Asylum Activities

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Yankton Indian Homes, courtesy Smithsonian Institution

When the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians had a small patient population, physical care was very likely good. The asylum’s physician, Dr. Turner, had as thorough a knowledge of general medicine as any other regional practitioner, and was enthusiastic about working in Canton’s unique facility. He gave patients standard medications (see last post) for their physical ailments, and both he and the asylum’s superintendent set up a system of mental health treatment similar to those in other asylums. Able-bodied patients worked in the gardens and took walks outside, while women more typically helped in the dining room and kitchen, cleaned floors, and went to classes which Turner referred to as “numbers” and “object lessons.”

The asylum’s report for these activities was dated August 29, 1903. A report from another South Dakota agency (Indian Training School, Yankton) made by James Staley that same year, indicates a number of health problems for residents there. Dr. O. M. Chapman, the agency physician begins: “The health of these people has been just about that of the average of former years.” Though he noted that contagious diseases were not a problem–except for a few cases of measles–he also stated that the number of people were declining since there had been 68 deaths and only 60 births. Forty percent of the deaths had been due to tuberculosis, which Chapman called “alarming.”

“The death rate was about 40 per 1,000,” Chapman says. “This is a death rate at least four times what it would be among an equal number of whites.”

Tuberculosis Sanitorium Buildings, Phoenix Indian School, courtesy National Institutes of Health

Group Picture at the Phoenix Indian School Tuberculosis Sanitorium Phoenix, AZ, circa 1890-1910, courtesy National Institutes of Health

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A New Asylum

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Patient Dining Room at West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, 1912

In his first official report, when the asylum was new and Superintendent Oscar Gifford had fewer than 20 patients, his glowing words probably did not fall too fall short of what was actually going on at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. “The patients are provided with a healthful, well cooked diet” which included eggs, milk, and fresh vegetables grown in the asylum garden. It is not too difficult to believe that a cook could have provided such meals for the relatively small staff and patient population that existed, and at that point, actually took great pride in her part of the new enterprise.

“The medical treatment has been tonic in character excepting in such cases and at such times, where antispasmodics, eliminants or other special treatments were indicated. . . . .In the treatment of melancholia an unlimited amount of patience and forbearance is required to insure good results, and our work in this regard I think has been a success. The epileptics require constant oversight, but the convulsions have been largely controlled, not alone by sedatives but by tonics . . . .”

Though no one likely wanted to come to the asylum, patients probably did receive far more individual attention from the full-time physician on staff (Dr. John F. Turner) than they would have received at any reservation.

A Sample Eliminant

Various Tonics, courtesy National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

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Asylum Winters

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1911 View of Canton, S.D.

1911 View of Canton, S.D.

When the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians was new, its electric lights and coal heat were luxuries many of its patients had not experienced before. It seems undeniable that they received attention for their physical problems or illnesses, though any psychiatric treatment was rudimentary at best. However, as more patients arrived and the ratio of attendants to patients increased, care in this relatively tiny asylum began to decline in quality. Continue reading →

Canton Winters

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Canton S.D. Courthouse with Buggy in Front, circa 1907

Canton, South Dakota was an extremely small town of around 100 people in the 1870s, when it consisted mainly of vacant lots. By 1880, more than 600 people lived there; the city was incorporated a year later and began to build in earnest. Residents were affected by the weather just as isolated settlers were, losing their crops to grasshopper infestations and enduring bitter cold and arid droughts. Continue reading →

Longing for Winter’s End

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Cheyenne Winter Camp

Solstice celebrations (see last post) helped peoples in cold areas of the world cope with their fear that summer would never return to a dark and dreary world. Later, these celebrations acted as bright spots during a long season of inactivity and discomfort. Wintertime was certainly a period of discomfort for most people, and could be deadly without proper shelter and enough food. South Dakota, where the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians was located, was no exception. Though records were not kept throughout the state’s (and territory’s) history, we do know that the state’s lowest recorded temperature reached 58 degrees below zero on February 17, 1936, in McIntosh. (Its highest was 120 degrees in Gannvalley that same year–representing a 178 degree swing in temperatures.) There is no way to know what wind chills may have been, since these measurements were not widely used by weather reporters until the 1970s.

Blizzards were a particular hardship on the Plains and in the Dakotas, where few trees could stop the wind and blowing snow. Frigid temperatures throughout winter often killed livestock, and indoor temperatures sometimes could not get above freezing. Milk, water, and even the ink in inkwells froze, and sometimes children stayed in bed all day simply because it was too cold to get up. Meanwhile, parents prepared food in freezing kitchens as they remained dressed in outside winter gear. Blowing snow could both blind and suffocate people, and settlers often strung clothesline between their houses and barns to prevent losing their way and dying of exposure. Winter in the Dakotas was a fearful time that left bitter memories for many families.

Photo of a Drawing by Charles Graham of a Herd of Cattle in a Blizzard, courtesy Kansas Historical Society

Sod Home Near Meadow, South Dakota, courtesy Library of Congress

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Winter Celebrations

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Hopi Katsina, also Katchina, or Spirit Messengers

Though Christmas is the winter holiday many Americans celebrate, people over the world and throughout time have celebrated and enjoyed holidays during the winter. The winter solstice, the time when the North Pole tilts furthest away from the sun, has been celebrated by many nations. Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples have famously left the Stonehenge and Newgrange (Ireland) sites as evidence of their solstice celebrations. Woodhenge, a circle of posts within Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois, marks both solstices and equinoxes. The city containing these mounds existed between 600-1,400 AD and are the remains of an advanced Mississippian culture.

