Native American Marge Milazzo dictated her oral history to the Churchill County Museum in 1998. Her interviewer was Marianne Peterson. A good portion of the oral history will be printed as part of the Churchill County Museum’s resurrected journal, In Focus, due to be published in Summer 2025. You are in for a treat.
Peterson asked Marge Milazzo to talk about her years spent at Stewart Indian School in Carson City. So much has been written lately about the abuses of the Native American Boarding School system, enough to arouse the anger of any thinking person. That having been said, it is important to also listen to the voices of children who benefited from their boarding school days. I suspect that the culture of each school was unique and that some were brutal and others, fairly humane. What is true of all of them is that speaking native languages was forbidden, that cultural assimilation was the goal, and that corporal punishment was the norm. The Stewart Indian School is now the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum. The campus buildings alone are worth viewing as they were constructed by Stewart students, who gathered colored native stones and erected 63 buildings under the watchful guidance of professional stonemasons.
Milazzo: Oh, that, yeah. I went there [at ages] ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen… Oh, I had a lot of fun there. We couldn’t talk our own native language, so when I first got there, I felt real strange 'cause I'd never seen a lot of kids before, you know, all over the campus there, and the campus was so beautiful. It just had flowers and sidewalks. The flowers were lined up along the sidewalk. So pretty over there. I thought it was heaven to myself. (laughing) Mr. Snyder, our superintendent, he made that place feel so good. I think it was the wonderfullest time that I had in my life, and not only mine, the other children that did like it. It was a beautiful place, and they had a great big pond there. I remember my older uncle, Raymond's brother, Clyde, he took the Fallon children in a bus and drove us over. I was new that time. I really didn't know how to speak White too good. I still don't. (laughing) I met some Schurz girls from Schurz Reservation. They talked to me, but I didn't answer, and I listened to them. Then one of the girls probably knew I was a Paiute, so she talked in Paiute to me, and I talked to her then. (laughing) We all got to talking and laughing and having a good time right there at the swimming pool.
After that we did a lot of studies, and we went to church every Sunday. We had to dress military style like, and the girls, oh, they used to look so good! Then we had a certain inspector that comes in from, I don't where, Reno or Carson. He was a big shot wearing this whole uniform outfit. He'd march between us when we were lining up for drills or whatever, and we had to present ourselves just perfect. He'd come along, and he'd walk along in front of us all down the line. There were over five hundred children. You could see so many boys and girls all lined up in their own companies, like I was in Company C. They inspected the way we dressed, and we had to stand certain ways. Then we had an officer that took care of us. She was from the building, but she was a mean big shot lady. (laughing) She'd come along with a paddle. If we got out of line, they'd strap us, but we always watched her, so it was really strict. We'd drill and march, and we did all the commands that they hollered to us when we were in line. We had to be about face. After the inspection then we all changed into our everyday clothes and play, whatever. I really enjoyed that cause I never had anything like that.
Did you or someone you know attend Stewart Indian School? Send that story or any story to [email protected].
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