While searching for information on Carlisle Indian School students who had transferred to Keewatin Academy, I came across a file about ineligible students at Carlisle Indian School from 1911. Sixty-nine names were listed but none of them had a relationship with Keewatin. Typically tribes and government programs require the person to be ¼ blood to be eligible. Most on the list were 1/8 blood or less. Some were from Canada and Mexico. Only American Indians were eligible for enrollment at Carlisle. Correspondence in the file concerning one of the ineligible students caught my eye.
Charles F. Peirce, Supervisor in Charge at Fond du Lac Indian School in Cloquet, Minnesota, took the time to investigate the situation of one girl on the list. Addie Hovermale, 14 at the time, was 1/8 blood Assineboine through her mother, who was dead. Her white father was in an insane asylum when she enrolled at Carlisle on August 30, 1910. She had lived with her elderly, white grandparents in Minneapolis since she was three.
Peirce found the couple barely able to support themselves. Not destitute but not far from it but unable to handle an additional mouth to feed and body to clothe. He thought she would have to be sent out to work if she was returned to her grandparents.
Her grandmother wrote Moses Friedman, Superintendent of Carlisle Indian School:
“We cannot have her come here in this wicked and cruel city. Please see that she is kept there to work and learn something as I have done all I can for the present time.I have nothing to look forward to as her father has passed away and I did not tell her he passed away the 2nd of last November. The little girl knew before she started away that her father was miserable.
“Please look after her. I know she will be taken care of as I know this is a good school. She is fatherless and motherless dear child.”
Friedman wrote the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, telling him of Addie’s grandmother’s letter and of his personal investigation and his recommendation:
“It is also believed that the Indian Office does not wish to have this young Indian Girl turned loose in a city where her aged grandmother can not care for her and where she would not have a chance to receive training of any use to her, and for the reason that I believe the girl is entitled to the protection of the United States Government, I recommend that the instructions contained in Office letter of May the 16th be waived in so far as this girl is concerned.”
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs decided to allow Addie Hovermale to stay at Carlisle. When her term of enrollment was completed in 1915, the school re-enrolled her for a two-year term. After graduating in spring 1917, she applied for admission to a nursing program in Philadelphia. She was still a student in the nursing program when Carlisle closed on August 31, 1918.
Addie lived a full life. She married William Sanders in 1924 and lived with him in Shelbyville, Indiana until his death in 1972. She then moved to Poplar, Montana to be near some of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren near the Fort Peck Reservation. She died in 1983 at age 84.
To what extent did Carlisle serve as an orphanage?
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