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.

The Hope of Spring

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Navajo Family Near Fort Defiance, circa 1873

Navajo Family Near Fort Defiance, circa 1873

Cultures throughout the ages have celebrated the return of spring after a long, harsh winter by eating the first new greens they can find. Native Americans took advantage of fresh, wild plants to supplement their winter diets of dried foods; foraging in woodlands or near streams could bring in an entire meal in some cases.

Mushrooms often sprouted with the renewed moisture of spring; experts had to hunt for this very nutritious, but dangerous food. Women hunted dandelions, wild onions and leeks, ramps, chickweed, poke, and wild mustard (or a related plant called “creasy greens”) as soon as possible, since many of these plants get more bitter as they grow older. Even young, tender leaves and shoots can be bitter, but these wild plants are very nutritious and have long been considered a tonic to wake up the liver and kidneys after a long winter diet of dried starches (like beans and pumpkin) and meat.

Pueblo Indian Planting Maize

Pueblo Indian Planting Maize

Sugar-Making Among the Indians in the North, Nineteenth Century Illustration

Sugar-Making Among the Indians in the North, Nineteenth Century Illustration

Traditional (Algonquin) Green Salad: One part wild onions or leeks, chopped, and one and a half parts dandelion leaves, to four parts watercress. Add a small amount of sheep or wood sorrel, and then flavor to taste. (Add a bit of maple syrup for sweetness, or use other traditional flavorings like salt, along with enough oil to coat the leaves.)

Cruel Through and Through

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Cruelties Endured by a Patient in Brislington House Asylum, England, courtesy, The Lancet

Cruelties Endured by a Patient in Brislington House Asylum, England, courtesy, The Lancet

Insanity was a cruel condition, and its victims suffered doubly: their minds caused them unease or suffering, and then caretakers typically punished their bodies. Though physicians eventually discerned that mental illness was not an incurable disease, the treatments for it were sometimes stunning in their callousness.

In 1824, a young woman named Mary Sewall caused her father concern because she had wandered into the countryside with a confused intent to attend a religious meeting. He ordered a bunk “with a lid to shut down” to keep her confined, and kept her in it at night for over two months. He additionally kept his daughter sitting all day in a “confining chair” which prevented any physical movement. Her arms and legs were strapped down, and she was forced to remain all day on a seat with a hole in it and a bucket underneath to catch her bodily wastes. The misery she must have endured is hard to contemplate.

A Confining Chair

A Confining Chair

Circular Describing the Four Month Term at Yale Medical Institution

Circular Describing the Four Month Term at Yale Medical Institution

Modern readers might wonder how Mr. Sewall could possibly treat his own daughter this way.  Part of the reason might be that he could think of little else to do to keep her safe. And, doctors and other specialists often believed that people who had “lost their minds” had reverted to an animal state. Many people assumed that the mentally ill didn’t need the comforts that a human with an intact mind needed or wanted. Thus, it didn’t seem particularly cruel to keep a lunatic chained in a barn or outbuilding–just like one of a farm’s other animals. Unfortunately, it seemed that people often treated lunatics much worse than they would have treated any animal.

A Layman’s Doctorin’

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A Book Any Layperson Could Reference

A Book Any Layperson Could Reference

Early settlers did not necessarily trust doctors (see last post) and were often able to circumvent seeing one by simply “reading up” on medicine, themselves. In this, they didn’t always lag so far behind a university-trained doctor, who may have only listened to a course of lectures before venturing into his profession. Several popular books were available to laypersons who wanted a reference to guide them; Every Man his own Doctor  or The Poor Planter’s Physician by Dr. John Tennent (American edition, 1734) was extremely popular.

Tennent began by condemning doctors’ high fees (whether they cured or killed the patient) and spoke of his great love for mankind as the reason for his publication. He launched into some of the commonest problems faced in the New World, such as “cough,” which he said was the foundation for many other “distempers” and therefore should be dealt with as quickly as possible.

