Category Archives: Canton Asylum for Insane Indians

Canton Asylum for Insane Indians in South Dakota was also known as Hiawatha. It opened in December 1902 and closed in 1934 after charges of neglect and abuse were validated. Dr. Harry Reid Hummer and Oscar Sherman Gifford were its only two superintendents. Its only patients were Native Americans, typically called Indians. It was the only federal insane asylum created solely for an ethnic group and served only Indians.

Another Patient’s Fate

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Admission Notes Showing Insane and Epileptics Co-Mingled

Susan Wishecoby was sent to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians probably because of her epilepsy. She apparently did not know exactly what was wrong with her, and erroneously thought she was going to a hospital. She wrote many letters to the commissioners of Indian Affairs in office during her confinement, but they always referred her requests for discharge to Dr. Harry Hummer.

Wishecoby obviously got better, and worked with the attendants keeping the wards clean. After Commissioner Burke forwarded a letter of Wishecoby’s to Hummer, he replied: “She suffered from epileptic seizures, upon admission, but has not had one, so far as we have observed, for more than three years.” Hummer went on to say that Wishecoby had had delusions which were also in abeyance, and that her “irascible nature” was probably permanent. Hummer added that “her actions here are all that could be desired.”

After making such a case for her recovery, Hummer hastened to add: “…that she is endeavoring to convince us that she should be returned, and, when the restraints of this institution are removed, she may give way.” Then he got to the heart of the matter–she was of childbearing age. “If we are concerned only in treating this individual, we should probably discharge her. If we are concerned also in treating the future generations and preventing the increase of the number of cases of mental disease, we should pause and give this matter deep consideration.”

Records are incomplete, but the letters that remain show that Hummer wrote these words to the commissioner in July, 1925, and that Susan Wishecoby was returned home on September 14, 1925. The intervention of her brother and the reservation superintendent probably came into play, since references are made to them in additional letters around that same time.

An Epileptic Asylum in Abilene, Texas

One Treatment for Epilepsy

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Released for Convenience

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Fort Totten Agency, Dakota Territory, courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota

Dr. Harry Hummer did not release patients from the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians very often. Though he was willingly to release a few people to their families over the years, Hummer often refused to do so on the grounds that someone who was doing well at the asylum might relapse. However, when he found one or two of his patients extremely inconvenient, he had no problem reversing his usual philosophy. Jerome Court was such a case.

Court was a violent patient who probably had a problem with alcohol and went on drunken sprees that landed him in jail. When he was taken to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians from the Fort Totten, North Dakota reservation, Court quickly engineered an escape. He was captured and returned to the asylum and escaped once more with the help of an employee who had fallen in love with him. Court was troublesome and dangerous, and Hummer decided he wasn’t insane. “After having held Jerome C. Court since July 12, 1923 to date, and after many mental examinations, I am forced to conclude that he is either “not insane” or that he had practically recovered from any psychotic symptoms by the time he reached here,” Hummer wrote to the Ft. Totten superintendent.

Hummer’s diagnosis is suspect because he had a history of not examining patients, and was faulted for it on many occasions. However, after bickering back and forth with the Fort Totten superintendent and the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hummer won the day and released Court.

Indian Girls at the Grey Nuns’ School at Fort Totten, courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota

Hummer Made Exceptions

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Images of Melancholia and Recovery

Though Dr. Harry Hummer did not seem to consider anyone ever completely cured of insanity (see last two posts), he was sometimes willing to let patients return home if they could be cared for properly by family. In this, he probably had some genuine concerns for the patient. He was likely aware of the many instances in which Native Americans had lost property due to unscrupulous outsiders, and he knew that some of his patients had allotments that needed protection. Hummer also felt that certain conditions required care that might be too much for naive family members who didn’t understand the burdens of round-the-clock attention.

When convinced that patients would do well under family care, Hummer did sometimes release them willingly. In 1911, Lucy Gladstone came to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians because of a suicide attempt. For several months, Hummer treated her for depression and some sort of seizures. Gladstone grew better and worked in the sewing room and with the laundry; she was tidy and quiet, and gradually came out of her depression. Within the year, Hummer considered her so much recovered that he released her to the care of her brother and felt confident enough to let her travel to his home without an escort.

