STEWART INDIAN SCHOOL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT BOXER, SAILOR, GUITAR PLAYER: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROLF BROWN Interviewed by Terri McBride Transcribed by Barbara L. Zeigler Funded by: Nevada Indian Commission © Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown Funded by: Copyright 2017 Nevada Indian Commission 5366 Snyder Avenue Carson City, Nevada 89701 2 Boxer, Sailor, Guitar Player: An Interview with Rolf Brown Rolf Brown is a Shoshone man from Darwin, California, between Owens and Death Valleys. After his mother died, the Inyo County officials took Rolf and his siblings away from their father. Because the authorities would not allow a single father to raise children, they placed the children in separate foster homes. The Inyo County schools did not enroll local American Indians in junior high or high school, so Rolf and his twin brother Ralph were sent to Stewart Indian School after fifth grade in Bishop. At Stewart, Rolf excelled at sports, competing in the Golden Gloves tournament for boxing in San Francisco in 1947. Immediately after graduating from Stewart, Rolf joined the U.S. Navy and served on the USS Missouri during the Korean War. Rolf currently lives in Lone Pine, California. His niece Katy Diaz was present for the interview. My name is Terri McBride and it is December No, not right away I didn’t. We were down at 21, a Wednesday, in 2016 and we are at the Lake Hughes. You know where Lake Hughes Southern Inyo Healthcare facility in Lone Pine, is? That’s where they took us. California in Rolf Brown’s room. The interview Yes. is with Rolf Brown, a former student at Stewart Indian School. We will be discussing his We didn’t see any Indians ‘til we came to experiences as a student. This interview is being Bishop [California]. conducted for the Stewart Indian School Oral Did you have a lot of contact with Anglos, with History Project for the Nevada Indian white families, then? Commission and will be archived at the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center, the State Library Katy Diaz (Rolf’s niece): He and his brother and Archives, and at the Special Collections at were adopted by a white family. the University of Nevada, Reno. R: No, not a real lot. I don’t remember a lot of What is your name? them now. They’ll get together and go up to my foster sister’s home in Hamil Valley. Her Rolf Brown. name’s Jeannie. When were you born and where were you born? I’m sorry, you said what valley? 1929 in Darwin, California. It’s a little town Katy: Hamil, H-A-M-I-L. It’s north of Bishop. over there going to Death Valley. Turn off 395 and go the other way. How many people were in your family? Did you celebrate American Indian ceremonies I remember I had two sisters. Five. Ralph, before you went to Stewart? Warren, and my two sisters. No. So you had two brothers and two sisters? What language was spoken in your household Yes. when you were a child? Did you grow up around other Indian families Shoshone.Were there problems communicating when you were little? between the parents and the children? Or the older relatives and the children? 1 Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown No, we all talked English. I didn’t learn any Now I’m going to ask you some questions about Indian language. Just a little bit of Paiute. your time at the school. What was your first impression when you got there? Were any of your other family members educated at Stewart School? To Stewart? No. Yes. When you got off that bus! Katy: His twin brother, Ralph. To start with, we were in a gymnasium. There were beds and they were fixing the whole school Did your brother, Ralph, go there? up. There was a dormitory there and they were Yeah, he went to school too. working on it. Before we could move to the dormitory, we stayed in the gymnasium. Rolf, what years were you at Stewart Indian School? Do you remember? This is a general question. Did you enjoy being a student at Stewart? 