James Gillray's 1801 Satiric Print of a Colonial Quack

James Gillray’s 1801 Satiric Print of a Colonial Quack

“It may be cured in the Beginning by riding moderately on Horseback every Day,” Tennent wrote. Additionally, the patient could take a little ground ivy tea sweetened with syrup of horehound at night before bed. If that did not effect a cure, the next measures followed the harsh cures of the time: “It will be proper to bleed Eight Ounces and be constant in the use of other Remedies.”

Woman Having the Vapours

Woman Having the Vapours

The “vapours” or “hysteric fits” should start with a stomach cleanse accomplished by dosing the patient with “Indian Physic” (a perennial herb called Bowman’s root, which induced vomiting.) Next, the (usually) female patient should have her bowels purged. Among other remedies, she was urged to not let the disappointments of the world weigh upon her, and to “be cheerful in Spite of a churlish Husband, or cloudy Weather.”

Tennent’s suggestions may not have cured every illness, but they were no worse than what any physician would have recommended.

A Taste of Small Town Life

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Canton, S.D. High School, 1911

Canton, S.D. High School, 1911

Newspapers can give intimate glimpses of a community and its concerns, and the Sioux Valley News zeroed in on the activities in Canton, South Dakota and its neighboring communities every Friday. On June 10, 1904, the paper reported on the efforts of the Misses Rudolph and Cooper to bring a high school alumni association into being. Interested people held a meeting in which they elected officers, listened to entertainment (singing), and then ate. The paper listed attendees, mostly alumni, as well as some of the town’s leading citizens such as Mr. and Mrs. O. Gifford (the superintendent of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians and his wife).

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

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

Small details were the life of the paper. It further reported that Mrs. Gifford had recently been out of town to attend a meeting of the Women’s Federated Clubs, that William Robinson had arrived from Chicago on Monday for a brief visit with his parents–and that he had “grown much heavier since becoming a resident of Chicago,” and that the Wentzys had passed through Canton on their way home from the World’s Fair.

State Asylum at Yankton, SD

State Asylum at Yankton, SD

This edition also had an item that must have saddened the hearts of the people involved: “An attendant came up from Yankton and returned on the afternoon train, taking with him John Bergstrom and Axel Olson who will be placed in the hospital for the insane for treatment.” At least in this respect, white citizens were not spared the publicity surrounding a commitment to an asylum any more than Native Americans.

 

Investigations of Little Value

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Dr. Carlos McDonald, circa 1915

Dr. Carlos McDonald, circa 1915

Very likely, all insane asylums were inspected on a fairly regular basis, and because of that, it would seem impossible that terrible conditions could continue to exist as they obviously did in many places. However, investigators had to care enough to make strong reports, and people in authority had to care enough to act upon them.

In 1876, Dr. Carlos McDonald became superintendent of the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane  in Auburn, New York. He stated in his first report that he had never seen the equal to the poor sanitation he found there upon arriving, that the place was a “stench in the nostrils,” that bugs crawled all over the patients’ beds, that the bread was sour and the food poor, and that patients were regularly punished, among other observations.

Believed to be Picture of Auburn Asylum for Insane Criminals

Believed to be Picture of Auburn Asylum for Insane Criminals

McDonald told an investigating committee that he had a patient who had a pistol ball in his arm “that had been shot in by my predecessor.” An attendant told him that this previous superintendent had also “blacked the eye of a patient and did not think anything of doing it himself.” Upon the orders of the assistant physician, attendants paddled patients on their bare skin with a piece of thin oak stick “about as thick as a piece of heavy sole-leather and about two and a half inches wide, with a handle.” Patients were handcuffed, chained, and shackled regularly.

Prisoners at Auburn State Prison, Not Insane, circa 1840

Prisoners at Auburn State Prison, Not Insane, circa 1840

The amazing thing that came out in McDonald’s testimony, is that the “association of the superintendents of insane asylums” (the professional organization, AMSAII) had met in the summer of that year in Auburn just before McDonald took charge. They had toured the facility and then had testified to finding the whole asylum “in the best condition.”

McDonald’s statements were made before A Special Committee of the New York State Senate, which had been appointed in May, 1880 to investigate “abuses alleged to exist in the management of insane asylums.”

