UC Riverside

During the early twentieth century, Evelyn Warren (Ojibwe), Cleo Caudell (Choctaw), and Ruth Murphy (Cherokee) navigated a window of opportunity to do the unexpected. They individually attended Bacone (Indian) College in Oklahoma before going on to study at the University of Redlands in California. After each completed their degrees, they separately obtained jobs with the Office of Indian Affairs. Opportunities opened for the women because of a convergence of a pipeline between Bacone to Redlands; a mainstream interest in Indian culture, one that the Indian New Deal supported; and recruitment efforts of the Office of Indian Affairs. Paradoxically, the general population’s fascination with Indian culture drew upon stereotypes of Native women, demonstrations in which the women participated.

Using their life stories, I have constructed a narrative that gives insight into the everyday and unexpected ways that these women traversed their lives. From their early schooling to their college attendance, they push back against prevailing Indian boarding school narratives and give new insight into the varied educational experiences that existed for Natives in the early twentieth century. Their histories also reveal how Warren, Caudell, and Murphy challenged white expectations in some ways while upholding them in others. As educated, cosmopolitan women they successfully adapted to different cultures, but doing so called for reinforcing visions of Indian women as people from another time. In strategically using these images though, the women gained access to schools and careers that they might not otherwise have and used their agency within the confines of these structures to challenge the very images they portrayed.