The Hopi Soyaluna is a winter solstice festival occurring on December 22nd. When the Sun God has traveled as far from the earth as he can, Hopi warriors bring him back through  festival activities. The core of the festival occurs when members of the tribe dress as snakes, warriors and the Sun God himself to re-enact the solstice story. The black Plumed Snake symbolizes the (evil) forces which drive the sun away, so prayers are offered to persuade him not to swallow the sun forever. (This “swallowing” image recalls the way an eclipse looks.) The warriors offer gifts, and eventually the sun returns.

This festival is also a time to exchange good wishes for the new year. Preparations for the festival include making and giving away pieces of cotton string tied with feathers and pinyon needles at one end. When a person gives this string to another, he says that he hopes the Katchinas (spirits of Hopi ancestors) will grant the recipient’s wishes the following day.

Cahokia Representation, courtesy University of Chicago

Stonehenge

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Lakota Winter Counts

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Sam Kills Two, Lakota Winter Count Keeper, circa late 1800s, courtesy National Anthropological Archives

Winter was an important time of year for Native Americans, partly because it allowed time for reflection, repair, and planning. Plains Indians documented their year through “winter counts,” which were pictorial histories drawn on materials like deer hides, buffalo skins, or even paper. A pictograph for the year depicted an important or memorable event for the community preserving it; yearly pictographs were arranged in a spiral or in rows. These pictographs were in chronological order, and served as memory prompts for the group’s oral historian. Individuals could also create their own winter counts so they could remember important events in their lives.

A community’s historian did not arbitrarily decide upon the most memorable event of the year, but instead, consulted with elders to decide what that year’s event would be. The event was not merely important, but also memorable–which means that it was often unique or unusual. A brilliant meteor shower, terrible sickness, great hunts, and so on, would be candidates for a winter count pictograph, rather than an important but annual event.

A Lakota Winter Count with Individual Pictographs

Lone Dog's Winter Count. Smallpox Outbreak 1801-1802, Successful Hunt 1837-1837, and Arrival of Cattle from Texas 1868-1869

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A Look at Asylum Food

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Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, early 1890s, courtesy East Tennessee State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Superintendents of asylums considered food to be very important, both for patient health and for their morale. Many patients came to facilities somewhat malnourished or with some degree of  sickness, and nourishing food was a primary means of restoring them to physical health. Even healthy patients enjoyed a good meal, and for many patients, meals afforded pleasant breaks in a long day. Superintendents liked to see patients working in asylum gardens: the work gave them exercise and fresh air, occupied their minds, and helped keep expenses down. Some asylum gardens produced surprising amounts of food, though not entirely (or even mostly) through patient labor. The Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, in 1887, produced the following:

— 400 bushels of turnips

— 4,524 ears of green corn

–12,000 heads of cabbage

— 1,102 dozen cucumbers

— 64.5 gallons of peas

These figures do not represent the total harvest from the garden, but do give an idea of its productivity. The superintendent making the report stated that ” . . . the [garden’s] yield is fair under the circumstances . . . . The crops were planted late, and the early part of the season was unfavorable. While the soil of the farm and garden are naturally good, it has been badly cultivated.” At the the end of  fiscal year 1887, the facility had a capacity of 250 but only housed 139 patients.

Animals at the Athens Asylum for the Insane

Patients' Dining Room, West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, 1912

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Artificial Want

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Indian Woman Making Fry Bread

When settlers arrived on Native American shores, they met robust nations with well-developed cultures and survival systems. However, native peoples did not domesticate the animals they ate to any great extent, nor grow food crops as extensively as Europeans did. Unfortunately, settlers considered animal domestication and agriculture hallmarks of civilization; they immediately assumed that the indigenous peoples they met had not yet “risen” to their own level. Much of the interference in native culture practiced by the U.S. federal government and by religious groups targeted this perceived lack of civilization.

In doing so, these groups delivered some of the most devastating blows to Native Americans possible. Official insistence on European-style farming in particular brought ill-health and suffering to Native Americans. Tribes that were pushed to unfamiliar, marginal lands in the West could not live on what they raised by farming. Federal food allotments were necessary for survival, but the allotments also were inadequate. Poor-quality beef, flour, sugar, and coffee could not replace the superior nutrition that game, fish, and the varied plants gathered from large swaths of land, had previously provided. Health problems quickly surfaced, and soon the federal government and Native Americans became mired in a system that could only react to the worst of any number of crises.

Sioux Squaws Waiting for Rations at Pine Ridge Reservation, 1891, courtesy Library of Congress

Rations For All, circa 1905, courtesy Library of Congress

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A Helping Hand

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In the Land of the Sioux, courtesy firstpeople.us

Though food scarcity occurred naturally due to weather and other factors, Native Americans could generally recover from a poor season of hunting or farming. However, the “help” extended by the U.S.’s federal government actually put them into a downward spiral that affected their health for generations. Government interference began early in the relationship between native peoples and settlers, stemming to some extent from a difference in world view. Settlers expected to see the same extensive domestication of animals and extensive farming in the new land that they had experienced in Europe, and could not understand Native Americans’ different relationship with animals and nature. Settlers took the absence of widespread domestication and agriculture by native peoples as an indication that they were uncivilized. A surprising emphasis of early legislation by the newly formed U.S. dealt with this issue of civilization.

The new Congress’s first trade and intercourse Act (March 1, 1793) said this: “. . . in order to promote civilization among the friendly Indian tribes, and to secure the continuance of their friendship, it shall and may be lawful . . . to cause them to be furnished with useful domestic animals and implements of husbandry.”

These seemingly friendly words and seemingly friendly intention started a cascade of events that left Indian nations destitute of land and poorly nourished. My next couple of posts will concentrate on these issues.

Klamath Woman Preparing Food

Buffalo in Kansas

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