1941 to ‘47. Yeah. How did you end up going to Stewart in the first place? Why? What about it? We couldn’t function in the public school in Soon as we started in the fifth grade and I was Bishop. We started there; I don’t remember there until high school started. They moved us what year, to the fifth grade and they took us out from there to the large boy’s site. Different of there and sent us to Stewart, in 1941. dormitories over by the gymnasium. That’s where me and Ralph—we were separated then. So somebody made you go to Stewart? We were in different dormitories. We got used to that and we got used to standing in line to get I don’t know about that part but we couldn’t dinner or meals at the dining room and stuff. function at the public school, I guess you call it. When we’d come back, we’d go to different At first, we went to the West Bishop School, that dormitories. We’d know where we were at school out there in West Bishop. That’s a during the day. After school, we had a little Presbyterian Church now. Then they closed that trouble in school. It was over the names. My down and we had to go to grammar school in name was spelled R-O-L-P-H and his was R-A Bishop. I went there about, let’s see, a year or [l-p-h]. We got our names all mixed up. They so. I remember they took us out of there and did! There were papers and stuff. Later on, I sent us to Stewart, me and my brother. changed mine to R-O-L-F so they could tell who That first trip, when you went to Stewart for the was who. (laughs) first time, how did you get there? Did you drive, When you left home to go to Stewart, do you did somebody take a bus? remember what you took with you and how you Yeah, the school bus took us up there. chose what to take? Were you old enough to understand where you Yeah, we had a suitcase. We both got a suitcase were going when you got on that bus? for our birthday. We took our regular clothes, what would make a suit, you know, they Yeah, we were told that we were going to matched, pants and shirt or a coat. They were Nevada, to go to school in Nevada. I didn’t know where until we got there. 2 Rolf Brown and his niece Katy Diaz. Lone Pine, California, December 21, 2016. like a little suit. We didn’t dress in dungarees or lot of supplies were shipped in by train. There nothing ‘til we got to Stewart. We started was a place on the campus where they pushed changing and dressed like they did. They had the trains in and park them and they’d leave Levi’s and coveralls, denim, and a jacket, we them there until we unloaded them. Same way went to work. See, we went to school, when we with the coal. They burned coal in a big plant, a went to high school, we went half a day and power plant, so we had to unload all that coal. I worked half a day at the farm or at the shops. mean it dumped itself . . . get away from the We raised our own potatoes and agriculture. tracks so the trains could pull out. I remember They had a school ranch at Jack’s Valley. They that! raised cattle too. Raised beef and raised I have some more questions about the potatoes up there, which were gathered by the vocational training in a little bit. Did you get students when it came time to pick them. We packages from home at Stewart? Did they send had to dig them and put them in sacks and send you care packages? them to Stewart, to a cellar, there at the farm. The cattle was our main supply. Whenever they Yeah! Like at Christmas. They’d send us needed a beefsteak, whatever, I don’t know packages, our foster folks. They sent a lot of what, they’d send it to a slaughterhouse in home cooked cookies and cake and stuff to us Minden, Nevada. They slaughtered there and too, up there. Besides our presents, we’d get cut it up and sent it to Stewart in cold storage. our gloves and shirts and pants. That’s just what I remember. We raised most of Did you have any problem sending mail out? our beef and potatoes and we picked. Let’s see, what else. We had apples and oranges too but No. we didn’t grow them there. They were shipped in. See that train went past Stewart, too. The V Did they censor the letters from the students? & T. It went to Gardnerville and turned around Do you know? and went back past Stewart to Carson and went Censor? No. In school, they gave us, well, we up to Reno. It went back and forth. There was a had our own tablets but we’d write a letter and 3 Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown they gave us stamped envelopes and we’d write No. I remember the first one we had in the fifth a letter and the teacher would read it first to grade. She was an Indian woman. See, all our correct it to make sure we’d write in English, teachers were white or Indian. She was an which we did all the time anyway. Then it was Indian woman and her name was Mrs. Harnoer. mailed to the [unintelligible, “folks”?] in Mrs. what? Bishop. Then they’d write back and they’d send us packages during Christmas. Harnoer. H-A-R-N-O-E-R, or something like that. We got along okay with her, me and my Did you purchase things at the student store, brother. She didn’t let others above us push us Novake? around or anything. See, there were different Yeah. tribes there, from different parts of the country. Oregon I remember, Oregon and Nevada were What kinds of things? one of them. Main ones and California. We got Candy! Candy and Pepsi. I remember that! into fights