Don't Let the Sun Step Over You Chapter 5 & 6

In these two chapters of Don’t Let the Sun Step over you, Eva Tulene Watt focuses upon her time spent at St. John Boarding School (Chapter 5) and when she went home after her mother went blind, and her family life with a her new stepfather (Charley Marley). However, for this post I am going to focus specifically on chapter 5 because it relates to my mid-term about the experience at Indian Boarding Schools (good and bad) and her experience is definitely a puzzle piece of the larger picture.
Watt begins with her arrival to St. Johns and her remembering that she and her brother Dewey were tied up with a rope by a priest to keep them inside of the seat because he may have felt that they may stand up. Really it sounds like he was worried that they would run off and parish the thought that he lose “precious Indian cargo”. That seems to be the way in which they were treated, like a crate tied to the top of a car. Once she arrived she was immediately put into a group of girls and ushered around the school.
Her experience with church, religion, and people of the catholic faith is very interesting. She is told her first day in church by another student “this is a church. You’re not supposed to talk loud in here. You have to be quiet ‘til it’s over with”. She just seems to adhere to it. I wonder why this is? Also, she would get oreos or eating the food of the catholic people until they gave her the evil eye. Did she just fall in line because there was some kind of incentive?
Watt’s section of when the children would get names because they needed English names would seem to be a very humiliating and assimilating moment in ones life. Because she already had an English name she would not have to go through the process. She describes that “some of the boys that came to school had real long hair. They cut it bald-headed the first times, not right down to the skin but real short, They cut the girls’ hair too. It’s short on the side and bangs. And they sent the kids’ clothes back to their families. They gave each of them a bag and they told them to put their clothes in there, Then they sent it back to their family. Then they gave them all new clothes”. This sounds like a death of a person. For the males, hair is a big deal, so to be striped of hair, and clothing that connected you to who you were previously as well as your clothes being sent way signifies to your parents that you are gone also.
When it came to learning English the rule was “After you catch on, you’re not supposed to talk your won language anymore. If they catch you talking your won language, they punished you.” Punishment at their school was extra chores, but what about other boarding schools? Was the punishment much harsher?
Other than her reason to not go home because of her new step father, I am still trying to figure out why she would deliberately stay there. What made her experience so good compared to that of other children or even people who went to other boarding schools? Anyway that is a good question to ponder.