Close
Stay informed: Sign up for eNews Subscribe

On the Borders of Love and Power Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American Southwest

Read Chapter 1
Close

1

Breaking and Remaking Families

The Fostering and Adoption of Native American Children in Non-Native Families in the American West, 1880-1940

Margaret Jacobs

In the late nineteenth century, Mary Dissette, a single missionary and schoolteacher at Zuni Pueblo, adopted a Zuni girl named Daisy. After her tenure at Zuni, Dissette settled in Santa Fe, where she bought an adobe house and a large orchard with the intent of taking in "a dozen Indian girls from the different pueblos and teach[ing] them practical domestic industries, especially spinning, weaving, horticulture and poultry raising." D