Neapolitan Children Bathing: The stories of John Singer Sargent and Robert Sterling Clark

Neapolitan Children Bathing, by John Singer Sargent

Presented to the Club by David T. Noyes on Monday evening, December 5, 2016



Can you remember when the only building housing the Clark
Art Institute was the stark, austere, imposing, lonely, marble fortress set
back from the street on a knoll in Williamstown? After moving to Pittsfield in
1981, Sue and I made many trips to take in Sterling Clark’s collection. There
was no food service at the Museum in those days, so we might grab lunch at the
(now defunct) Howard Johnson’s, or have a sandwich at Papa Charlie’s Deli on
Spring Street. No visit was complete without admiring this small painting—also
titled Innocence Abroad; or Boys on a Beach, Naples, painted in 1879 by John Singer Sargent.

This 11” x 16” canvas shows children enjoying a beautiful
sunny day at the beach. Two boys—one with a towel over his face, the other on
his stomach with his head propped up on his hand—lie near two other, much
younger boys standing. The boy at the center, wearing water wings, looks as
though he is trying to get up the courage to wade into the rolling surf. Out in
the water, a head bobbing above the rolling waves shows us a swimmer. The only
interruption of the blue sky is the sailboat on the horizon. The smallest
child, still showing the chubbiness of babyhood, looks outward engaging the
viewer, thereby inviting us into their realm. The use of a completely frontal
stance became a hallmark of Sargent’s painting as he felt this gave a more
powerful image and made a more direct connection with the viewer. The children
are all relaxed, and self absorbed—the very epitome of childhood innocence.

During those early years in Pittsfield, we frequently made
family trips to Cape Cod to stay and visit with my parents at their cottage
with a view of the water. Naturally, the beach was the favorite place to be—accessed
via a simple walk across the narrow road passing by the front porch. From the
moment I first saw this painting, I imagined that the two younger boys were our
sons, Todd and Tyler, as they were exact likenesses. When I dropped off the
postcards to Harold to be included with the regular reminder mailing, Audrey
immediately said: “Is this a picture of your family?” “Exactly!” I smiled.

In fact, The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning art
critic, Sebastian Smee, was similarly struck by this painting. In a June, 2015
article he writes: “This small stingingly bright canvas always stops me at the
Clark, where it hangs amid great works by 19^th-century painters,
most of them French. It evokes a world far from the Clark’s undulant campus. The
stark light and satisfying spiritual click of standing on your own shadow
reminds me of my own childhood in Australia, much of it spent on all-but vacant
beaches like this one.”

This painting, by John Singer Sargent, when he was just twenty-two
years old, was his third work to appear in America. The owner lent it to the
National Academy of Design in New York City for its 1879 exhibition where it
was applauded as “delightful, happy, and sparkling” and commended for its
subtlety of color. The tremendously positive reaction reflected the important
status given to children in post Civil War America; they were signs of purity
and innocence, as well as hope for the future.

Although Sargent is considered an American artist, he was
born in Florence, Italy in 1856. His father, Fitzwilliam Sargent, was born in
Gloucester, Mass. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a
degree in Medicine 1843. For ten years, from 1844 until 1854, he worked as a
surgeon in Philadelphia. Eminent in his profession, he published works on minor
surgery. John Sargent’s mother was Mary Newbold the daughter of John Singer, a
well to do Philadelphia merchant and successor to a prosperous business he
inherited from his father.

As a child, Mary had travelled to Italy. Such was the magic
of that country, that after four years of marriage, she persuaded her husband
to give up his practice and in 1854 they moved to Florence. Fitzwilliam Sargent
had, by virtue of his practice in Philadelphia, made a good living. But Mary
was sufficiently well off that he did not have to work to support the family.

Fitzwilliam expected his son would have a naval career, but
at age 12, John’s mother recognized his artistic talent and his schooling soon reflected
that. The conventional curriculum of Greek/Latin and Mathematics was supplanted
with music and foreign Languages, where, he excelled.

In October 1874 at the age of 18 he entered the studio of
Carolus Duran, then the foremost portrait painter in Paris. Sargent himself
always recognized his debt to the teaching of Duran. At the height of his fame
he commented that “Carolus Duran couldn’t actually do it himself---but he could
teach it”. When asked, for example, how he avoided false accents in
portraiture, Sargent said: “you must classify the values. If you begin with the
middle-tones and work up and down from there towards the darks and lights—so
that you deal last with your lightest lights and darkest darks—you avoid false
accents. That’s what Carolus taught me.”

In 1876 he sailed to America and experienced his first visit
with the United States. There is no hint of the impression he received. He was
an American by parentage, born and educated in the Old World, steeped in the
culture of Europe, and now, at the age of twenty, he was introduced to his
native country for the first time. The contrast must have been sharper than it
would be today. The great American collectors had not really begun the
piecemeal transfer of European collections of art. It was only by visiting
Europe that one could obtain any idea of the history of painting.

In 1878 his picture “En Route pour la Peche” received
honorable mention at the Salon.

In 1882, two of Sargent’s pictures in the Salon, were
singled out by the critics for unqualified praise. One critic wrote of the
portrait: Mrs. Austin---“one does not know which to admire most, the simplicity
of the means which the artist has employed or the brilliance of the result
which he has achieved” Another critic wrote that El Jaleo was the most striking
picture of the year. And so at the still quite young age of 26, Sargent, an
American by virtue of his heritage, was being hailed in Paris as the author of
the two most outstanding pictures in the Salon. He was soon receiving as many
commissions as he could execute, charging for a full length portrait----8,000
francs, for a half length—five thousand, and for his subject pictures and for landscapes,
anything from two to four thousand francs.

No French artist was more admired by Sargent than the French
Neoclassical artist, Jean—Auguste--Dominique Ingres who became most famous for
his portraits from the early to mid nineteenth century. Yet the two artists
were quite dissimilar. Ingres painted with serenity in his delineation of form,
and with repose and beauty in his lines, but often shunned the agitation and
movement of light. By contrast—Sargent was forcible in his execution, concerned
with the play and reflection of light, and on the look-out for the intricate
aspect of things; highlighting an art that is alert, vibrant, and vital with
color and the spirit of life. But underneath all that, there remains the
draftsmanship, the genius for composition and the fluent strength and elegance
of the line of the French master—it was these virtues that Sargent never tired
of extolling.

And those skills are dramatically apparent even in this
early painting. It would appear to be a simple, casual representation of a day
at the beach. But the painting was developed from several pencil sketches and
four preliminary oil studies on panel, all of which seem to have been painted en plein air. Sargent puts three of the
boys off center, and crops the legs of the figure in the foreground. The
shining grey-white sand, surf, and translucent water wings contribute reflective
surfaces so that soft golden hues can define the children’s bodies, with
puddles of grayish purple forming their shadows. The overall effect is one of
warm sunshine that charms the viewer.   

While in Paris, he frequently saw Degas, Renoir, Sisley and
Pissarro, but was most friendly with Claude Monet whom he believed had a
greater influence on art than any other modern painter. When Sargent discussed
genius on painting, he said there were four painters who possessed genius in a
superlative degree: Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto and Raphael. When asked his
opinion of Velasquez joining the group. He added that no painter exceeded
Velasquez in technical skill, but that he was less gifted in his power to
interpret “spiritual qualities”.

Sargent moved to London in 1885—more out of distaste for
Paris than preference for London. He leased the studio that had previously
belonged to James Abbott McNeill Whistler, another American, but European
portrait painter.

