Big Arm School
By editor
Big Arm, Lake County
The land around what they now call Big Arm, on the shores of the great Flathead Lake, was once understood differently. For the Salish and Kootenai people, it was a place of sustenance, a part of a living community of relations. The mountains, the waters, the game, the plants, all held their place in a balance that had been observed for generations. Then came the Dawes Act of 1887, a law born of a different understanding, one that saw land not as a relation, but as a commodity to be divided, measured, and owned.
This act, titled "An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations," spoke of "severalty"; the treatment of Native Americans as individuals, not as members of their tribes. It was a concept foreign to our ways. The law decreed portions of land: "To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section; To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section." This was the American way of order, a geometric imposition upon a living landscape.
Our leaders, Chief Charlo and Sam Resurrection among them, resisted this division of the Flathead Reservation. They understood the consequences of such an act. Yet, the will of the government was firm. In 1910, the 1.2 million acre reservation was opened to homesteading. The land, once held in common, was now parceled out, inviting a new wave of settlers who saw opportunity where we saw disruption.
With the influx of these new inhabitants, institutions of their civilization followed. Within a year of the reservation's opening, the Montana School Board established Big Arm School District #65. For a time, the children of the white settlers and our own children attended separate schools. This was a reflection of the two worlds that now coexisted, often uneasily, upon the same ground. But in the mid-1910s, a new structure rose: the Big Arm School. It was built to serve all area students, a single building where different paths converged, at least for the hours of instruction.
The school itself was built according to their best practices for small school design. It had a gable roof, clapboard siding. Inside, near the entry, were two cloakrooms. The builders, guided by the health professionals of their time, placed a single band of windows on the north wall to let in light, believing that "cross-lighting" harmed pupils’ eyes. Two outhouses, separated by a modest distance, served boys and girls. At midday, children would warm jars of soup on the wood stove, a simple ritual before the games of softball, red rover, or kick-the-can began. These were the rhythms of their new life, a blend of the practical and the playful.
Yet, the story of this land, and the structures built upon it, is not merely one of settlement and schooling. It is also a story of a deeper transformation, a change in the very relationship between man and the earth. As Garrit Voggesser observed in The Flathead Project: The Indian Projects, "Once the federal government designated the Flathead Reservation as a permanent settlement for the Indians of those environs, it also began to envision the need for a consistent and controlled water supply to aid the tribes’ farming and ranching enterprises. In turn, Anglo-American settlers quickly needed the same assurance. Accomplishing that feat would prove to be a beneficial, though difficult and drawn-out process." The land, once a provider, was now a project, its waters to be controlled, its resources managed for enterprises.
The school continued its purpose until 1952, when increased teachers’ salaries and better roads led to students being transported to Polson. The building, however, remained. It was a community dance hall, a polling place, a club room; a center for the new community long after its primary function ceased. For nearly a decade, it stood boarded up, a silent witness to the passage of time and the shifting currents of human endeavor. Then, in 2008, the Big Arm Association began its work of restoration. By 2011, the school once again became a center for the Big Arm community, a place where the echoes of different histories, different understandings of the land, continue to resonate.
