Copyrights and Site Access

Some materials and sources may be subject to copyrights though nothing that originates on either the blog or website is copyrighted. This creates some complications: 

• For fair use of some materials, our use must be for educational, research or scholarship purposes. Those are the purposes of the website which has no commercial purpose. 
• The website is not public. Users are expected to use the site only for the above purposes and never for any commercial purpose. To preserve the non-public status of the website, registration of users is required. 
• The inconvenience of registration is unfortunate but I will be glad to help any of the few people I expect to seek registration. If you don't already have a Google account, you will need to create one. If you have a Gmail address, you already have a Google account. How to: Create a Google Account
• The blog is public and is not to contain any copyrighted materials. Posts I create or submitted by someone other than me become a part of the public domain (no copyright). 

Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) Review of Tucson Indian School Records

The PHS conducted an extensive review of their operation of the Tucson Indian School which is accessible online here. The review report is well worth reading in its entirety because of its completeness and candor in addressing the subject. A descriptive paragraph from the report follows: 

"In winter of 2023, when we at the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) Reparative Description Committee were auditing archival collection guides for harmful and oppressive language, the records of the Tucson Indian Training School (Record Group 103) caught our attention. As we wrote in our first blog post on the topic, reparative description is the practice of critically examining and ultimately adjusting the way we as an institution describe or characterize marginalized groups, paying particular attention to instances where our description inflicts harm, spreads false narratives, or minimizes past and ongoing injustices.  In reading the original collection guide, we immediately recognized outdated terms were used to refer to the Akimel O'odham (Pima) and Tohono O’odham (Papago) people, but, upon further reflection, noted that the lived experiences of these Indigenous groups were erased and misrepresented through omission and under-description rather than through outdated language alone. The use of a neutral voice glossed over government and church policies of assimilation and cultural destruction and left out students’ points of view." 

An image of the Escuela News, the school newspaper, gives the reader of the school's function in 1960. The reader may also notice a condescending tone in describing the students. Other images include student photos and documents related to student enrollment and their work on a well replacement project. 

Much of the latter part of the review will be of more interest to a researcher than to someone interested in the students or school life. There are links to other materials that may be of interest. Images related to Tucson can be seen here. 

Website Fixed

Earlier this week, a friend told me that the website would not work for him. I looked into it and found that there was a problem caused by human error (mine). It is now fixed. Thanks Jim. 

I'm sorry if this inconvenienced you. 

I've been occupied the last few days doing backups of my online accounts to reduce the risk of data loss. That's done for now, so I'm back to doing research and posting articles. 

View with Small Screen

Using a tablet or phone, it is best to select the Desktop Site option and in the landscape (wider) orientation. Both the blog and website work best on a laptop or desktop computer. 

New material and Better Organization

I've found many historic photos of Tucson's early years, many more than I can use here. While doing that, I learned some new things about our city. I'm not surprised but didn't know that Tucson had an Indian school. Such schools are quite controversial today, with good reason. There are a great many pictures related to the school but I want to know more about the lives of their students. Perhaps there are still former students willing to share their stories. 

Naturally there are more photos of more recent times but I would like to stick mostly with the WW II years and earlier. I also want to focus on the downtown and the five Historic Preservation Zones but as time passed, these communities were influenced by events outside of those places. Major events in the growing city should not be ignored. There is still a lot of research to be done. 

As I filled in the pages with new content some reorganization seemed best. The main two subject areas are history and historic preservation. In some ways, each is distinct but the boundaries become blurred in some cases. The goal is to make it easy for you or me to access material of interest. That's not as easy as I first thought. 

My last chore will probably never be entirely completed: finding and fixing broken or erroneous links. It's annoying to click a link and get nothing of use. There are hundreds of links in a complex website and the content they point to can be moved or deleted. Each link must be tested and fixed as needed. A good link today may be bad tomorrow. 

If you discover any problem in the blog or website, please let me know at historictucson@gmail.com. 

Progress Report

I've made good progress at organizing and adding new content to the website; there is still much to be done. Portraits and biographic sketches of early Tucsonans have been added; more will be coming. Some pages are nearly complete but others are waiting for my attention. If you come across a blank or incomplete page, please be patient. I'll get around to it. Many pages are nearly complete. If you have comments, questions or problems, please let me know at historictucson@gmail.com. 

Big Changes

The structure of this site and arrangement of the content have been substantially changed, The blog (https://historictucson.blogspot.com/) is still the best starting place. Blog posts like this one will point out new or reorganized content along with discussion of historic information in the Old Pueblo. Some blog posts may be the basis for new pages on the website. Google Sites is the host for the web pages and provides many more features to organize the content and make it more useful to those viewing the site. 

The Topics page (https://sites.google.com/view/historictucson/topics) on the website is a way to see the variety of subject categories and pages on the site. It is the home page of the website and is where the link near the top of the left column of the blog will take you. The Topics menu at the top of every web page has the same function. 

I have cleaned up many broken or outdated links but there are more likely to need attention. if you find a bad link or other problem, please let me know at historictucson@gmail.com.