“Those who watched Sargent painting in his studio noticed
his habit of stepping backwards after almost every stroke of the brush on the
canvas. And the track of his paces so worn on the carpet that it simulated the
path sheep make through heather. When confronting difficulty, he had a sort of
battle cry of “Demons, Demons” with which he would dash to and fro at the
canvas”

During the winter of 1887-1888 he sailed to Boston where he
exhibited twenty of his pictures. His work was hailed for its sincerity, and
its brilliant variation from the stereotypical conventions of the day. Henceforth,
his reputation in America was assured.

From this point forward in his career, he no longer chose
subjects from the humbler walks of life. Destiny prescribed for him the role of
a portrait painter of the social world. He had brought the tradition with him
from Paris; he had grown up in an age when, having your portrait painted, was an
expected part of the fashionable life. In London he carried on the tradition. He
was unaffected by the changes taking place in Paris in the character of
subjects which the rising Impressionist artists were painting. The work of
Sargent now came from a study of the eminent, the rich and the successful. He
painted the world of which Henry James wrote. His migration to England put an
end to his interested outlook in the peasant life and folk
subjects----fisherwomen by the sea, dancers in Spanish cabarets, Parisians in
the Luxembourg Gardens, Venetian water-carriers, or, even, Boys on a Beach!

Conditions in England decided the direction of Sargent’s
genius. He was turned away from his experiment in Impressionism, and his
leanings towards common subjects. As the chronicler of the fashionable world,
like Van Dyck in his day, or like the 18^th century English portrait
painters Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough in theirs, he established
within a few years an undisputed supremacy.

Few artists have been more consistently applauded in their
lifetime than Sargent, few have seen their work maintain throughout many years
greater popularity with the public. There had never been a moment since 1875
when his pictures had not found a ready market, there had never been a year
when he didn’t have more commissions than he could execute. Critics, after the
first hesitations, and with few exceptions, consistently eulogized his
paintings; dealers had been resolute in their acquisition; fellow artists had
acclaimed him; and the public, had made him their favorite. The prices realized
by his pictures at auction rose steadily during his lifetime. And in July 1925,
237 of Sargent’s oil paintings and drawings sold at Christie’s for 170,000
pounds—there was no parallel for such a sale at that time.

Robert Sterling Clark purchased this painting from the son
of the original owner in 1923 when he was forty-six.

The person whose fortune made all of Sterling Clark’s
collecting and high living possible was Edward Cabot Clark. The four grandsons:
Sterling and Stephen and their brothers, Edward and Ambrose could not have been
who they were without the incredible wealth from Edward’s phenomenal business
success. When he died in 1882 his net worth was 50 million dollars. The origin
of the family fortune is due to Edward Clark’s alliance with the sewing machine
developer—Isaac Merritt Singer.

Singer would become infinitely better known than Clark—in large part because
his name was on every one of the machines that entered first American and then
international households. These engineering
inspirations were a result of Singer’s inventiveness, but turning those
qualities into such a vast fortune was the genius of Edward Clark.

Edward Clark was born in 1811 in Athens, New York. His
father had a successful pottery business and Edward grew up in comfortable
circumstances. At the age of twelve he began four years of education at the
Academy in Lenox Massachusetts. He then went on to graduate from Williams
College at the age of nineteen in 1831. (He would later become a trustee and be
awarded an honorary Doctorate.) Edward apprenticed for three years at the law
firm of Ambrose Jordan in Hudson, New York, and was then admitted to practice
law--setting up a practice in Poughkeepsie. He
married his boss’s daughter and then moved with his father-in-law, in 1836, to
New York City. Soon thereafter “Jordan and Clark” gained the reputation as New
York City’s most prestigious law firm. (It probably helped that Ambrose Jordan
was the state’s attorney general!)

Isaac Merritt Singer was also born in 1811, in Pittstown,
New York. He grew up in poverty and left home at the age of twelve. He
apprenticed in a machine shop, and began to make a good living because of his
mechanical ingenuity. Singer stood six feet four inches tall and had a massive
build, cutting quite an imposing figure. He married Catherine Haley and had two
children with her.

He fancied himself quite the actor, and especially enjoyed performing
Shakespeare. In 1839 while working with his brother in Illinois digging a
waterway, he got his first patent: a machine for drilling rock. With the two
thousand dollars he received, he formed his own travelling theater company. He
was now known as Isaac Merritt and his actress mistress, Mary Ann Sponseler,
was known as Mrs. Merritt. He ultimately had eleven children with her. (He also
had an additional child from a third woman, Mary Eastwood Walters, during this
time) The troupe ran out of money and
Singer moved to New York with an idea for a machine that would carve wood-block
type. Here he sought the help of the Jordan and Clark law firm.

Ambrose Jordan found Singer “too personally distasteful to
represent”. But he must have seen some value in retaining him as a client
because he referred him to his son-in-law. Edward Clark helped Singer obtain
the patent in 1849 and Singer assigned Edward three-eights of it in lieu of
paying legal fees.

Sewing machines had existed since at least 1790 when Thomas
Saint had received a patent for one in England. A French tailor, Barthelemy
Thimonnier improved the machine in 1829. In 1846 Elias Howe received a patent
for his sewing machine. Singer’s improvement was to have the machine make
stronger stitches in a perfectly straight line. He received a patent in 1851
and went into a financial partnership to start the Jenny Lind Sewing Machine Company.
(Named after Swedish soprano then touring the United States.)

However, Elias Howe felt that Singer’s machine was
sufficiently close to his own that he began legal proceedings for patent
infringement. Singer once again turned to Edward Clark. Still penniless, Singer
ultimately agreed to give Clark half ownership and the right to take control of
the new company: I.M. Singer & Company in exchange for legal services.

What is interesting about the patent litigation is that
Singer had, indeed, violated the law and infringed on one of Elias Howe’s
patents. When Howe pressed for a settlement of twenty-five thousand dollars, he
did so because of Singer’s use of the eye-pointed needle in his new machine. Although
Howe had not invented that device, he did own the patent. Everything else about
Singer’s machine was an advance over Howe’s, but the use of the needle without
authorization was illegal. The settlement reached in 1854 awarded Howe a
royalty from all Singer Machines. Edward’s genius was in keeping the settlement
from being more onerous and in mitigating the effects of Singer’s criminality.  

For the next decade, Clark oversaw every aspect of the
business while Singer basked in the role of resident genius. Edward was
concerned with appearances and got Singer to decorate the black machines with
gold ornament. He had the idea of selling machines to minister’s wives for half
price so that they would introduce them to their sewing circles. During the
recession in 1856, Edward pioneered the idea of an installment plan whereby for
five dollars down and three dollars a month, customers could reach ownership of
the machines. He also developed and expanded the European market to a degree
previously unprecedented in American Manufacturing.

Clark also became embroiled in the management of Singer’s
personal life. He and Mary Ann Sponselor, whom most took to be his wife, lived
opulently in a grand house on lower Fifth Avenue. But Singer now had an additional mistress, Mary
McGonigal with whom he had five more children! Singer lived with her as Mr. and
Mrs. Matthews in a separate house in New York. The sewing machine buying public
disdained Isaac Singer for his scandalous ways, and it was in the interest of
the company to clean up his reputation. It fell to Edward to negotiate Singer’s
divorce from his legal wife, Catherine Haley. Clark assumed that Singer would then
marry Sponselor, but he was too loyal to “Mrs. Matthews”. One day when Singer
was out with Mrs. Matthews, they accidentally came upon Mary Sponselor who
unleashed a public tirade for all to hear.

Singer responded by storming into the house on Fifth Avenue
and choking Sponselor, and one of their daughters who tried to intervene, into
an unconscious state. Before legal action took place Singer fled to England,
accompanied by Mary McGonigal’s nineteen year old sister Kate.