on the playground and in the Bottles of Pepsi. And there were chocolate dormitories, but it didn’t last long because of, cupcakes and candy that was sold at the store. oh, he wasn’t a teacher. I forget what they call him. Anyway, he was in charge of the boys and You talked a little bit about this earlier. What the girls had their own. See, they kept us was living in the dorms like? Was that fun? separated. We didn’t mix with the girls. The Was that not fun? girls stayed on that side of the campus and we had our own side down toward the farm, down It wasn’t bad. We had to sweep our own rooms that way. The only time we got to visit the girls out and on the weekend, like a Saturday we had was after dinner. You’d go to the different parts to scrub the rooms. They had hardwood floors of the campus or to the store and buy some and we had to scrub out the rooms then. All the goodies if you had money, buy little cakes or details were different—the hallway and the Pepsi or something and just talk and visit for a lavatory and the basement. Each one had a short time. Then everybody went back to their different job to do. And the next year you come own dormitory for night call, for bed call. Make back and you had different things to do. Not the sure everybody was in the right place! (laughs) same every year. We changed around. You worked in the basement then went upstairs, Did you have a favorite class? hallways, lavatories and the dining room. No, not the dining room, the sitting room. We had Favorite one? No. all our meetings in there. What about vocational training? What kinds of What was eating in the dining hall like and what skills were you taught when you went there? was the food like there? I worked in the shoe shop, repairing shoes. I worked in the kitchen too. I helped mix salads Shoemaking? and peeled potatoes. Yeah. And I went to the mechanic shop, too. Try to learn a little about motors. I didn’t get Was the food okay? too far in that mechanics. And then I went to the farm and the ranch. That’s what I liked the best, Yeah. was the farm and the ranch in Jack’s Valley, the school farm. We stayed up there. We didn’t go Did you have a favorite teacher? to school. We stayed there six weeks! That’s why you liked that the best! (laughs) 4 Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown (Laughs) Yeah. And the boss up there, I liked liked that place because there was a lot of places him, had a daughter and a son and they went to to go hiking and went into some of those old school but they went to Gardnerville to school. mines. We were told not to play in the mines To high school. They didn’t go to Stewart. He but we did anyway. (laughs) I remember we had was a good guy. He taught us. We learned how an old ore car that we played with. We pushed it to milk cows, for one thing. They had horses to back in as far as we could on the tracks. We’d ride, saddle horses, and we stayed in rooms start pushing, pushing, and we’d jump on it and upstairs above the main ranch house. The dining ride it out of the cave back to the ore bin where room was downstairs and we lived upstairs. We they dumped the ore. It would coast across the all got along good. There were four students at a road, there was a big post there, and it’d stop time that went up there and stayed until the time there. They dump that and then they’d push it was up and then go back. Then four more would back into the mine. Those old timers. Those go up there. So, year- round there were students cars were still rolling. That’s what we played working there. on. We were told not to do that but we did, because nobody was with us when we were So, did you work there in the summers or during hiking. One time they bought us a saddle horse the actual school year? to ride to school when we went to West Bishop. Oh, no. We came home in the summer, in the We didn’t ride it all the way to school. We rode spring, in May. We stayed home all summer it to the [older?] school there, to the little store in until fall, ‘til school started in September. Then West Bishop. We knew the man that ran this we went back to Stewart. We would spend store and we’d leave our horses in his pasture every summer at home; we wouldn’t stay in until after school when we’d walk back to the school. Everybody went home then, if you had a store, get our horse, and ride back to the mines. home. I learned later on that some of the (laughs) One time we didn’t even go to school. students went home and went to another school We rode around all day until they saw on our for the summer. They went to other caretakers. report card that we missed school. We didn’t I was just learning about the Indians then. know