Digging Through Newspapers

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The Sioux Valley News, August 9, 1895

Newspapers can give tremendous insight into an era, and small-town newspapers are gold mines of localized information, attitudes, and values. Many reported the comings and goings of their town’s citizens and reported on odd topics of interest. On Jan 22, 1904, the following items appeared in The Sioux Valley News in Canton, SD:

— Mrs. George Alexander of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. began crying for no apparent cause and literally sobbed herself to death.

— A few days ago H. Davison of Norfolk, Neb., purchased a pair of blue socks. Now his feet are in such a condition from wearing them that his attending physician says they will have to be amputated.

— As a result of drinking ginger ale flavored with lemon extract, Charles Benke, Albert Lewis and William Prudence are dead at Alexander, Ark.

The modern reader wonders what in the world happened in these three medical incidents, which were published as straightforward news items.

Vintage Ginger Ale Ad

Vintage Cigarette Ad

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An Easy Escape

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Sisseton Agency, 1891

Most patients at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians were allowed some degree of freedom if they were not violent or abusive. Elizabeth Faribault (originally from the Sisseton Agency) simply left the grounds without permission one evening in January, 1920. Asylum staff located her a couple of days later in Alvord, Iowa and brought her back to the asylum.

Faribault escaped again in September, 1921 by opening a window on the asylum’s sun porch and jumping through a screen to the ground. Once again she was returned to the institution, where she died of heart failure in 1928 at the age of 35. She had displayed no symptoms of  illness prior to death.

Indian Family, Sisseton 1885, courtesy http://www.firstpeople.us

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Escaping the Insane Asylum

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1890 Census Report

Few patients enjoyed their stay at an insane asylum. Sam Black Buffalo managed to escape from the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians the week after Thanksgiving, in 1905. Canton’s weekly newspaper, The Sioux Valley News,  recounted the escape, saying that Black Buffalo slipped away during an afternoon rain shower and wasn’t missed until supper. The paper called Black Buffalo “sharp as a tack, but deaf and dumb.” Even this early in its existence, the asylum was being used improperly to detain inconvenient, rather than insane, Indians.

On the same day it told of the escape, The Sioux Valley News gave its conclusion: “Dr. Turner, assistant superintendent of the asylum, went west Tuesday and discovered the fugitive on a way-freight at Emory. The conductor picked the fellow up at a watering tank and was afraid to put him off for fear he would freeze.”

Sam Black Buffalo was returned to the asylum on Wednesday, after two days of freedom.

One-Handed Alphabet for the Deaf and Dumb

Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Little Rock, Ark., (1905-1915)

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Another Insane Author

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Clifford Beers

Clifford Beers believed his mental collapse was precipitated by his elder brother’s illness and eventual death from it. The brother had enjoyed perfect health previous to his sudden illness, and Beers found himself fixating on the idea of his likewise becoming suddenly ill and dying of the same epileptic-like condition that had killed his brother. Eventually Beers tried to commit suicide and additionally fell prey to paranoia and hallucinations; he eventually entered an insane asylum.

Beers differs from Grimes (see last two posts) in that he described both his own mental state during his breakdown, and life in the various asylums where he spent time recovering.

He described going into a violent ward: “Clad in nothing but underclothes, I was thrust into a cell. Few, if any, prisons in this country contain worse holes than this cell proved to be. It was about six feet wide by ten long. A patient confined here must lie on the floor with no substitute for a bed but with one or two felt druggets (blanket-like material). For over a month I was kept in a half-starved condition. Worst of all, winter was approaching and these, my first quarters, were without heat.”

Beers recovered from his breakdown and went on the found the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, the precursor to the National Mental Health Association.

Beers' Book About His Experience

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An Insane Author

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Dementia Praecox Patient

Green Grimes, a patient at the Lunatic Asylum of Tennessee (see last post) wrote a book about insanity. He explained that in his own case, he became partially insane with melancholy depression after the loss of his favorite brother. His widower father remarried and his stepmother made life so unpleasant that Grimes left home as a young boy, and applied to his older brother for help. After his refusal, Grimes became a mechanic and did well enough to get married and have three children. He was swindled of his assets later in life by someone he trusted, and stated that he went from moral insanity to raving madness, accompanied by epilepsy.

Grimes had a reasonable insight into some causes of insanity, saying that it could be produced by the death of a near relation or bosom friend, sudden hard spells of sickness, sudden disappointment, or by intemperance or opium eating.

He also attributed insanity to inflammation from a dislocated joint reaching the brain, and to an”affected” liver, or an “affected” ligament running from the shoulder to the brain. Tellingly, one cause for insanity was “pretended friendship.” Grimes undoubtedly put the blame for his own insanity on the betrayal of a friend.

Insane Male Patients

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Writing About Insane Asylums

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Lunatic Asylum of Tennessee

Several former patients wrote books about their experiences in an insane asylum, but one unusual work went beyond that. In 1846, a patient named G. Grimes wrote A Treatise on the Most Important Subject in the World: Simply to Say, Insanity. The officers of the Nashville, TN Lunatic Asylum certified that Grimes wrote the book while a patient at the institution–which he still was at the time of their certification. The book sold for 50 cents a copy.

