Agnes
Dill

FIRST A CHILDHOOD VOW, THEN A LIFE OF COMMITMENT

Honored December, 1994

Agnes Dill

With a father from one Northern New Mexico pueblo, Laguna, and a mother from another, Isleta, Agnes Dill spent her early years in both places, before boarding at the Albuquerque Indian School between the ages of 8 and 16.

As a young teen-ager she also worked as a domestic helper, an unpleasant experience that helped shape the course of her life. “It was such a dreary way of earning a living,” she reflected many years later. “I knew there were other girls like me, who were qualified to do other things. So while I was there washing dishes or sweeping floors, I made a vow to myself--to do something for women’s betterment in education and employment fields.” It was a vow she kept.

Most young Indian women in those days--the 1920s and ‘30s--were brought up to be reticent, not outspoken, and to become wives and mothers, staying in the home. But Agnes’s parents prized education and encouraged her to become a teacher. She earned a degree from New Mexico Highlands University, then was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to teach at four different schools in Oklahoma from 1937 to 1948.