Again, Clark was concerned that women would not buy a
machine linked to adultery, wife beating, and illegitimate children. He
persuaded Singer to give up any active management of the firm and incorporated
Singer Manufacturing Company. Together they would still be equal owners with
20% of the stock sold to key employees. Singer agreed as long as Edward could
not be president while Singer was still alive. Edward, however, managed to retain
considerable influence as Chairman of the Board.

When Edward died in1882, he left an estate worth fifty
million dollars! Although he had three sons, only the youngest, Alfred, was
married, with four children—Edward Severin (nicknamed Rino), Robert Sterling
(whom the family called Robin), Frederick Ambrose, and Stephen Carlton. I’ll
skip over Alfred’s life, which may be worthy of Club Paper on its own.

Sterling Clark studied engineering at Yale, and then joined
the U.S. army Ninth Infantry Regiment. He fought in the Spanish American War
that captured the Philippines, and in China to help stifle the Boxer Rebellion
in 1901.

With that international background and no concerns about
having to make a living, he moved to Paris in 1910, at the age of thirty-three.
There, he bought a three-story house a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe. He
frequented the most famous art galleries in Paris, London, and New York City. Sterling
collected art the way he drank fine wine (Burgundy being his favorite) and ate
good food (he wrote his own cookbook)—with an appreciation for his own sense of
quality. He trusted his own artistic judgment—no one else could tell him what
was good or bad, what would rise or sink in value, or what might add balance to
his collection.

In 1919, now forty-two, he married Francine Clary, an
extremely pretty former actress in the Comedie Francaise. She already had an
illegitimate child when they met. Sterling regaled in doing the unexpected. This
was the sort of thing Isaac Singer might do—not a member of the Clark dynasty. His
three brothers, along with their wives, were appalled.

Then, in the early 1920’s tensions began mounting over the
children’s inheritance. The various Singer trusts were organized in such a way
that the benefits only accrued to the next generation via direct family
lineage. Sterling’s brothers Ambrose and Edward had no children while Stephen
had four. Thus when Sterling died his “share” would be given to Stephen’s
children. At a meeting of the brothers with their trust financial manager in
1923, Sterling and Stephen came to a physical altercation. This was the
beginning of a rift that would never heal. This feud became public when the New
York Times reported in 1927 that Sterling was suing the family trust, valued at
some eighty million dollars! Sterling lost. He never spoke to any of his
brothers again. His diary entries over the next twenty-five years persistently confirmed
the ongoing contempt he had, especially for Stephen and his wife, Susan.  

Meanwhile, Sterling had been planning for the ultimate
disposition of his collection. His initial idea focused on Cooperstown, N.Y.—the
site of the Clarks‘ summer family compound. But after World War II, he opted
for building a museum to rival the Frick in New York City. In 1945 he bought
three buildings on the corner of Park and Seventy-Second Street for that purpose.
However, five year later, he changed his mind, following a visit to
Williamstown. He bought one hundred acres of woods and field to build the
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. He felt the setting reminded him of
the paintings of Winslow Homer. He and Francine were convinced that a
“crossroads museum” would entice summer tourists who might never get to a big
city. They also chose the college town because it was far from an urban center
that might be a target for atomic bombs. The construction of the museum included
reinforced concrete designed to withstand an atomic explosion one-tenth of a
mile away. The three million dollar building was faced with marble—a tribute to
ancient Greek monuments. Sterling died from a stroke at age seventy-nine, just
one year after opening the museum. He left an estate that was worth eighty-four
million dollars (the equivalent of half a billion dollars today) which would
allow his collection to be seen free of charge.

Of course, we know that the Clark Art Institute is no longer
a single building, and, also, that it’s no longer free! It has become much more
than a small rural museum, as witnessed by last year’s Van Gogh exhibition, and
this year’s “Nudes from the Prada” presentation. Yet, I never fail to seek out
Sargent’s simple, refreshing image of children at the beach whenever I visit
the museum. Do any of you have an artwork that has so persistently spoken to
you?

Material for this essay is taken from:

John Sargent by
Evan Charteris, Charles Scribner’s and Sons, New York 1927

The Clarks of Cooperstown,
by Nicholas Fox Weber, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008

American Painting and
Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, by Margaret
Conrads, Hudson Hills Press, Inc., 1990

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“John Singer Sargent’s Neapolitan Children Bathing”,
Sebastian Smee, The Boston Globe, June 2, 2015

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The Back Stairs: The world of servants in America

Presented to the Club on Monday Evening, March 7, 2016 by Albert Easton

I am sure that most of us here have watched, or are at least familiar with the television program Downton Abbey, or its predecessor, Upstairs Downstairs. Each of these programs derives part of its drama from the contrast between the aristocracy and the servant class. Although each is based in England at a time and place when this contrast was most clearly delineated, there certainly was a somewhat similar contrast in America up to about 1930, and my purpose tonight is to explore the world of servants. Who were they, what were they like, and what has become of them?



Servants have probably existed for most of human history. It was natural for one person who was able for whatever reason to dominate another, to request that that other person take on some of the tasks he had been doing. Very often, the dominance was a result of warfare, and the people of the defeated nation were made the slaves of the victor. Often, too, the younger children did not inherit enough to support themselves, and had to offer services to others in order to survive.





Some authors have suggested that the role of servants in England grew out of the feudal system. Certainly, the existence of an aristocracy was a heritage of feudal times, but America has never had a hereditary aristocracy. America’s aristocracy consists, in general, of those who have the money to play the part. And playing the part requires, or at least did require, having servants.



It is estimated that in the early years of the twentieth century about one American household in six had servants. This includes many houses that had only a part time servant, a one-day-a-week laundress or cleaning woman, for example. Only a much smaller fraction had one or more full time servants, and only about half of these were live-in. If a house had only one servant, she was almost always of the category: “maid-of-all-work.” More about the duties of such a person later. Houses with a full complement of servants might have a butler, a housekeeper, a cook, and one or more maids or footmen. This does not include the “outdoor servants” — gardeners, farmhands, coachmen, stablemen and (after the advent of the automobile) chauffeurs.



Even in houses with a large number of servants, the lady of the house was considered the housekeeper. She was responsible for maintaining her home in all ways. .But assisting her was the highest ranking servant, the hired housekeeper. The hired housekeeper’s status was on a par almost with members of the family. Her post was an administrative one. She assumed responsibility for the smooth functioning of the household. She oversaw the training and discipline of the rest of the staff, including their performance and personal behavior. She managed the household expenditures, including the purchase of household supplies (but not including the purchase of food – that was the cook’s job.) She supervised the hiring and firing of the rest of the staff and the payment of their wages.



Working closely with the hired housekeeper was the butler. His status was just below hers, and he filled in for her when she was not available to do her job as overseer. He was also responsible for directing the footmen, who were his assistants. He saw to the security of the house, and to the care of the china, glassware and silverware stored in the butler’s pantry. He also managed the purchase, decanting and storage of the household supply of wine and liquor. And many miscellaneous tasks fell his way. For example, arranging the flowers and providing place cards at formal dinner parties. (The arrangement of seats at the table itself had to be left to the lady of the house. Only she was able to discern the social status of her guests, especially in this country with no hereditary aristocracy.) I should mention that the relative status of the housekeeper and butler seems to be reversed on Downton Abbey. This may be because of Carson’s personal dominance, or because roles were somewhat different in England from those in America.



