The figure of the Native-American teacher remains largely absent in histories of the teaching profession in this country and of the government-operated Indian schools that emerged and flourished at the turn of the last century. At a time when a growing literature is enlarging the understanding of what schooling has meant and means to minority populations in American society, it is especially important to consider the experiences of these teachers, their effects on students, possible explanations for their relative invisibility, and the implications for historiography. This article addresses that absence by examining the ways several Native-American women, who returned from mission of government-sponsored schools to classrooms filled with youngsters of their own race, textualized--in fiction, essays, speeches, graphic design, and pageants--their experiences and perceptions as teachers. The schools considered here include day schools located in reservations, boarding schools on reservations, mission schools operating under government contract, and, especially, the twenty-five off-reservation boarding schools, which opened between 1878 and 1902. (Contains 95 footnotes.)