Essie's Story: The Life and Legacy of a Shoshone Teacher

by Esther Burnett Horne, Sally McBeth

This is the spirited story of Esther Burnett Horne, an accomplished and inspiring educator in Indian boarding schools. Born in 1909, Horne attended Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and often visited relatives on the Shoshone Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Motivated by teachers like Ella Deloria and Ruth Muskrat Bronson, Horne devoted her life to educating other Indian children. She began teaching at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, in 1930 and has remained active in education to the present day.

 

Her experiences as student and teacher have enabled Horne to provide a detailed portrait of Indian boarding schools. We learn about daily life at Haskell and about the challenges and rewards of teaching for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Wahpeton. Above all, Horne's life illuminates the ongoing struggle by Native teachers and students to retain their cultural identities within a government educational system designed to assimilate them.

 

Esther Horne and Sally McBeth developed this life history in a truly collaborative manner. McBeth carefully documented both Horne’s personal history and the creation of this work. What emerges is an engaging and informative narrative about education and identity.

Genres: Biography Memoir, Native American

225 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Shoshone woman tells her life story, drawn out by anthropologist Sally McBeth through a series of interviews and long editing and clarifying sessions over a 10-year period. I recommend it to anyone interested in either Indian boarding schools or Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who helped translate and guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Esther Burnett Horne was a student from 1924 to 29 and then a teacher for 30 years at Indian boarding schools in Kansas, Oklahoma and Minnesota. She loved her experiences.

The schools are widely criticized for their efforts to separate children from their culture and their families, forbidding them to speak their native languages and teaching them English and vocational trades in order to make them into productive citizens of white society. Sometimes, especially pre-1930s, children were abused and many died from diseases and inadequate health care. Horne's story is proof that some children thrived at boarding school; she was a good student and developed her natural leadership abilities. She was, in fact, glad to leave behind an environment of poverty and neglect after her father died and her mother struggled to support six children. As a teacher, she was ahead of her time, making Indian culture part of her curriculum and teaching Indian dance.

Horne claims descent from Bazil, Sacajawea's adopted son and nephew, and considers her heritage at the core of her identity.

There are two schools of thought as to what happened to Sacajawea after the Lewis and Clark expedition. An Indian wife of the Frenchman Charbonneau died in 1812 and many historians are convinced that it was Sacajawea. However, Shoshone oral tradition says that Sacajawea died an old woman in 1884 and was buried on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. There is no question that there was an elderly woman claiming to be Sacajawea who lived on the reservation at the time.

Anthropologist McBeth has a lot of interesting things to say about the way we treat written and oral history. Indians who could not read and write handed down their stories by telling them to each younger generation. Although she first heard them spoken, Horne documented in writing the stories she heard from people who knew the Wind River Sacajawea first hand.

"Truth is highly subjective,"McBeth says. "What exactly happened in the past may never be understood fully, because the past is remembered differently by different individuals whose perspectives are influenced by timing, culture, insights, agendas, and the past."

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collaborative autobiography that Sally McBeth and Esther Burnett Horne wrote over ten years. Sally McBeth has previously written a well regarded book on Native American boarding schools in Oklahoma. "Essie" Horne spent her first years on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. She saw herself as the great granddaughter of Sacajawea. She then attended Haskell Indian Boarding School in Kansas and later became a teacher at a boarding school in Oklahoma. Most of her career was spent at Wahpeton Indian Boarding School in Wahpeton, ND. She tells a positive story of both her student and teaching experiences at these different boarding schools. Sally McBeth has several chapters on the process used in developing this book. It presents the arc of her life well. Essie died a few years after this book was finished.

[Catherine Richmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Negative information about Indian boarding schools get our attention. When her father's death cut the family income, Essie was sent to Haskell boarding school. She thrived, found purpose in educating other Native American students, and changed curriculum to honor NA culture. My favorite story was about Essie enlisting the elders of the community to help a 4-H club develop an Indian dance project which won locally, regionally, and at the state fair. A life well-lived, even in retirement!

[Kathy Foley · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting memoir about a very brilliant Shoshone Indian that tried to help her people survive in the white man's culture and keep their Native American identity.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting topic about an amazing lady. I'm thinking Essie's life was more interesting than the writing style portrayed. She seemed to be an engaged, dedicated educator, but at times the writing style seemed to be a little plodding. [I did this, then I did this. This is why.] This autobiography was written with the assistance of a professional author....I think possibly that author could have been more creative at turning this lady's interesting life into an interesting read. At the end of the book, there was what seemed to be an extensive documentation of testimony about Sacajawea's disputed date of death....good for reference material.

[Becky]

My first exposure to a positive position on Indian boarding schools. The telling was a little awkward though.

[Allison6876 · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for paper AMIN 3201W