that they wrote us down on the report Before that we didn’t know any Indians until we card. We couldn’t lie out of that one. So, they went to Stewart. When we got to Bishop the took the horse away from us! (laughs) That’s first time we didn’t live right in town. We lived when we started riding the bus after that. We in Tungsten City where they milled and mined started riding the school bus to school. way up hill near Mt. Dome up in Round Valley. Did you graduate from Stewart? We lived up there because our stepdad, he was a miner in Tungsten. They drove us down to the Yeah, in 1948. bus stop from Tungsten City through that road. I know you’re going to love this topic. Describe I forget the name of that road that goes from Red what the athletics at Stewart meant to you. Did Hill to the Highway 395, and it comes straight you play sports? across to another road that goes up, Bishop Creek Road, there’s two roads that came into Yeah! town. Not just 395. I remember that we had to What sports did you play? catch a bus to school. The first time we had to walk; we were going to walk to school. They Football, to start with. After that they had took us to school. We had to walk home; they’d basketball and boxing. I tried to play basketball come and get us. Sometimes we’d walk a but I wasn’t very tall so I got into boxing. I couple of miles, maybe three miles, until they liked that better so I stayed with the boxing came and picked us up and took us home, back every year I went back. up to Tungsten City. That was a good place. I 5 Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown Were you in some championships in boxing? Can I ask, what kind of events or activities did you go to at the auditorium on campus? What Yeah! In flyweight. The lightest weight was kinds of things did you go do at the auditorium? flyweight, 112 [lbs]. In 1944. I remember that because I still have that trophy. Oh, that’s where we had some movies on Saturday or Sunday, whenever they had a So, you won that year in that weight class? projector. It was one of those with the great big Yeah! Then the next year I went up to 118, wheel, like that, in the aisle, way at the back. which was a bantam weight. There was a screen on the stage that they let down. That’s where we seen the movies from. What is it? There’d be an instructor that had to change the reels and stuff when it ended and had to put Bantam. another reel on the storyteller. We seen a lot of So, after 1944 you bumped up to the bantam western movies and Tarzan movies and stuff like weight class? that. And Frankenstein! (laughs) I remember those movies! Yeah. Did the boys and girls get to sit together in And how’d you do? there? Well, I didn’t win much in that one. Then I No. mowed up, the next year I was 135 [lbs]. That’s a lightweight. That’s the heaviest I got and So girls on one side and boys on the other. that’s where I stayed. I didn’t get any heavier Yeah. than that. I stayed in lightweight class. 135 pounds. I boxed in the weight classes and I won What about social events on campus. Were one in Reno and we went to San Francisco. We there dances? Did you do things like that? didn’t do very good down there. Them guys were tough guys, they’re fast! We were Oh, yeah, they had school dances in the excluded but we stayed there through the gymnasium! They didn’t have a band, but a tournament. Then we came back to Stewart. juke box that played the music. They changed We didn’t go down there very much because records, whichever they wanted to hear. But when they did, they had to get different cars to that was all, they didn’t have a band or anything take us. We didn’t go on a bus. When they did like that. They had a carnival there too, a school they had to get two different cars or a panel carnival. The students, we didn’t handle any truck we had to travel in. We’d all stop to eat money. We had big rolls of tickets. A dime or lunch or something and we’d all go into the twenty-five cents and you bought whatever you restaurant and sit down and eat. Of course, they could, depending on your money. You’d take had a hotel rented for the team. I remember that your tickets and use them for different things because it was on Market Street right across the around the gym like pitching balls, or darts, or main road there to the Civic Auditorium. We basketball, and they’d take your ticket walked from the hotel over to the Civic away. They didn’t let us have any money in Auditorium when the fights started. When that there. They thought we’d lose all of it or was all over, we all piled in the cars and we somebody would take more than we wanted came back to Stewart. them to, so we had those tickets. I remember You also played football. How many years did that because I saved money when I worked in you play football? the summer at Bishop. I worked in a dairy, I Three. 