To do his job the butler required the assistance of footmen. Footmen’s duties paralleled those of the butler, plus serving at the dinner table. One author has suggested that: “Male servants (commonly known as flunkeys) became the ultimate status symbol. They were paid for their servility; their function was to emphasize the social position of the employer. Male retainers received twice the wages of most female servants, and did half the work.” To accomplish this, they were on view as greeters at the door, guarding hallways and delivering messages to the parlor.



Another type of male servant was the valet. The valet’s responsibility was to look after the master’s clothing and appearance – in general, a fairly easy job. But the valet was also a “gentleman’s gentleman” – responsible for carrying out whatever errands his employer assigned, and usually traveling with his master. P. G. Woodhouse was written many stories about “Jeeves” – a valet who miraculously manages to extricate his master “Bertie” from the various scrapes Bertie manages to get himself into. Bertie is a bachelor and Jeeves his only servant. The light duties would seem to make valet an easy job, but it was also the most likely to make its incumbent feel like a second class citizen, and thus not the choice of a fully self-respecting individual.



The lady’s maid was the female counterpart of the valet. She had the same kind of responsibilities as a valet – caring for clothing and jewelry, dressing her mistress, generally seeing to her appearance and traveling with her when necessary, often even accompanying her to evening entertainments. Dressing took place at least twice a day, since day clothes were not worn to dinner or evening entertainments. Her job was somewhat more involved than that of the valet, since managing a lady’s clothing and appearance is more complicated than that of a gentleman.



There were also two other types of maids – the parlor maid and the chamber maid. (Chambermaids were sometimes known as “the upstairs maid.”) Parlor maids began each day by removing ashes and cinders from the fireplaces in the parlors and drawing rooms, cleaning the andirons, and preparing new fires. They also swept the carpets and floors in these rooms and the hallways, dusted and periodically washed windows and polished the brass. Chamber maids had the same responsibilities in the bedrooms, and also the daily chore of emptying and cleaning chamber pots, as well as making beds. In the evening, while the lady of the house was at dinner, they cleaned up the clutter left from the nightly dressing-for dinner ritual, turned down the beds, and saw to the fire if necessary.



Usually, there was a laundress, sometimes with assistants. The laundress handled the washing and ironing, which was strenuous work in the days before the advent of modern appliances. In earlier times, the laundress was also responsible for preparing her own starch, bleach and cleaning products. Not only was the work back-breaking, it required some judgement and intelligence, since missteps in laundering could destroy a family’s wardrobe.



The kitchen was the responsibility of the cook. While in very large establishments the cook might be a man (the “chef”), usually the cook was a woman. The cook was responsible for ordering, storing, and preparing food, including that of the servant staff. The cook also was responsible for washing dishes and keeping the kitchen clean, but sometimes had the help of a scullery maid for these chores. When food was prepared over a wood or coal stove, it was the cook or scullery maid’s job to keep that stoked and cleaned.



A final indoor servant was the nursemaid, who cared for the children of the house. The job of nursemaid required a person of tact and intelligence, since she was responsible for teaching the children as well as caring for them. She also had all the duties toward the children that a lady’s maid had toward the lady of the house. She generally was expected to sleep near the children, so that she could be available to care for their needs in the night. She might have severe restrictions on the extent to which she could reprimand or punish the children, and of course had the unpleasant job of changing diapers for the youngest children. Some houses especially sought a nursemaid who spoke another language as well as English, so that the children might be raised bilingual.



I have not mentioned the governess, who was not really a servant, but a teacher. As such, she outranked all the servants. A governess was expected to teach the children reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as history and culture, including the etiquette and demeanor that they needed to assume the station in life that their parents aspired to for them. Like the nursemaid, she may have had severe restrictions on her ability to correct the children.



Outdoor servants included gardeners, coachmen and chauffeurs. If they were live-in, they usually did not sleep in the house, but in the appropriate out-building. Coachmen and chauffeurs were more likely to be live-in, so that they could be available to provide transportation at any time.



Of course, even upper middle class houses could not always afford a full retinue of servants, so compromises had to be made. A frequent combination in a middle class house, was a cook (who also took on the duties of the laundress), a maid (combining the duties of the parlor maid and chambermaid) and a single male servant who was a combination valet and footman. In some houses, even the male servant was not present, leaving only a cook-laundress and a maid. (If the ages of the children in the house required it, there might be a nursemaid, who often was not live-in.)



Further down the ladder, a situation very often encountered in America, was a house with only one servant – the “maid-of-all-work.” A maid-of-all-work performed the duties of the footman (waiting at table), the cook, the parlor maid and the chamber maid. While this was a tremendous amount of work, many managed it. If the house to which she was assigned was a farm, the maid-of-all-work might also be expected to join in feeding the animals and helping with the milking.



There was no such thing as a minimum wage in the early part of the twentieth century, but if there had been, servants would have been at or below it, in spite of the back-breaking work often required of them. An important part of a servant’s compensation was the privilege of living in a very comfortable house. Houses to be occupied by members of the upper middle class in this country, built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, almost always included a section intended to be used by the servants.



The servants’ part of the house was separated from the part intended for use by the family, and tended to emphasize the difference between the two classes. The servants’ quarters included the necessary number of small bedrooms for the servants. (Maids sometimes shared a room, but male servants rarely did.) In houses with indoor plumbing, there was usually a small bathroom and toilet for the use of the servants. Downstairs, the servants had the kitchen, the pantry, the laundry, and in larger houses a “servants’ hall” – a room where servants dined and had their relaxation. Rooms in the servants’ part of the house were very simply decorated, as opposed to the elaborate adornment in the drawing room, dining room, and parlors., and in the upstairs chambers in the family part of the house. An extra set of stairs, the “back stairs” was provided for the sole use of the servants, so that they would not have to intrude on the other part of the house to go from floor to floor.



Beginning about the turn of the century, houses with servants often contained a system of electric bells, for summoning the servants. There would be a front door bell to alert the butler or footman when visitors had arrived, and a different sounding bell for the back door, alerting the cook to the arrival of a tradesman or a visitor for one of the other servants. Other bells were used for summoning servants to the dining room, drawing room, or one of the bedchambers.



Houses with back stairs and servants quarters like those described were very common in American communities, and most of the larger houses built from 1850 to 1920 included them. While some have been altered by remodeling, there are a great many older houses that still include these outmoded accommodations. Without question, many of our predecessors in the Monday Evening Club lived in such houses.



Of course, the living quarters described for servants weren’t universal. Unfortunately, many maids slept on sleeping porches or in furnace rooms. There was also a wide variety in the meals available to servants. In really large establishments, a separate meal might be prepared for servants, and in smaller ones they might enjoy the remains of the dinner served in the dining room, but there was no guarantee as to the amount of food they would get in that case. Servants almost never ate until the meal in the dining room was finished, since they were expected to be on hand to serve it and clean up afterwards, so the time between their lunch and dinner meal might be very long.



Wages for servants varied widely, but they were generally quite low. References indicate that live-in servants received between five and ten dollars a week. Servants who did not live in received about the same, although they generally worked shorter hours and were given car fare to get to and from work each day. There were even cases where the maid was expected to work for room and board only, or (for someone with little experience) for the training they received at the hands of the more senior servants.



The wealthy not only paid more, but there was some satisfaction and esteem to working for a very wealthy family. America had no hereditary aristocracy, but servants preferred working for a family that had been established for several generations, so that they were used to dealing with servants. Wealthier families were more likely to have more attractive quarters for the servants, and it must certainly have been more satisfying to be part of a well-organized and disciplined staff. Servants had hierarchy of position to strengthen their self-esteem, with the butler ranking highest, then the valet, then the footmen. As mentioned, the head housekeeper was highest ranking, but the male servants outranked almost all the female ones.



