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One excerpt from the “official replica” of John Winchester’s journal discusses Dean Winchester’s first solo hunt. A simple salt-and-burn of the ghosts of two nuns from St. Stephen’s Indian Mission who fell in love and killed themselves. This hunt seemingly did not end well because John states in his journal, “I don’t think I’m going to be sending him on any more solos soon. That one was a little tense.” Dean’s sexuality is something heavily discussed in fandom and after reading the excerpt, many fans headcanonned it as one of the many reasons Dean has struggled with his sexuality. John sending Dean to burn queer nuns was a message to Dean about his sexuality which would make the case a rough one.
John was, objectively, not a good father. Sending your son on a case to steer him away from being queer would only reaffirm that. However, one detail of the excerpt keeps getting overlooked. The nuns that Dean hunted were from St. Stephen’s Indian Mission. It is easy to overlook this detail, especially if you do not know the history behind these missions. But with the history in mind, Dean’s hunt was most likely hard for reasons other than John’s homophobia. To understand what Dean might have gone through on his first hunt by himself, it is important to go over the history of Native American Missions in the United States.
Native American Missions were established by various Christian churches as a way to convert Native Americans to Christianity and European ways of life. Natives were brought to these missions by force or by their own volition. Missions were usually built in regions where Native lands were harmed by disease and war, leaving some Natives no choice but to go. While living at the missions, Natives were instilled with Christian beliefs, learned the languages spoken by the missionaries, and were forced to work.
The conditions at missions were reported to be atrocious. Diseases killed many of the Natives. Food was scarce, leading to starvation. Then, of course, there was corporal punishment. Many Natives were physically abused for things such as: trying to escape, neglecting work or religious duties, and fighting. They were also punished for speaking their languages and practicing their own beliefs. Punishment for those crimes included whipping, beating, and being placed in stocks, hobbles, or shackles. One report states that a group of Natives that had tried to escape had crosses burned into their foreheads with a hot iron. Most priests did not care how badly Natives were hurt or if they were dead because it meant more Christan souls were going to heaven.
Native Americans were treated as less than human in missions. It can safely be assumed that the conditions at St. Stephen’s Mission were no different. St. Stephen’s Mission in Wyoming was founded by the Catholic church in the late 1880s-1890s. The Bishop of Omaha, James O’Connor, had heard the government’s plan of building a school for Native children, donated $5,000 for construction as long as he would get to run the school. St. Stephen’s Indian Mission was a residential school.
Residential schools, much like other missions, were Church founded establishments where Natives would be educated on “the habits and arts of civilization”. Also known as Indian Boarding Schools, Residential schools got their students through the same way missions did. By force or little choice. Children at these schools were isolated from their families. They were forced to cut their hair, wear uniforms, and sometimes even pick different names. They were not allowed to practice their customs or speak their languages without fear of being punished. Children were physically punished, by whippings with belts or straps, being hit by rulers some of which had blades on the end, or by humiliation. They were yelled at in front of the other students, made examples of, had their heads shaved. In addition to physical and emotional abuse, children also faced sexual abuse at the hands of the nuns and missionaries. Residential schools were a hot spot for pedophiles due to the childrens’ isolation and inability to read or write to report the abuse. Thousands of children died in these schools from reasons such as disease to suicide. The unmarked graves of children are still being dug up to this day.
Dean Winchester, like other American children, probably did not learn about the horrors of Native American missions and boarding schools in school. It is safe to say that his first experience with this knowledge would be while investigating St. Stephen’s on his first hunt. Dean Winchester, who has dealt with his neglect and abuse, who has been established to have a huge soft spot for kids, probably sifted through accounts of children being abused at the hands of missionaries and nuns in the name of God. The nuns, the queer nuns, would also have participated in the abuse of these children. They would have scolded them for speaking the only language they knew, kept them away from their families for extended periods, beaten and humiliated them. The queer nuns would have been complicit in the cultural genocide of Native Americans.
The intention of this discussion was not to say that fans could not use this excerpt to analyze Dean’s sexuality. However, there are plenty of moments in the show fans can use to do that. There are not a lot of moments in the show that say Dean’s first hunt was at a residential and it was tense. It changed him. The stark contrast between Dean in the season nine episode, “Bad Boys,” and the season four episode, “After School Special,” would show that. At some point between the flashbacks in those two episodes, Dean burned the bones of two nuns who abused children in ways that many children who attended residential schools still cannot talk about. This discussion intended to show that yes, while John sending a homophobic message by making his son burn gay nuns is very in character, the more likely culprit of Dean’s traumatizing first hunt is the brutalization of Native American children at the hands of those gay nuns.