6 Stewart Braves football team, 1945. Rolf is #57 at front left. His brother Ralph is #51, also in front row. worked baling hay, hauling hay. Mostly farm The dining room! work. That’s why I liked the farm. The dining hall, yeah. The shops, the workshops You liked being outside. Were you in any clubs or just the campus grounds themselves. Do you or groups like the marching band or social clubs have any particular memory of any of those like that on campus? buildings that you’d like to share? You told me about the school carnival that was in the gym. Oh, yeah! Katy: He used to work in the bakery. What were those? I told you I used to work in the shoe shop, and I wasn’t in any band; I wasn’t in the band. I the mechanic shop, and the paint shop. I did didn’t do any dancing either. I didn’t know how painting. You know, on a house, painting with a to dance or I never learned how to dance so I roller and brushes, doing a wall and sheathing. didn’t go very much to the dances. I couldn’t [congregate?] with the girls and stuff and doing Did you go to church at Stewart? that so I just left it alone and did everything with Oh, yeah. the boys in there. Which one? For the buildings on campus: Do you have experiences in any particular building on It was called a mission and they were campus that stands out to you? You did just talk Presbyterian. They had a Catholic—at the about the gym and the school carnival. Like the auditorium, that was a Catholic class. We gym or the dorms or the infirmary. weren’t Catholic so we didn’t do any of those. We went to the mission. They had all kind of 7 Stewart Indian School Oral History Project: Rolf Brown religions. You could be any kind other than And then you were friends with them in the Catholic. I didn’t do anything—I didn’t play an summer when you all came back to Bishop? instrument. I never learned how to play a guitar Yeah. until real late, way at the end of school. Some guys brought a guitar to school and I’d go and Did you ever get sick at Stewart? listen to them and watch ‘em. I started learning Yeah! from them, how to hold chords. Next summer when I went home, I bought a guitar, a little Did you have to go to the infirmary? cheap guitar in the store and [unintelligible] on that. But I did learn, I still play a guitar. I have Sure! I had the measles one time and the one, it’s at home. mumps. I remember that! A lot of the school kids were getting the mumps and we’d end up in Katy: I have your guitar. the hospital. You know they had a hospital there too. It’s a Martin guitar. One of the . . . it cost about eighty-some dollars. Right! What was that like? That’s nice! Are there any classmates you have It was good. There was doctors and nurses. A memories of from Stewart? lot of Indian girls were being trained as a nurse too, to be nurses. So, I knew some of them in Oh, yeah! You mean my buddies? Sure! the hospital. Who were they? This is more personal. As a student, were you You want to know their names? There were shy, were you mischievous, were you happy, some from Bishop for one thing. There was were you quiet, were you sad? What kind of kid Ryan Williams, Bill Turner. were you? You went to Stewart with these guys? Well shy, for one thing. I couldn’t . . . I didn’t learn how to dance! I couldn’t communicate Yeah. They were from Bishop too. with a girl like that. In school during a play Katy: He’s talking about his friends from when we done, learn our parts, say them. Bishop. Do you remember any friends from You were in a play? Stewart School, Uncle Rolf? Yeah! All the grades had a play, something they Yeah! I don’t know if they’re alive or not. I did in the auditorium. You know, what they haven’t seen them in years. Of course, they’re learned in class and get up in front and say as old as I am now too. I’m 86 or 87. poems or read something that you did in school. Katy: I think you’re 87 now. You had your Oh, we was playing drums too, with about four birthday a little while back. other kids, boys. We went to the music teacher who was teaching us how to play a drum, the Were there any friends from home, from Bishop little drums, those snares. It was a drumming when you were at school? Did you know any class. I don’t remember . . . today I couldn’t other kids from Bishop that were at Stewart play a drum! when you were there? When you were at Stewart, can you remember Yeah! back, what were your future plans? What were Were you friends with them at school? you thinking you were going to do when you got done with school? Yeah. 8