 Alexis de Tocqueville in his landmark work Democracy in America, published in 1840 mentions his observation that America had no permanent servant class, because American society was too mobile. I think that overlooks the existence of slavery, which was still prevalent in the time he was writing, but the matter became truer and truer as the years went along. Very few people in this country were raised expecting to be servants. The source of most servants in this country was, and still is, immigration. And, for many years after the civil war, African Americans migrating North, or simply trying to make a living in a still segregated Southern society.



And this gave rise to the “servant problem” – the lack of people willing and suitable to take a service position, and the difficulty of filling vacancies. After all, who, in fact, would want to? Being a personal servant is considered to be very low status. So a footman has much lower status than a waiter, and a chef outranks a cook. A reasonable case can be made for the advantages of living in a well-equipped mansion in a beautiful area, but the traditions of service required that servants live in the least desirable part of the house, in the smallest rooms with the least desirable furniture. If the house had an ocean view, for example, servants lived on the side away from the water.



About 90% of servants were women. Only the largest staffs employed any men. It was understood during the period when servants were prevalent that most domestic employment was “women’s work”. Girls were taught “Home Economics” in school – learning the basics of cleaning, cooking, laundering, table setting, and generally caring for the smooth running of a household.



In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were three ways of filling a vacancy among the servants. By far the best was a referral from friends, but these were rare. If friends had a good servant, they generally wanted to keep him or her, and of course they would hesitate to refer an unsatisfactory one. A second method was by advertisement in a newspaper, but this resulted in contacts from a variety of persons who needed to be interviewed and have their references reviewed. The final method was to contact an employment agency. Employment agencies specializing in filling service positions were known as “intelligence offices”. Intelligence offices often did their own recruiting and the better ones were often a good source.



The final question I want to deal with is: Where did all this go? Why do we so rarely see homes with servants today? The peak of the servant period was about 1900, when 7% of homes had a full time servant. This was down to 5% in the 1930s, and 2% in the 1950s. Today the proportion is less than 1%. One quick answer is to suggest that labor saving appliances have eliminated the need – in other words, robots have replaced humans. That is part of the answer, but by no means all of it.



Sociology probably holds the rest of the answer. The American dream of the 1950s was a home of one’s own and many of the vast number who returned from overseas were able to achieve that goal. Wives, at that time were expected to be at home raising children, and employing the skills they had learned in their universally taught home economics classes.. Both these ideals (even if not universally achieved) were inconsistent with serving in someone else’s house. No one desired any longer to earn a living by caring for someone else’s family.



Most of us would much rather not have our privacy disturbed by the presence of servants in the house, although we still enjoy being waited on, even if not every night. A restaurant waiter does much the same work as the footman did and receives much higher pay, especially when tips are included. His co-worker in the kitchen, the chef, is much better educated and higher paid than a domestic cook. And many of us still have cleaning women who come in occasionally, and a laundry service. Those who need child care have ways of arranging it. We still have servants, even if we don’t call them that, and their status is much higher.

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Richard Whitlock Nunley, 1931-2016

Our longtime Monday Evening Club member, Richard Whitlock Nunley, born July 31, 1931, in Scituate, Massachusetts, died from a brain hemorrhage on March 3 in Portland, Oregon.



Dick was a teacher, poet, cook, gardener, and lover of the natural world. Childhood mentors fostered a love of books and learning, which led him to Dartmouth College and Kings College, Cambridge in England.



There he met Susan Stroud, whom he married on December 19, 1965. They spent the majority of their lives together in New Lebanon, New York, where Dick was a teacher at Darrow School. They raised two daughters, Diana and Felicity, at their "Garden Hill" home, surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens with a spectacular view across Lebanon Valley.



In 1970 Dick became a professor of English at Berkshire Community College in nearby Pittsfield, Massachusetts. An exacting teacher with high expectations for all, many former students credit him with changing the course of their lives.



For 25 years beginning in 1980 Dick wrote a weekly "Our Berkshires" column for The Berkshire Eagle. His columns challenged readers to connect the dots between vignettes of Berkshire life and his favorite poets and thinkers, and revealed the thoughtful, caring and generous man that he was.



For the last 12 years of his life, Dick and Sue lived near Felicity in Portland, Oregon, where he turned his eye on the lush environment of the Pacific Northwest and enjoyed the city's art and musical offerings. He delighted in his grandchildren, Helen and Norris Meigs of Portland and Hanna and Elena Johnson of Minneapolis.



"How simple happiness is, really," concludes one of Dick's poems. That lesson may be Dick's greatest legacy to all who remember him whether it's to be found in a delicate spring bloom, a morning walk, or a fresh-baked loaf of bread. A brief memorial service will be held at Willamette View in Portland on Monday, March 7, with a fuller celebration of his life planned for this summer in New Lebanon.

***

We also enjoyed this remembrance of Dick by Judy Waters in The Berkshire Eagle of Friday, March 11, 2016.

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Allotment: How the 1887 Dawes Act disrupted Native American cultures

Henry Laurens Dawes

Presented to the Club by Martin C. Langeveld on Tuesday evening, May 26, 2015 (that Monday being a holiday)

One of the founding members of this club in 1869 was Henry Laurens Dawes, born in Cummington in 1816. He graduated from Yale University in 1839 and became a teacher in Greenfield, where he also edited the Greenfield Recorder.

In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and opened a law practice in North Adams, maintaining his interest in journalism by editing the North Adams Transcript.

From journalism he moved into politics, being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848, 1849 and 1852, to the state Senate in 1850, and to the Massachusetts Constitutional convention in 1853.

He then served as U.S. district attorney for Western Massachusetts from 1853 to 1857, when he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives and served there for 23 years until 1875.

That year, Dawes was elected by the Massachusetts General Court as United States Senator from Massachusetts, to succeed Charles Sumner, who died in office. He served in the Senate until 1893, and died in Pittsfield in 1903 at the age of 86.

A friend of Abraham Lincoln, he served as a pall bearer at Lincoln’s funeral.

In the House, Dawes figured prominently in the passage of anti-slavery and Reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, as well as in tariff legislation, the establishment of a fish commission, and the establishment of a system of daily weather reports, which was a forerunner to the United States Weather Service.

He took a great interest in the development of the American West, supporting the creation of Yellowstone National Park and funding for geological surveys of that area. His son Chester Dawes served on the survey team, and the first boat to appear on Yellowstone Lake was named the Annie, purportedly after Dawes’s daughter Anna.

He was also an ardent supporter of the Transcontinental Railroad, influenced, perhaps, by a gift from Congressman Oakes Ames of 2,000 shares of stocks in the Credit Mobilier of America railroad construction company. Ames was subsequently censured for his vote-buying largesse.

Among the two Monday Evening Club papers that have survived among the Dawes papers housed in the Library of Congress, one reflects his interest in Western and frontier matters — it is about the fur seals of Alaska. The other, an 1889 presentation entitled “The Winter Before the War” covers the period immediately before the Civil War, including Dawes’s personal recollections of Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Francis Adams, General Winfield Scott and others.

But if Dawes were here presenting his own biography, he would write at the top his list of accomplishments and interests that he was a friend of the Indian. In the Senate he served as chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs, and his signature achievement was the passage, in 1887, of the General Allotment Act of 1887, generally known as the Dawes Act.

While Dawes, until his death, believed that the Allotment Act was the right course for U.S. Indian policy, it is clear today that the allotment had disastrous consequences, still being felt today, for the economic, social and cultural well-being of the Indians.