Patients Working in Laundry Room at Texas State Lunatic Asylum

Patients in Sewing Room at Willard State Hospital for the Insane

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Not Just Patients Suffered

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For most of his tenure, Dr. Harry Hummer ran the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians as the only medical person on staff. He resisted trained nurses (probably because they could challenge his own expertise) and immediately undermined and harassed the nurses forced on him by the Indian Service. Grace Fillius reported to the asylum in September, 1928, and her strong personality immediately clashed with Hummer’s.

Fillius had worked as a nurse with the Army during the Great War, and suffered a breakdown in 1918 which apparently required a short stay at St. Elizabeths. When Hummer began his work against her, he brought up this breakdown as a weakness inherent in her character. Though this “cause for concern” was probably produced out of spite, it also fit in with Hummer’s philosophy that a person could never truly be cured of mental illness (see last post).

St. Elizabeths, East and North Facade, courtesy Library of Congress

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Dr. Hummer’s Views on Curability

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Alienists Sought Early Intervention for Insanity

One reason that people throughout time have hesitated to admit to mental illness is because the diagnosis was frequently a lifelong sentence (see last post). Unlike physical illnesses which were cured, people with mental illness were stigmatized long after symptoms subsided or a problematic episode cleared up. One reason alienists and asylums were embraced so eagerly was because they promised a new age of cures. Alienists were so confident that the right environment and treatment could cure insanity that a “cult of curability” developed which waned only when asylums became so crowded that effective treatment became impossible. When alienists could no longer deal only with acute, new cases of insanity, the prospect of a cure became bleaker.

At the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, Dr. Harry Hummer almost embraced a cult of incurability. He rarely pronounced an individual well, and his letters are full of misgivings about letting patients return home even when their symptoms abated. He wrote to the commissioner of Indian Affairs about Agnes Caldwell: “I recommend that no steps be taken looking to her release, because it is almost certain that she would soon come to grief and have to be returned.” In 1919 he wrote about Allen Owl: “[He] is well-behaved and trusted with parole privileges of the grounds and an occasional pass to town to the picture shows, in addition to which he was permitted to work with neighboring farmers this season, earning about one hundred and fifty or sixty dollars. This, however, does not mean that he could or would do as well were he discharged . . . I believe that it would be but a comparatively short time before there would be a return of more active symptoms which would necessitate his re-incarceration in an institution for the insane.”

Acute Insanity as Cause of Death

Prominent Alienist, Luther Bell

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Stigma Attached to the Insane

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Beggar, created by Jan van der Vliet

Beggar, created by Jan van der Vliet

Most people would not be ashamed of breaking a leg or falling ill with the flu, and their family members likewise would not mind the world knowing about either condition. However, the same kind of acceptance has rarely applied to mental afflictions. There are many reasons for this lack of acceptance, but early issues included the probability of “getting well” or being permanently cured of a mental problem. Continue reading →

Cultural Considerations

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St. Dymphna

One of the worst problems for patients at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians was the lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of the institution’s staff (and throughout the Bureau of Indian Affairs). No greater contrast to the BIA’s handling of the insane can be found, perhaps, than the treatment the insane received in Gheel, Belgium.

Though the reality might not have been quite as idyllic as often portrayed, there is little to criticize in the underlying premise behind this town’s attitude toward the insane. Originally, insane patients were brought to the shrine of St. Dymphna (the patron saint of people suffering from nervous and mental afflictions), who is buried at Gheel. Many patients were said to have been healed there, but others were left at the shrine to be cared for by villagers. For nearly a thousand years, mental patients have lived with host families in the town of Gheel or with families in the surrounding countryside. They worked, went into town, participated in amusements, and enjoyed most of the same life events that their hosts did. The result was almost complete de-institutionalization for these patients, and they certainly were given care within their own culture.

Gheel had an asylum where patients received initial care or stayed for a time before being assigned to a family. There were isolation cells at the asylum for the violent insane, but otherwise, no restraints were used. Though many alienists admired the community at Gheel and its method of treating the insane, most acknowledged that it couldn’t be copied very easily elsewhere.