Empty Yourself

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Bloodletting As a Treatment for Agitation in Insanity, courtesy Burns Archives

Bloodletting As a Treatment for Agitation in Insanity, courtesy Burns Archives

Early alienists typically believed that an insane person needed to eliminate something from the body in order to get well. Copious bleeding and/or purging were popular ways to deplete a maniac’s excessive energy or excitement, but many alienists soon came to believe the procedure was too extreme. Instead, they turned their attention to the bowels.

Samuel Woodward, former superintendent of the Massachusetts State Lunatic Hospital, wrote in 1846 that it was “common for the bowels to be constipated in mania,” and advised a round of laxatives to help solve the problem. He also urged that these laxatives be gentle, but unfortunately turned to poisonous mercurial compounds to do the job. A popular concoction was “blue pill” which was generally a mixture of about one-third mercury, one-third rose oil, and small proportions of licorice, milk sugar, and possibly another quarter portion of hollyhock or marshmallow derivative. Two or three of these pills might represent close to a hundred times the level of exposure that the EPA considers safe today.

Calomel Preparation, Flavored

Calomel Preparation, Flavored

Benjamin Rush's Bilious Pills

Benjamin Rush’s Bilious Pills

Mercury poisoning usually shows up first with headache, nausea, stomach pain, and later, with sore gums and loose teeth. Eventually, symptoms move on to the brain and cause loss of memory and insomnia, and often irritability, depression, and paranoia as well. Since the alienist’s goal for his patient was a daily evacuation of the bowels, patients could take something like calomel or blue pill for quite some time. And, the psychological type of symptoms as a result of mercury poisoning might well keep the sufferer both in an asylum and taking the medicine indefinitely.

How to Commit

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Elizabeth Packard Being Taken to an Asylum Against Her Will, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Elizabeth Packard Being Taken to an Asylum Against Her Will, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Few patients went to insane asylums voluntarily; most were committed by physicians called in once concerned family members decided a patient’s behavior had reached some sort of tipping point. Committing a patient to an asylum should have been a very serious affair, but it is evident that it was not always done with professionalism and discernment. In an article* published by the American Journal of Insanity (1876), Dr. A. E. MacDonald gave medical students some sound advice about how to examine a patient and determine whether or not to propose commitment.

Dr. Abraham Myerson, Dr. I Veron Brigg, and Dr. Earl K. Holt Examine Defendants, 1934

Dr. Abraham Myerson, Dr. I Veron Brigg, and Dr. Earl K. Holt Examine Defendants, 1934

Many states required the concurrence of two or more physicians to commit a person to an asylum. MacDonald noted that many times a physician–perhaps at the invitation of the family’s physician–was asked to commit a patient to an asylum, rather than to examine a patient. He likened the situation to that of a physician called in to prescribe medicine to a patient without examining him first to see if the medicine were needed. Families would seldom do such a thing, yet with a presumably insane patient, the verdict was often presupposed and the physician essentially called in to rubber-stamp the decision. MacDonald cautioned students to be careful, though, and to examine such a patient thoroughly with an eye to defending himself in a court of law should the patient later sue.

MacDonald went on to say that physicians often encountered two groups within the family: those who wanted the patient committed, and those who didn’t. He also emphasized that much of what he would hear concerning the patient from these family members would be either useless or untrue. He tried to give students a road map of pertinent questions to ask and a systematic way to approach the situation so they could assess a patient objectively.

He also had this bit of advice: “I advise you to make sure of being able at once to recognize your patient from those who may surround him, by learning before you enter the room, some particulars as to his dress or appearance. It is not a little awkward and embarrassing to address yourself to a bystander, under the impression that he is the patient, but it is a mistake that has happened, and might happen again.”

Ambulance Outside Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, 1895

Ambulance Outside Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, 1895

*From a lecture delivered before the students of the University of the City of New York, Medical Department, March 10, 1876.