To understand the environment that brought about the Dawes Act, we need to look at the roots of American Indian policy in the early years of the American republic. A long series of Indian Wars that began in colonial days and continued until 1890 was instrumental in pushing Indian populations westward to the Great Plains, confined to reservations. The presence of this aboriginal population remained a thorny problem, especially as mining resources were discovered in the West, railroad companies began plotting routes through Indian reservations, and white settlers began eyeing Indian territory as potentially valuable agricultural land. At the same time, social reformers and missionaries sought to come up with a solution for “civilizing” the Indians — improving their educational attainment and motivating them to become productive citizens. The goal was assimilation. And collective ownership of reservation lands by the tribes was seen as an obstacle to that goal. Individual land ownership would motivate the Indians to better their situation, it was thought.

As early as 1792, George Washington’s secretary of war, Henry Knox, suggested that individual, rather than collective ownership of land would benefit the Indians. The United States, he said in a speech sent to an Indian group, “would be greatly gratified with the opportunity of imparting to you all the blessings of civilized life, of teaching you to cultivate the earth, to raise corn; to raise oxen, sheep and other domestic animals; to build comfortable houses, and to educate your children, so as ever to dwell upon the land.”

Thomas Jefferson, as president, told a delegation of Indian chiefs in 1808: “Let me entreat you . . . on the land now given you, to begin to give every man a farm; let him enclose it, cultivate it, build a warm house on it, and when he dies, let it belong to his wife and children after him.”

Throughout the first half of the century, the adoption of severalty, or individual land holdings, was discussed as the goal. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote in 1838: “Unless some system is marked out by which there shall be a separate allotment of land to each individual . . . you will look in vain for any general casting off of savagism. Common property and civilization cannot co-exist.”

Treaties made with some of the Indian tribes during this period did provide for individual allotments of land on a small scale, and in 1875, Congress extended homesteading privileges to Indians.

The movement toward allotment was accelerated by a group known as the Friends of Indians, which counted Senator Dawes as a member and leader. From 1883 to 1913, they met annually at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York, as guests of the proprietor, Albert K. Smiley, a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners. These gatherings became known as the Lake Mohonk Conferences, and they included wealthy and influential men and women who had access to Congress and to the President. They were driven by philanthropy and by strong desires to spread the blessings of Christianity to underdeveloped peoples.

In pursuing this goal, we can now see, they were relentlessly ethnocentric. Most aspects of the Indian cultures, they believed — languages, religious beliefs, common ownership of land, and aboriginal lifestyles — were incompatible with modern civilization and had to be changed.

The 1884 Lake Mohonk Conference called for providing Indians with an education that would be in English, to the exclusion of native tongues, that would teach them industrial skills, and that, above all, would be a Christian education.

By 1886, the conference was advocating strongly for a system to permit individual ownership of land. One speaker, Prof. C. C. Painter, put it this way: 

I would at once break down the reservation walls and let civilization go in; I would secure the Indians for the present inalienable possession of sufficient land, by personal title, for the use of each one; I would sell the remainder for their benefit, and in place of the agent's irresponsible will make them subject to the laws and give them their protection; I would give them without delay citizenship with all its privileges and duties.

Dawes himself gave the 1886 conference a legislative update, in which he expressed the realistic expectation that granting private ownership of tracts of land would not solve the problem by itself, and that the government should also invest in education for the Indians. But he seems to have been driven by the idea that without allotment, the Indians would soon have nothing at all, saying: 

Our work must be done now and without delay, for the greed for the Indian's land is growing every day, and it is as impossible to resist it under the forms of our Government as to stop the flow of the river. We may guide and direct it, but we cannot stop it. We are blind, we are deaf, we are insane if we do not take cognizance of the fact that there are forces in this land driving on these people with a determination to possess every acre of their land, and they will lose it unless we work on and declare that the original owner of this land shall, before every acre disappears from under him forever, have 160 acres of it where he shall be fitted to become a citizen of the United States and prepared to bear the burdens as well as share the rights of our Government. 

Not everyone agreed with the civilizing aims espoused by the conference and built into the Dawes Act. Many pointed to the Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) who lived in what was then called the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. The Act exempted those tribes from allotment because they had already established a variety of the elements of civilization, including centralized governments, a rule of law, commerce, and education. But they worked their lands in common, and hunted in groups for buffalo. The exemption for the Five Tribes may also have been influenced by white cattlemen who had secured extensive grazing privileges from those tribes.

The most realistic criticism within Washington came from the minority report of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, which stated:

However much we may differ with the humanitarians who are riding this hobby, we are certain that they will agree with us in the proposition that it does not make a farmer out of an Indian to give him a quarter-section of land. There are hundreds of thousands of white men, rich with the experience of centuries of Anglo-Saxon civilization, who cannot be transformed into cultivators of the land by any such gift.

Colorado Senator Henry M. Teller vigorously opposed allotment, calling an earlier allotment effort “a bill to despoil the Indians of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth.” Teller and other critics also pointed out that in reservations where small-scale allotments that had taken place under treaties since 1845, the land had gradually been dissipated, removed from Indian ownership, in all but a few cases. Opponents in the minority of the House Committee in 1880 also pointed out that the passage of legislation and the issuance of deeds was not likely to change the fact that: 

. . . from the time of the discovery of America, and for centuries probably before that, the North American Indian has been a communist. Not in the offensive sense of modern communism, but in the sense of holding property in common. . . . This communistic idea has grown into their very being, and is an integral part of the Indian character. From our point of view, this is all wrong; but it is folly to think of uprooting it . . . through the agency of a mere act of Congress or by the establishment of a theoretical policy. 

What about the Indians themselves? Some favored allotment, and petitioned for it. Federal Indian agents working among the tribes typically reported that their charges favored allotment as a way to prevent their removal from their lands. But the notion that after allotment they were expected to settle down into an agricultural lifestyle was not well understood. Some tribes were explicit in their opposition, sending memorials to Congress outlining their concerns. The Creeks, Choctaws and Cherokees wrote that “the change to individual title would throw the whole of our domain into the hands of a few persons.” The Senecas, in a resolution, pointed out that under their communal system, “No Indian, however improvident and thriftless, can be deprived of a resort to the soil for his support and that of his family. There is always land for him to cultivate free of tax, rent or purchase price.”

But Dawes and his supporters believed that allotment was precisely the solution that would prevent the Indians from losing their all their land, and to prevent abuses, Dawes proposed a 25-year restriction during which the recipients of allotments would not be permitted to sell or encumber their land.

The options were stark, Dawes told the Mohonk Conference.

That he will pass away as an Indian I don't doubt, and that very rapidly. It will be into citizenship, and into a place among the citizens of this land, or it will be into a vagabond and a tramp. He is to disappear as an Indian of the past; there is no longer any room for such an Indian in this country; he cannot find a place. The Indian of the past has no place to live in this country. . . . Something stronger than the Mohonk Conference has dissolved the reservation system. The greed of these people for the land has made it utterly impossible to preserve it for the Indian. He must take his place where you have undertaken to put him, or he must go a vagabond throughout this country, and it is for you and me to say which it shall be. He cannot choose for himself, and he does not know where the ways are.

Even ethnologists, who today would be the first to defend tribal rights and autonomy, largely toed the allotment line. John Wesley Powell, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, wrote: “No measure could be devised more efficient for the ultimate civilization of the Indians than one by which they could successfully and rapidly obtain lands in severalty.”

And so, in what became essentially an act of faith by the “friends of the Indian,” land and citizenship were the tenets that became embodied in the Dawes Act the following year. As signed by President Cleveland, the act provided:

1. A grant of 160 acres to each family head, 80 acres to each single person over 18 and to each orphan under 18, and 40 acres to each other person under 18.


