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Conclusion

Early photo of playing Indian at Seton’s.

 

Early girls’ camps were established on ideas to build a nation and resist the perceived drawback of modernity – through the wholesale acculturation of Native American lifeways.  In response to these anxieties stimulated by a rapidly altered American culture, ideas of child development were perceived as a way to protect and ensure a continuity of a physically superior race. In this vein, camps were a way to maintain emotional and physically gendered roles for future citizens of a growing nation.

Over time, summer camps challenged girls to be strong, independent and skillful.

Girl’s camps were seen as progressive institute of education and became an accepted part of girls’ development among white middle and upper-class families. Leaders of the camps saw camp experiences as a way to improve girls lives by enhancing their relationship with family and friends-and building self-respect, self- reliance and courage. Summer camps continue to operate and some with the use of “time honored Native American themes using respectful approaches to Indigenous culture and competency.” (ACA) How camps afford respectful and educative activities within sociocultural contexts remains to be seen.

Girl Scouts of America,
Indiana State Library.

Sources:

  • Campfire Girls. https://campfire.org.
  • John Cucchi. “Visiting with Betty Ridley.” Video. YouTube, 2008. Retrieved 20 Mar 2019. Eastman Family Papers. Jones Library. Amherst, MA. Folder 2. Photo 3, 11,19
  • Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Photo of Baldwin Locomotive Works 1888. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/industrial-neighborhoods/. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
  • Eastman, Goodale, Dayton Papers. Sophia Smith Collection. Box 12, Fiile 6; Photo 2, 3; Article” Training American Girls as Indians.” Boston Sunday Post, June 21, 1915. Box 15, Folder 1. Jones Library Information on Eastman’s; Series II, Box 5 Folder 6.
  • Jennifer Helgren. “Native American and White Camp Fire Girls Enact Modern Girlhood, 1910–39.” American Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2014): 333-360. https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.smith.edu/ (accessed March 3, 2019.).
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  • Indiana State Library. Photo. Girl Scouts. 1914. Web. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
  • Susan A. Miller.Growing Girls. The Natural Origins of Girl’s Organizations in American. New Brunswick. Rutgers University Press. 2007. pp3, 5, 6. Print.
  •  Wilma Miranda. Ruth Yerkes, ed.  American Camp Association. “One Hundred Years of American Camping Celebration.” 2018.  www.aca.org.
  •  Roderick Nash. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven. Yale University Press. 1967. p.153. Print.
  • National Park Service. “Conservation, Preservation, and Environmental Activism.” nps.gov. Retrieved 31 Mar 2019.
  • Nelson Historical Society. Postcards from Munsonville: Camps Oahe, Winnenomack and Others. 1901-1950. nelsonhistory.org. Web. Retrieved 20 Mar 2019.
  • National Archives. “Teaching with Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor.”. www.archives.gov. Web. Retrieved 31 Mar 2019.
  • Rockwell, Norman. “Recitation.” Illustration. Saturday Evening Post & Curtis Publishing Company. June 15, 1919 edition. Web. Retrieved 30 Mar 2019.
  • Ernest Thompson Seton. The Birch-bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians, Containing their Constitution, Laws, Games, and Deeds (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1907)
  • Susan Schrepfer.Nature’s Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), p.156. Print.
  • Kiara M. Vigil. “Charles Eastman’s School of the Woods. Re-creation Related to Childhood Race and Gender at Camp Oahe.” American Quarterly, 70, no 1 (2018) 25-53. https:// muse. Jhu.edu/ accessed February 27, 2019.
  • Abigail A.Van Slyck. A Manufactured Wilderness. Minneapolis.University of MN Press. 2006.Print