Medicine Man Administering to a Patient, courtesy Library of Congress

Native Americans recognized mental illness, and had several descriptive names for different conditions. The Navajos called tremors and seizures “moth madness,” which was said to be caused by sibling incest. Some tribes considered violent mania to be the result of the evil spirit, windigo, which could possess someone’s body and eat souls.

Sometimes, Native Americans attributed insanity to the influence of an evil charm or to a enemy’s potion. Along with that belief was the counter-belief that a stronger charm or potion would effect a cure.

Ironically, an article in the October 1903 issue of the American Journal of Insanity (discussing a study of 7,600 cases of insanity in Connecticut over 32 years) noted that Native Americans had the lowest incidence of insanity in the population. This finding was backed up in a number of books of the period, in which missionaries and others who frequently traveled among a variety of tribes, declared that they had never seen any insane Indians.

Skull To Keep Evil Spirits Away, Montana, courtesy Library of Congress

Hupa Shaman, 1923, courtesy Library of Congress

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