2. The deeds to these properties were to be held in trust by the government for 25 years, during which time the owners could not sell or encumber their property.


3. Indians were to choose their land within 4 years, or thereafter the government would select it for them.


4. Every Indian accepting an allotment would be granted citizenship, along with any Indian who had left their tribes and adopted “the habits of civilized life.”

The Lake Mohonk conferees applauded the bill, but urged greater attention to the educational goals they espoused. Later in 1887, their report urged: “The work of education, which has been heretofore desultory, individual, fragmentary, denominational, must be made systematic, harmonious, organic, Christian."

It urged the various educational and missionary entities working among the Indians to “act as one body representing one great constituency, and combining their various energies to one great end, the Americanizing, civilizing and Christianizing of the aborigines of the soil.”

A federal Indian educational program, funded through the Bureau of Indian affairs, instituted a system of boarding schools, many of them in the East, to which Indian children were brought. Typically, the long hair of the boys was cut, all the students were made to wear uniforms, education was in English and Anglo-centric, and discipline was strict. They also received English names, were forbidden to speak their native languages even among themselves, and were required to attend Christian services and encouraged to convert. Graduation rates were abysmal: during a 24-year period at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania beginning in 1879, out of 10,000 students who enrolled, only 158 graduated.

By 1902, there were 6,000 students in about 25 boarding schools in 15 states and territories. In fact, the Indian boarding school system continued to grow until attendance peaked at about 60,000 in the 1970s. Since that time, more enlightened Indian self-determination policies have resulted in decentralization of education back to tribal areas, and the reintroduction of education in aspects of Native culture.

In the grammar schools Indian children attended on reservations before going to boarding schools, Americanization was the goal. In one of his reports the Commissioner of Indian Affairs urged:

Schoolrooms should be supplied with pictures of civilized life, so that all their associations will be agreeable and attractive. The games and sports should be such as white children are engaged in, and the pupils should be rendered familiar with the songs and music that make our home life so dear. . . . If they persist in remaining savages the world will treat them as such, and justly so . . . . The school itself should be an illustration of the superiority of the Christian civilization.

But the system for educating young Indians did not extend to any form of adult education, such as instruction in how to farm their land, which gave Dawes cause to worry, in 1890, that the allotment policy was moving forward too quickly. He asked the Mohonk Conference:

What have we done to prepare these people for their new home and for their new state? Hardly anything can any of you call to mind, —anything that the Government, that the friend of the Indian, that anybody, has done to prepare an allottee for life on his allotment. . . . I sometimes think you had better abandon the allotment altogether and keep him where he is, unless this is done.

By 1897, 60,000 Indians had been allotted land, but there were only 272 farming instructors on the payroll of the Indian Service to teach them how. As a consequence, only about 5 acres per allotment, on average, were actually being cultivated by Indians, and the typically allottee could count on only a few hours of coaching per year.

The Indians were caught between two competing forces: that of the idealist friends of the Indian, who promulgated allotment in the belief that this policy would naturally drive the Indian to adopt the American culture of individualism and competition, and on the other side, the land-seeking settlers and business enterprises who saw allotment as a way to break down the reservation system and take land away from the Indians.

There is no evidence that the railroads or other western land seekers directly sought to influence the passage of the Dawes Act. Presumably those interests were happy enough to let the philanthropic and Christianizing arguments carry the day. But, the railroads did get into the Dawes Act a provision that the Act could not be 

. . . so construed as to affect the right and power of Congress to grant the right-of-way through any lands granted to an Indian, or to a tribe of Indians, for railroads or other highways, or telegraph lines, or the public use, or to condemn such lands to public uses, upon making just compensation.

It did not take long for Congress to begin granting such rights of way through Indian Lands, with multiple railroad grants sailing though Congress annually throughout the rest of the 1880s and 1890s. And railroads were not the only ones interested in western lands.

Generally, the reservations had significantly more land than was necessary to provide allotments to all who qualified for them. So Congress passed enabling legislation to permit agreements with tribes providing for the sale of surplus land. Under these agreements, by 1891, 20 million acres had already been sold out of Indian hands. The Commissioner estimated that of the 116 million acres of Indian land covered by the Dawes Act, only 30 million acres were actually required to provide allotments to all the Indians who qualified for them, and that rest could be sold off for $66 million — the interest on which, he calculated, at 5 percent, would be sufficient to pay for all the costs of Indian education, and the principal could gradually be used to help develop the allotments.

The process of selling “surplus” lands progressed rapidly. Of the 155 million acres of Indian reservation lands in 1881, by 1900 only 78 million acres remained. Of that, 5.4 million acres had been issued in allotments, the rest was still held in common by the tribes. With this rapid shift, some began to anticipate that before long, the government’s oversight over the Indians could end, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs could close up shop.

It was the job of the Indian agents on the reservations to gently persuade and educate Indians into accepting allotments. But in some cases, this was done with considerable pressure, and sometimes there was strong pushback. For example the Osages were reported in 1890 to be nearly unanimously opposed to allotment, on the basis that they were simply not ready for it and that in any case their land was most suitable for use as common grazing land. The common thread among tribes expressing opposition was that allotment would break up their tribal solidarity and destroy their hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Some of the reformers recognized this problem. For example, Rev. Thomas Riggs, a missionary to the Dakotas, told the 1890 Mohonk Conference:

We have tried to turn hunters into farmers. We have tried this not only in a good country where it would be difficult enough to teach agriculture to an Indian, but on the plains, in regions where out of five years, we may possibly have a good crop one year.

Besides the lack of coaching in agricultural skills, the government allocated virtually no funds to assist allottees in the purchase of seed and farming implements. The appropriation for this purpose in 1888 was $30,000 to cover 3,568 allotments. This was cut in half after a few years and between 1893 and 1900 no funds were provided at all for this purpose. Private philanthropy was applied, but was wholly insufficient to meet the need.

Defects in the Dawes Act itself become apparent, as well. The twenty-five year period restricting allotments from being sold or encumbered became problematic, because it meant that no state could levy taxes on allotments. Consequently, states refused to provide funding for roads and education in the Indian lands.

To address these various problems, by 1889 Congress was at work to amend the Act to permit Indians to lease out their allotments, for example to white ranchers. Dawes himself was of two minds about this. He wanted to see the allotment experiment through, and told the conference that a leasing provision 

. . . would speedily overthrow the whole allotment system. The Indian would at once seek to let his land, and relieve himself from work; and there would be whites so ready to take possession that all barriers would soon be broken down … The Indian would abandon his own work, his own land, and his own home, which we have talked about as the central pivot in our attempting to civilize the Indian.

But before expressing those concerns to the Conference, Dawes had already introduced leasing legislation, which was endorsed by both the Mohonk Conference and the Indian Rights Association. As passed, the new law permitted leases of allotted lands for periods of up to five years for farming and grazing, and up to ten years for mining. The bill also increased the size of allotments for Indians who were not heads of households, with the idea that a family of five Indians, receiving five allotments, could live and farm on one and lease out the other four.

The leasing of allotment proceeded slowly, at first, but gradually picked up. By the year 1900, out of 58,594 allotments granted, 7,574 had been leased, and the pace was accelerating. Only 10,835 families were actually living on, and cultivating their allotments. By 1916, 2.3 million out of the 6.4 million acres granted in allotments were in the hands of lessees.

There was rampant abuse in the leasing system. For example, one shrewd operator rented 47,000 acres from the Winnebagoes for eight to 25 cents per acre, and then sublet them to farmers for up to two dollars per acre. Among some tribes, nearly all of the allotted land went into leasing: for example, the Pawnees in 1898 were cultivating 1,443 acres and leasing 36,784; the Tonkawas were cultivating 75 and leasing 11,200. While there were opposite, more positive results elsewhere, clearly this outcome is not what Dawes and all the reformers had in mind when the general allotment policy was originally conceived just a dozen years earlier.

