the windblown plain.
Peavy and Smith will return to Montana to give what they call "readings and recognitions" at the tribal colleges associated with the various reservations flung across Montana. They are also collaborating on a forthcoming documentary whose working title is "Champions of the World," currently in production at Montana PBS.
"When we gave presentations on the team in Montana and at various conferences all of the excitement and enthusiasm would come rushing back," said Peavy. "Seeing, hearing and sensing the audience's interest in and excitement about the story never fails to fire us up."
Contact Chuck Clarino at chucl.clarino@rutlandherald.com
http://www.ndnsports.com/...MS/article.php?storyid=36
