Annie McCallum Sayre, Teacher in the American Southwest

At first glance, Annie McCallum Sayre (1848-1921) seems to be representative of small-town New Brunswick life. The bare facts of her life – born and died in St. George, New Brunswick, the second daughter of Hugh and Mary Ann McCallum, Anglican, and of Scottish descent – belie her exceptionally adventurous spirit. On 19 October 1876 at the age of 28, Annie married John E. Sayre of Saint John, but just thirteen months later her husband died, leaving her widowed and childless. Within a few years, Annie left her sister’s farm in St. George and journeyed to the southern United States, seeking employment as a teacher with the growing United States Indian School Service.

The Office of Indian Affairs was created in 1824, and through the United States Indian Service, engaged hundreds of educational workers to set about ‘civilizing’ the wild American West. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Indian Service grew exponentially; by 1897 it had almost 4000 salaried employees in the field, the majority of the School Service employees being women. By the early twentieth century, the Indian Service was a full-scale federal bureau.

Beginning in about 1890, Annie Sayre’s employment with the Indian School Service coincided with the zenith of its activity in the American West at the turn of the century. She was assigned to teach among the Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico, and over a period of eighteen years taught at Zia and San Juan pueblos in New Mexico, and one other as yet unidentified. That some of her donated artefacts come from Apache, Hopi and Santa Clara Pueblos suggests other locations where she may have spent time.

But what would compel a young widow to leave the rural shores of New Brunswick to work in the American desert, thousands of miles from friends and family? Without a personal memoir, it is difficult to ascertain the true motivation behind Annie’s decision to join the Indian School Service. Perhaps she had family connections in the area. We know that other New Brunswickers sojourned in the American Southwest. Perhaps she acted on a missionary impulse, found the promise of a salaried position enticing, or simply wished to fulfill a sense of adventurous curiosity.

The female employees of the Indian School Service were remarkable for two reasons: first, in a patriarchal world they held significant power as federal agents; and second, they were fascinated by Native art and culture, and often formed meaningful relationships with the peoples among whom they lived. Annie Sayre was no exception. In one instance, she wrote an animated letter to the Superintendent of the Indian School Service, demanding that he address a boundary issue in which a non-Native was encroaching on Zia Pueblo territory. Annie’s letter sparked a legal land claim dispute, throughout which she acted on behalf of the Zia Natives. Her Pueblo artefacts also attest to her interest in Native culture and underscore her concern for her pupils.

Annie was teaching at the San Juan Day School in 1908 when she resigned for reasons of ill-health. Soon afterwards, she must have returned to St. George where she was living at the time of her first donation to the Natural History Society in 1920.