Indian agents who were on the ground in reservations began to understand the Indian cultural pressures that were at odds with the allotment concept, although they continued to advocate for the policy. A report by the agent to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes in 1895 illustrates the cultural clash inherent in the efforts to change the culture of the Indians: 

The most common and pernicious custom among them is the habit of visiting their relatives and friends and eating their substance . . . . Their lavish hospitality militates against the accumulation of wealth by individuals. Tribal visiting keeps alive old customs and should be abolished.

 Another agent to the Shoshones wrote, “Like all barbarians, they are communists, and are loath to take up individually any untried pursuit.”

Another unforeseen consequence of the allotment policy is referred to as fractionation. As the original 25-year holding period expired, Congress passed a variety of measures extending the period in instances where the government deemed the holders incapable of managing their holdings, and passed special Indian probate laws that divided ownership collectively among the heirs of the original allottee, with the title held in trust by the federal government. So if the holder of a 160-acre allotment died with four heirs, each heir would receive a one-fourth interest in the full property, rather than 40 acres apiece. This served to protect the integrity of whatever farm enterprises might have been on the land, but ultimately got very complex, with instances of parcels that had hundreds of fractional owners, each receiving a pittance from the leasing income. In 1986, one tract bringing in $1,080 in annual lease income and valued at $8,000 had 439 owners receiving a variety of tiny shares of the income. The cost of handling the accounting for this tract by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was about $17,000 per year. By 2003, the ownership of this tract had grown to 550 persons, and the cost of accounting was $42,000.

Currently [2015] there are still about 250,000 individual owners of some 3 million fractionated interests in allotted lands. The Bureau of Indian Affairs maintains an Indian Lands Consolidation program that is gradually unraveling the ownership of fractionated parcels by buying them and turning them over to tribal ownership.

The allotment policy itself officially ended in 1934 with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (although it continued in Alaska until 1993). This law, sometimes referred to as the Indian New Deal, sought to reverse the goal of assimilation, and to permit tribes to continue their traditions and culture. It also provided for self-governance of reservations, including the right to manage land and mineral assets.

It is beyond the scope of this history of the allotment policy to go into the further consequences of American Indian policies, but it should be noted that the general economic situation of Native Americans living both on and off reservations still lags significantly behind the rest of the country. Unemployment rates and alcoholism on reservations are high. In 2012, the median income of Native American households was $35,310, compared to a median $51,371 for the entire nation. The Native American poverty rate is 29.1 percent, versus 15.1 percent for the country as a whole. At 82 percent, the Native American high school graduation rate lags behind the national average which is 90 percent. On the other hand, today cultural traditions are being rebuilt, with a significant percentage of Native American students learning their tribal languages, history and culture.

Dawes himself is memorialized in Pittsfield in the name of Dawes Avenue, and the former Dawes School. Dawes, the Dawes Act and the influence of the friends of the Indians are not well-regarded by historians. No biography of Dawes has every been published, but the Dawes papers at the Library of Congress amount to 64 boxes of correspondence, speeches and other records, including an unfinished biography by his daughter — potentially a trove that could shed much new light on the origins of the allotment policy.

In any case, had our esteemed member, Senator Dawes, espoused a more enlightened approach to solving “the Indian problem,” how might things be different today?

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In memoriam: Kim Burbank

We are saddened by the death of Kelton Miller Burbank ("Kim"), who was a member of the Club for nearly 50 years, from 1964 until 2013, and an honorary member for the last few years. Our condolences go to his widow, Hedy, and to his extended family. The Club will miss Kim.



The following is Kim's obituary:



Kelton Miller Burbank died peacefully in his home in New Ashford, Mass. on June 29th, 2015.



He is survived by his loving wife, Hedy Harris Lipez Burbank; his three children, Kelton M. Burbank, Jr., (Betsy Burbank), Brooke E. Burbank, (Blake Wood), and Joshua G. Burbank, (Miriam Preus); his brother, John Burbank, (Ouissa Fohrhaltz), his sister, Donna Burbank Eckhardt, (Alan Eckhardt); his two step-children, Sydney J.Lipez and Zachary H.Lipez, (Zohra Atash); and his three grand-daughters, Phoebe Lan Burbank, Katherine Xian Burbank and Samara Preus Burbank.



He was beloved by all and will be deeply missed. Kim, as he was affectionately known, was a lifelong Berkshire County resident, and practiced law in Pittsfield until 2012. He was a graduate of the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT and received his Bachelor of Arts from Williams College in 1956, before graduating summa cum laude from Harvard Law in 1959. He was a law clerk to Justice Harold P. Williams of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for a year before becoming an associate at the Boston Law firm Choate Hall & Stewart. After a year he left Boston to return to the Berkshires where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1961 he joined the firm of Cain, Lewis and Humphrey, and in 1963 became a partner at Cain, Hibbard and Myers. In 1984 he opened his solo practice where he continued practicing until his retirement at the age of 78.



Kim served on the board of numerous Berkshire County non-profits and arts organizations where he donated countless hours of his legal skills, including the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, the Pittsfield YMCA, the Elizabeth Freeman Center, (which assists and counsels victims of rape and domestic violence), the Audubon Society, the Family and Children Service of Berkshire County, the Berkshire branch of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Housatonic River Watershed Association, Shakespeare & Co., South Mountain Assoc. and many, many others. He also happily served as a Selectman of the town of New Ashford for nine years.



Kim was an avid skier in his youth and well into middle age. He was captain of the Williams Swim Team. His passion for swimming continued throughout his life and he swam competitively at the master's level where he won several events when he was in his 60s. Kim had a wide variety of interests, including but not limited to, hiking, playing tennis, bird watching, reading poetry, and completing the New York Times crossword puzzle (in ink) before anyone else arose.



He loved the Berkshires not only for their intrinsic beauty, but for the ready access to art museums, lectures, musical and theatrical performances, and he attended as many cultural events as he could. His chief passion was gardening. He spent the majority of his free time digging in the dirt, pulling weeds, and planting vegetables, flowers and shrubs. Kim enjoyed nothing better than to spend the entire day in his garden, coming in at dusk covered from head to toe in the dirt he so loved.



In 1999 the Berkshire Natural Resources Council dedicated a trail on Yokum Ridge in his honor for the then "30 years of mostly anonymous but invaluable service" in ensuring the preservation of vast swatches of land throughout Berkshire County. Kim continued his work for BNRC until his passing. The past president of BRNC noted that the overwhelming portion of Kim's work for BNRC had been without charge, in keeping with his generous nature and dedication to land preservation.



In 2000 he was fortunate enough to reconnect with an old friend, Hedy Lipez, and shortly thereafter the two of them began their life together, traveling the globe and attending peace rallies as necessary. They married in 2003 and their travels brought them to Zambia, Scotland, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, the Galapagos Islands, and Thailand. In May of 2005, they undertook the "great road trip", and drove across the country to see Kim's kids in Seattle. In 2007 they discovered Bisbee, Arizona where they ultimately purchased a cottage that was to bring them much joy together.



Kim's friends and family will always think of his smile, kindness, generosity, vast knowledge of the unexpected, and his invariable modesty. His many merits were hidden under a barrel. Of all the many varied roles in which Kim served, none gave him more pleasure than that of Pop-Pop to his three beautiful grand-daughters. He will be fondly remembered as having one or all of them perched on his lap, with a book open and a smile on his face.

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