A scarce and charming survivor, written and illustrated by the sixth grade class at Tucson Indian Training School, “a mission school owned and operated by the Board of National Missions of the Presbyterian Church.” While the school was inevitably assimilationist in its mission, this book fits into a tradition of publishing at residential schools which gave Indigenous students access to printing resources. The two teachers named in the book’s production, Hazel Cuthill and Maude E. Hold, are both credited with supervision of composition, binding, art, and printing, suggesting that the students did all of this themselves.
Whispers of Arizona was part of a series of books published by students “to promote pride in their culture and ethnic heritage” (McIntyre). “We wrote this book so as to correct the strange thoughts and ideas of white men. Some of them think we wear war paint and have feathers in our hair. Then we want the people who do not live in a desert country like our Indians do to know more things about it because we love the desert.”
Commencing with a roster of the sixth grade class, the book consists of richly illustrated stories and anecdotes concerning Native Americans from the Southwest, including “The Pima Indians”; “The Apache”; “Hopi Tribe”; and “Indian Story.” These are followed by illustrated descriptions of the flora and fauna of the desert. All contributions carry a student’s byline. The preface states that, “We got our ideas of birds, animals, and plants right from our own back yards mostly. Some of them we learned from books. The stories of the tribes were written from our own experiences.”
Tucson Indian Training School was founded as part of the drive by the Woman’s Executive Committee of Mone Missions of the PCUSA to expand west and provide educational and religious services to Native populations. A boarding school, “at both the junior and senior high school level, [the Tucson Indian Training School] had separate programs for boys and for girls, as well as for individual ethnic communities. Their focus was both academic and vocational. Vocational projects, such as farming, domestic sciences, spinning, and weaving, were intended to keep native arts alive as well as provide goods to be sold by families for additional income” (Presbyterian Historical Society). The school closed in 1960**.**
OCLC locates three copies in Arizona and other at the Presbyterian Historical Society Library in Pennsylvania.
McIntyre, A.J., The Tohono O’odham and Pimeria Alta (Charleston, SC, 2008), p.102; Presbyterian Historical Society, “‘Go Forth and Teach …’: Presbyterian Schools in the Southwest” in The Journal of Presbyterian History, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Fall/Winter, 2007), p.154.
