Any writer who attempts to report on historical events can expect some readers to disagree on the facts as recorded. Because I am the writer responsible for the text in the Lawrence 150th Anniversary Book, I knew what I wrote about Haskell might be controversial. It is, however, as accurate as my considerable research in the time allowed could make it. I relied heavily on information in old issues of the Haskell Leader, Haskell’s own newspaper, and on other contemporary newspaper reports about the school.

I do not believe in writing revisionist or politically correct history. As a child and adolescent, I noted how the account of the Battle of Little Big Horn accompanying Capt. Myles Keough’s mount, Comanche, at Dyche Museum changed over the years. First, the narrative portrayed the Indians as bad guys who massacred Custer; a few years later, Custer and his troops were depicted as bad guys who deserved it. I always wondered why someone didn’t just tell what happened, without editorial opinion rearing its ugly head, and let readers draw their own conclusions.

The fact that there are children as young as 8 months buried in the Haskell Cemetery does not mean that they were students there. The school was designed to teach the boys to be farmers, the girls to be domestic workers. One can argue whether that was a good idea, but obviously they were not teaching babies and toddlers to perform such work.

Pictures of students in the early years of Haskell show very few young children and I state in the book that a small number of younger children were there. Some were the children of teachers, others were younger siblings of students whose families accompanied them to Haskell. In one instance, a younger class of students was sent there with their teacher to see if primary-aged children could learn to do some domestic chores. Evidently, the experiment was not successful because I found no evidence that it was tried again. In 1890, the average age for boys at Haskell was 15 years, 8 months; for girls, who did lighter work, the average age was 14 years.

The word “brave” when applied to Indian men of the early last century is not pejorative to me. I am sorry if it is to others. I used the term in describing the construction of Haskell Stadium, which I always presumed the government built; in fact, the stadium cost a whopping $250,000 in 1926 dollars, all of which was raised by braves of 60 tribes who presented it to the school as a gift. It was a noble effort that I felt readers would appreciate; the term “brave” was used in contemporary reporting of their generous gift.

Lastly, I never stated that Baker acquired the wetlands in 1966, but that “in 1968, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare gave 573 acres south of the Haskell campus to Baker University for the re-creation and management of a wetlands area.” I did not write that “Haskell officials told the Department of Interior and Baker that they didn’t want the land.”

Instead, I accurately reported that “In 1966, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife officials offered to return the section known as the Wetlands to Haskell, but the Area Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent a letter stating that there was no interest in re-acquiring the land.” Although I sought and found other corroboration of his facts, that information came from Clark H. Coan’s “Selected Chronology of the Haskell-Baker Wetlands and South Lawrence Trafficway.”

Am I always correct in everything I write? No, perfection continues to elude me, but it is not because I haven’t done my research. And it isn’t because I slant my words to fit an agenda. History happens and I feel obligated to report what happened as accurately as possible and let readers decide for themselves the motives of those who made the history, not the motive of the person who reported it.

The long-dead Lawrence businessmen who formed a committee in 1882 and raised $10,000 to purchase 280 acres of land that they donated “for the purpose of building a trade school for the education of American Indian boys and girls” envisioned the school as an asset to the community.

Today, almost 120 years after Haskell first held classes, it remains the asset they hoped it would be.

Marsha Goff is a local historian and writes a regular column for the Journal-World.