Elizabeth Bender (1888–1965), a Chippewa Indian from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, entered Hampton Institute’s Indian Program in 1903. Like her sister Anna, Elizabeth published nonfiction essays in Talks and Thoughts. In the essay that follows, Elizabeth describes a trip she took with Anna “From Hampton to New York.” As Elizabeth explains in her essay, she and Anna were not simply on a sightseeing trip. They were “chosen” to go north to sing Ojibwe songs and speak at “parlor meetings . . . for the benefit of Hampton.” Even though school authorities wanted to emphasize that students were being successfully civilized, they often referenced the tribal past of students and displayed them as “examples” or “objects” whenever it proved beneficial for drumming up financial support for the schools. There are several possible reasons why Elizabeth and Anna were chosen to represent Hampton’s Indian Program. They both excelled academically; were active in a number of organizations, including the Josephines, a female literary society; and published their writings in the school’s student-run Talks and Thoughts. From the perspective of school authorities, exemplary students like Elizabeth and Anna were a walking testament to Hampton’s Indian Program.
Elizabeth Bender would continue to publish nonfiction essays in the boarding school press after she graduated from Hampton in 1907. After completing postgraduate work in teaching at Hampton, she taught among the Blackfeet on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana, which she recounts in her 1916 essay “A Hampton Graduate’s Experience” (see part 2, this volume), and at Carlisle. Later in life she was active in the women’s club movement and in programs aimed at developing Indian education. Through her membership in the Society of American Indians she met and married Henry Roe Cloud, a founding member of the society and founder of the American Indian Institute, where Bender taught as well as contributed to the institute’s newspaper, the Indian Outlook. In the 1940s she was named chair of the Indian Welfare Committee of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, and in 1950 she was named American Mother of the Year, the first Native American woman to win that honor. (Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement, 174; Molin, “‘Training the Hand’”; Tetzloff, “Elizabeth Bender Cloud”)
Early in January my sister and I had an opportunity to go north to speak and sing at some of the parlor meetings that were held in Philadelphia and New York for the benefit of Hampton.
We left Old Point Comfort one evening and reached Baltimore the next morning. As we were being transferred from one depot to another we had a good view of the burned district and the many large new buildings that are being put up. One who had not seen or read of the terrible fire would hardly know the difference the new buildings are going up so rapidly.
From Baltimore we went on to Philadelphia and as soon as we reached there we started to go about the city. First of all we visited the Lincoln Institute. There are about forty Indian scholars, mostly little tots. We got there just as they were having dinner and they seemed to be very happy indeed, to judge by the broad smiles on their faces. We also visited Independence and Carpenter Halls and they are about the most interesting places I have ever been to. In the evening we attended the meeting which was held in a private house for the benefit of the school. Bishop McVickar presided and it was very interesting.
The next morning we left for New York and remained there about ten days. Between the meetings we had a good deal of time to go about the city and we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Natural History, the Aquarium, Zoological Garden, Academy of Design, the Settlements, and also went to a lecture on Holland and to a concert where a young Hungarian violinist played with great skill. In the Aquarium were every kind of fish imaginable. They were swimming around in large glass cases and seemed to be as much at home as in their native haunts.
The Museum of Natural History interested me the most for it contained so many Indian ornaments, weapons, domestic utensils, medicines, and I believe every imaginable thing that the different tribes of America have used. It seems so strange that nearly all the tribes should differ so very greatly in the way of dress and of living.
We spent one whole day at the Zoological Park. It was great fun watching the many kinds of monkeys, some seemed almost human. In one of the houses were all sorts of reptiles. One of them was twenty-two feet long, and the keeper said that they had one that was twenty-eight. We did not remain there very long for it gave us the creeps. There were ever so many kinds of animals and birds which one could not stop to mention, some of them I had never heard of before.
In spite of all these good times we were not sorry when the time came for us to come back to Hampton, and we think we were very fortunate to have been the ones chosen to go, for we had a chance to see so much and meet so many interesting people.24