Flora Gregg Iliff (1882–1959)

When Flora Gregg read about the Havasupai, she decided that she wanted to go and work with them - the tribe which lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon woke up her adventurous spirit. So after a short career as a teacher in a white school, she enrolled in the Oklahoma Territory Teacher's Institute and when she graduated (at the age of 17), she was sent to the Walapai Indian Reservation (these days the tribe is known as the Hualapai) to teach the tribe's children. It was close - the Walapai are related to the Havasupai - but not what she really dreamed of. This did not stop her from doing all she could - and before long, her dream came true and she got a position at the bottom of the canyon - living with and teaching the Havasupai.

He initial posting was in 1900 and she spent the next few years in the two schools until her mother's illness brought her back to the Midwest and she never came back to the Canyon except for short visit. More than 50 years later, she decided to write about her experiences - after spending the intervening years in different postings related to Native American education.

So how do you remember what happened 50 years ago? She is clear from the start - most of the story is based on the letters she wrote diligently to her mother, all of them preserved and existing, with her own memory supplying some details and with most names changed so real people's dignity and privacy does not get harmed.

The memoir is entertaining even in the places where it makes you cringe - the beginning of the 20th century was not really a great time for the relationship between the white settlers and the Native Americans and the time when the book was written (it came out in 1954) was not much better. It is a story of an attempt to destroy and eliminate a culture by branding it savage, of replacing a way of life with civilization as the government and its agents saw it. But somewhere in there is also a story of resistance and of the life on the Canyon, of a disappearing way of life which still somehow kept going and of a young woman's discovery of a world which for most people was as exotic as tales of Madagascar. There is also love (Flora Gregg met Joe Iliff while she taught at both reservations and they fell in love and got married) but also a lot of pain and loss. The tale was not just sad though - there was laughter and completely comical moments but over everything there was the shadow of what had been done to the tribes - and how people's reactions to it had been changing.

If she had written her book while she was there or soon after her return, it would have been a different book. The 50 years and all the work inside of the system gave her a perspective which helped made the book a lot better (or so I think anyway). Had she lived 50 more years and then written the book, it would have been very different again. The book as is shows both the 1900s and the 1950s perceptions and attitudes. As such, there are passages where you want to just make people stop and ask them what they think they are doing. And yet, the story is full of people and lives, laughter and tears, dreams and nature. Because the two tribes live in some of the most beautiful parts of America - and when Flora Gregg (which was to become Flora Gregg Iliff shortly) lived with them, she took note not just of the people, their lives and legends but also of all around them.

Strongly recommended if you want to learn more about the Native American lives in the area and the history of the reservations. Even when it was not an easy read, even when you could see where the author would be considered backwards today, it is a documentary evidence to cultures that had changed considerably under the assault of education and civilization.… (mais)