View of Big Sioux River, which ran past the asylum, 1911

Some patients at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians kept up a regular correspondence with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, letting him know how they felt and what life was like for them in the asylum.

In 1918, Susan Wishecoby, a Menominee Indian, wrote: “I will drop you these few lines in order to let you know I am still alive. I am getting along fine and dandy in my days out here in Canton. I am not sorry I ever did come out here, for I am getting so I don’t have my spells so hard like I use to.”

Inevitably, she longed to go home. In August of 1921 she wrote: “I never did feel so blue and bummy like I feel now days. I certainly set down for a few moments before I go to bed and think of the days that has passed when I was at home.”

Wishecoby entered the asylum on November 8, 1917, and was eventually released on September 14, 1925.

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