Document 6. The Field Matron's Work, Lida W. Quimby, Puyallup, Washington.
Department of the Interior, Annual Report Commissioner of Indian Affairs, The Field Matron's Work by Lida W. Quimby, (Washington, D.C., :Department of the Interior, 1900), 468-469.
Quimby's report likewise emphasized the importance of the educational function of field matrons and the primacy of domestic work. In this excerpt from her report to the Charleston Conference she waxed lyrical about the delights of domestic arts and their function as the bulwark of the happy home.
| The purpose of the Government in supporting field
matrons, housekeepers, and reservation boarding schools is to equip the
young Indians with a practical knowledge of the elements of domestic
science, as well as elementary book learning. The training in
boarding schools should fit the pupil for domestic life, for work in the
home after leaving school. To sweep a floor, cook a meal, or make
a garment is the training the Indian girl needs most, rather than stress
upon the literary studies.
The barn with its "chores," the farm and garden, the carpenter shop, and the everyday detail of boarding-school work correspond to the tasks that are predestined to enter into the lives of every child in school. Home and home-making is the impelling power of life. |