Dance Therapy

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Dance Therapy in New York State Asylum, 1920

Dance Therapy in New York State Asylum, 1920

Physical exercise was seen as therapeutic for mental illness, and the staff at insane asylums employed it in many ways. Patients often labored in asylum gardens and farms, took walks, joined in exercise programs, or otherwise used their bodies in healthful ways. Dancing was one type of movement that asylum managers used for entertainment, reward, and healing. Dancing not only released pent-up energy in an enjoyable way, but it also allowed patients a measure of self-expression. Some who participated in group dances were also able to form social bonds that helped them endure their stay in an asylum.

Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Composer Edward Elgar began his career at the Worcester County and City Lunatic Asylum in Powick, England in 1879, at age 21. As bandmaster, he composed many polkas, quadrilles, and minuets for the asylum’s 22-piece (asylum-staff) band; his music was “cheerful, charming, and appropriate to its setting.” Additionally, he and the band gave concerts that also brought the patients enjoyment. Later in his career, Elgar liked to shock listeners by referring to “when I was at the lunatic asylum.”

Music Recovered From Elgar's Early Career

Music Recovered From Elgar’s Early Career

Though he wrote no masterpieces during the five years he composed pieces at the Worcester Asylum, he later went on to write the Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstances Marches.

Dancing in the New Year

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Lunatics Dancing at Blackwell's Island, New York in 1865

Lunatics Dancing at Blackwell’s Island, New York in 1865

Most asylums tried to incorporate decorations and festive activities into their patients’ lives during the Christmas season; the cheerfulness helped many patients and also brightened the morale of staff. Dances were popular entertainments at asylums, and many undoubtedly held special New Year’s Eve dances as an end to the holiday season.

Article About a Dance

Article About a Dance

A reporter attending a New Year’s Eve dance at Middlesex Madhouse in Hanwell (1842) described the participants as looking and behaving like “a crowd of children.” He described the dancing as being of the kind one saw at village fairs, and that the patients didn’t wear uniforms or “workhouse” dresses. Many of the patients definitely enjoyed the activity and talked avidly and gaily, but others seemed anxious, disturbed, melancholy, or uneasy.

There had evidently been a change of management or policy, because the reporter described a girl who had formerly been restrained a great deal of the time and had just recently been released from that treatment. “Her wrists were deformed by the hard leather cases in which they had been confined; and so habituated had she been to wear them at night, that for some time after they had been removed she held up her hands to be bound whenever she went to bed.”

A Twelfth Night Party at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum

A Twelfth Night Party at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum

Though his article was laudatory, the sad picture he painted at the end was the reality many patients at asylums faced. One night of comparative fun and freedom could scarcely make up for it.

Anyone Could Be Insane

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Alsa Thompson, Age 4

Alsa Thompson, Age 4

Early alienists did not spare many conditions when it came to assessing insanity. Alcohol abuse, syphilis, and epilepsy, were often considered forms of insanity, as were the physical manifestations of a severe form of niacin deficiency called pellagra. Women with severe PMS or menopausal symptoms, or even too much interest in sex, could also be considered insane. Children did not escape that label, either.

Publicity Surrounded This Unusual Case

Publicity Surrounded This Unusual Case

In 1925, seven-year-old Alsa Thompson confessed to poisoning her family by putting sulphuric acid and ant paste in their evening meal. Fortunately, her intended victims found the taste so awful that they didn’t eat more than a bite or two of the meal, but the child’s troubled psyche had been exposed. Further investigation found that she had slashed her five-year-old sister’s wrists with a safety razor (which didn’t kill her), and had poisoned two canaries and a cat.

Judge Walter Gates dismissed the insanity complaint that had been brought against Alsa, but he did feel she needed to be under observation. He remanded Alsa into the custody of parole officer Jean McCracken of the local lunacy commission until she could be transferred to a state institution.

Some Contemporaries Obviously Doubted Alsa's Confession

Some Contemporaries Obviously Doubted Alsa’s Confession

Newspaper accounts of the time mentioned that she did not seem bothered by the accusation and simply stated, “I like to see them die,” when questioned about her motives. Her father vigorously defended her, and others thought she was simply impressionable and confessed to a crime she did not commit.