The first few pages of this chapter have to deal with the rations of the students and also what they ate. At the beginning of the functioning of the school the students were given the bare minimum of nutrition. At time the students would get only one glass of milk during their 3 course meals. Also, quite a few students had trouble getting used to the 3 square meals a day. Many of the children ate when they were hungry and had a hard time waiting to be told to eat. When they were served food it was normally the same thing every day. This book had a menu of the early years of what was served.
1910 Food Menu
Breakfast: Oat meal & milk, Fried potatoes, bread & coffee.
Dinner: Boiled meat (which was very bland) & gravy, potatoes, cabbage, bread & water.
Supper: Roast Meat & gravy, potatoes, beans, prunes, bread & water.
This menu did not have very many variations to it, every now and then the cooks would put dumplings in with the gravy but that was the best of what the children got at that time. Fresh fruits were never served the only way children got the nutrients of vitamins was normally through the cabbage which contained vitamin C which greatly help prevent the scurvy. In the book it also shared how the children complained of their oatmeal being wormy, and the book also names 3 children who had run away because they had found worms in their rice. The menu slowly got better as time grew on and parents as well as the government began to notice that the children would complain of being hungry and write letters to their parents to insist that they take them home.
Another thing this book talked about was the horrible was the health care. Many of the students who attended Rapid City were subjected to a variety of possible sicknesses including; tuberculosis, scarlet fever, smallpox, cerebro-spinal meningitis, influenza and many others. The medical care for these viruses was nothing more than rest and water, because at this time in the medical field there weren’t very many antibiotics available. The flu pandemic was one of the biggest concerns at this point in time and in 1918-19 it actually caused the school to shut down in order to control the plague.
First off, the food sounds disgusting. Secondly, one of my grandmas attended a Catholic boarding school in Red Lake, MN, and she would run away to her grandma's house down the road just to get a good meal. Her grandma always took her back for the fear that she would get beat, which she usually did. I guess it was pretty common for children to run away because of the meals they were served.
ReplyDeleteThe meals were very small and not alot to choose from. I wonder if the students were able to get seconds and thirds. I bet they weren't. With only 3 meals a day, and not much to eat, everyone probably ate the food, even though they did't like it. I bet there was alot of skinny Indians at the boarding schools.lol
ReplyDeleteUsually when individuals talk or write about food I immediately get hungry, but not in this case. The meals were so poor! I wonder how many children were sickened by the drastic change in their diet as well as the adjustment to the timeliness that they would be offered meals. In my book the author mentioned that the Jesuit priests would allow the students to hunt on occasion. Whatever they ended up killing, usually rabbits and birds were then brought to the kitchen to be prepared for the students. I thought that that was a nice gesture offered by the school personnel.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting is my book is also touching base on the menu at Flandreau boarding school. They stated that the menu wasn't too appealing and consisted of mostly starchy foods and they did mention gravy and more gravy, which I noticed is on your menu also. The wormy oatmeal reminds me of Shawshank Redemption. (Eeew)
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