Grimes gave his background and route to insanity, but concentrated most of his rather academic discussion on the causes and treatment of insanity in general. His claim that “There are other Medical books which treat on Insanity, but comparatively few to the population, and none written by an Insane man,” was almost certainly true.

The next post will give a flavor of Grimes’ thoughts on the topic.

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Crazy About Insane Asylums

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Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

Though families weren’t always enthusiastic about having their names–or loved ones–associated with an insane asylum, towns had a different attitude. Asylums meant construction work, a steady employee payroll, additional supply orders for local businesses, and so on.

In 1858, Virginia voted to add another insane asylum to its system, due to overcrowding at their Staunton and Williamsburg facilities. The towns of Fayetteville, Sutton, and Weston were in consideration for the project, and that meant competition between the three.

Several important men in the government at Richmond were from Weston, and they urged the town to spruce itself up before the selection committee arrived to inspect it. Citizens hustled to whitewash and paint houses, mend fences, gravel their dirt streets, and repair their sidewalks. They went the extra mile and hauled away their trash, filled potholes, and then greeted the committee with a parade and a brass band.

Weston became the site of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in what later became West Virginia.

Current Image of Hospital

Early Postcard of Weston, WV

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Clashes and Their Consequences

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General George Custer

Colonel George Armstrong Custer brought hundreds of soldiers to help him search for a good spot to put the army’s new fort. (See last post.) For some reason, he also brought along two miners—who found gold. It wasn’t a big strike by any means, but it fed the rumors about gold in the sacred Black Hills. Soon other prospectors did find gold—a huge amount—and treaties didn’t mean much after that. Miners poured into the region, with more and more settlers following.

The Sioux defended their land, but nothing would stop the onslaught of miners. Finally the Commissioner of Indian Affairs decreed that if the Lakota didn’t settle on reservations by January 31, 1878, they would be considered hostile enemies. The Lakota refused to go to the reservations.

A respected leader, Sitting Bull, gathered warriors from the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes to his camp in Montana Territory. He had a vision that showed the white soldiers falling in the Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. That vision inspired another war chief, Crazy Horse, to lead the first of several battles against the military forces sent to defeat Native Americans’ resistance .

Sitting Bull

The U.S. soldiers did fall like grasshoppers. However, after Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn, the Fort Laramie Treaty boundary lines were redrawn so that the Black Hills fell outside protected territory.

General Custer and Scouts

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Clashes Between Indians and Whites

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Returning War Party, courtesy Library of Congress

Dakota Territory, where the city of Canton was eventually established, embraced the Mandan, Arikara, Kidatsa, Assiniboin, Crow, Cheyenne, Cree, and Dakota (Santee Sioux) tribes. The Lakota Sioux were openly hostile to white newcomers, and even the early trappers avoided their sacred land in the Black Hills. Things changed when pioneer families came in and railroads began to snake through the countryside. Railroad workers arrived in hordes to cut through previously untouched land. People who had heard rumors about gold sometimes sneaked into the Black Hills.

The Lakota Nations were important to peace in the region, and in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government granted them a huge parcel of land west of the Missouri River. The government forbade settlers or miners to enter the Black Hills without permission, and the Sioux agreed to stop fighting with the newcomers.

Some people inevitably broke the treaty, and inevitably there were clashes. One Sioux retaliation tactic was to raid settlements and then retreat to the Black Hills where they were protected from pursuit by their treaty. The military wanted a fort in the area to better their chances of cutting off the Sioux before they could get to the Black Hills. That desire for a fort changed everything.

My next post will discuss what happened when the government pursued building a fort in the area.

Sioux Indians From Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D., courtesy Library of Congress

Sioux Delegation, 1891, courtesy Library of Congress

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Miss Smith Goes to the Insane Asylum

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Female Patient, Bellevue, 1885, courtesy Wellcome Images

Families sometimes committed their relatives to asylums for convenience or spite. In 1910, New York resident Alice Stanton Smith was arrested for carrying a small revolver for protection. She was sent to Bellevue hospital, stripped, forced into a chair, and injected with morphine. Later she was released as sane. Adorned with diamonds and other gems, Smith appeared in the Harlem Police Court to defend herself the following week–not so much against the crime of carrying a revolver, but to plead with the court not to send her back to Bellevue.

The court magistrate called the psychopathic ward at Bellevue to talk with the examining physicians there; they said Smith was only “a little nervous and eccentric.” Her brother sent an agent to court, saying that Smith had been doing “crazy acts” for years. When pressed for an example, he said that Smith had once slapped a guest at a dinner party.

Smith–worth $100,000 in her own right–told the court that her relatives had tried to have her declared insane a number of times. Though Smith did not appear deranged to the reporters in the court nor to the physicians at Bellevue, the magistrate sent her back to the asylum.

Bellevue Hospital Ambulance

Lunacy Law, 1913

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