Isolation Cell from Kew Asylum, Victoria, Australia circa 1870

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Worlds Apart

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Sweat Lodge in Use, circa 1880 to 1910, courtesy Library of Congress

Though insanity was rare, Native Americans did sometimes have to deal with tribal members they deemed insane. Their methods were less harsh than European ones (see last post) and Native Americans often tried to cure insanity rather than settle for the long-term confinement of the affected person. Many Native Americans believed that illness came from evil spirits, so their rituals emphasized that aspect of healing. The Shoshones believed that a ghost entering a person’s body caused sickness, and used incantations, prayer, drums, medicine whistles, and sweat lodges to prepare a patient to have the ghost extracted. After preparation, their healer would form a tube with his hands and place them over the patient’s mouth. He then sucked until the patient vomited or belched out the evil spirit. The Creeks sometimes used four white pebbles in water to alleviate insanity. The tribe’s healer performed ceremonies and sang songs, then put some of the water in his mouth and spit violently upon the head of the insane person. The latter then drank from the cup of water four times. This ceremony gave the healer power over the sufferer and allowed him to eventually cure the individual.

Native American cure rates were probably similar to European ones. The important point is that their treatments were culturally acceptable, just as European ones were for New World settlers. European and Anglo-American patients would not have accepted or been comfortable with Native American ceremonies to cure insanity, and it is little wonder that Native Americans were not comfortable with European-derived treatments. One of the great failures of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians was that it did not take culture into account when staff interacted with patients.

Hupa Female Shaman, 1923, courtesy Library of Congress

Native American Healer, Known as Shields, Served the Crow Creek Reservation, courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

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Another New World

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Pilgrims Entered a Difficult Life In the New World

Europeans coming to the American continents experienced a new world, but Native Americans also experienced new worlds as these strangers introduced their cultural practices and religious beliefs to them. Some, if not many, of these initial exchanges benefited both peoples, as Europeans learned how to survive in this new land and native peoples received European goods they enjoyed using. Over time, Europeans became convinced that their own notions were the right ones, and began to reject much of Native American culture. This rejection included the way insanity would be treated.

Because Native Americans relied on oral histories during colonial times, much of what has been written about them in this period comes from Europeans’ observations. Early accounts indicate that some Native American tribes treated the few insane members they had with great respect and care, while other tribes were indifferent and neglectful toward the insane. What must be remembered is that during this time, Europeans treated the insane quite cruelly. It was common in both Europe and the new colonies to let the insane wander the countryside. Worse, violent or difficult people were chained or locked in outbuildings for most of their lives. Though whites eventually believed that they had moved toward compassion once they took chains away, there is no evidence that Native Americans ever used them. At least during this era, Native Americans treated the insane less harshly–certainly not more so–than Europeans did.

Peaceful Meeting Between William Penn and Native Americans

Indian Village on the Plains, circa 1880 to 1895, courtesy Library of Congress

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New World Medicine

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Joe Pye Weed

Europeans who came to the New World welcomed Native American medical knowledge. Though Europeans had commonly used herbs and other plant preparations to cure illnesses, they were not familiar with many of the plants they found in their new home. Native Americans had used these plants for centuries and generously shared their knowledge. Joe Pye weed (which can be dangerous if used without caution) is a native plant with many medicinal uses. The Iroquois and Cherokee used its roots and flowers as a diuretic to help with urinary and kidney ailments, while the roots and leaves could be steeped in hot water and the liquid taken for fever and inflammation.

This weed’s unusual name has been attributed to a number of sources. One is that Joe Pye was a phonetic translation of jopi or jopai, supposedly an early native American word for typhus. Or, it derived from the name of a 19th century white “Indian theme promoter.” However, the 1822 third edition of the Manual of Botany, for the Northern and Middle States of America states that Joe Pye weed was named after a Native American in Massachusetts. Details of Pye’s life have not always been recounted accurately, but according to research by Richard Pearce, Pye was a Mohegan sachem (healer) who lived in an area where the weed (botanical name: Eutrochium purpureum) was used to cure an outbreak of typhus. Joe Pye weed is a sweat inducer, which is probably the mechanism of cure.

Apache Medicine Man, 1885, courtesy Library of Congress

Drawing of Massachusetts Bay Colony Citizens

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