Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians

Located in Canton South Dakota across from the Hiawatha Golf Course are 3 different historical markers, the Canton Ski Hill, Augustana the School on Wheels and the one I wanted to talk about today the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians.  

The marker explains this was the second federal mental hospital and the first dedicated to Native Americans. Senator Richard F. Pettigrew helped secure funding for the asylum, and it would operate from 1902 to 1934. 

More than 370 Native American people would be held at the asylum during those years and of that at least 121 would die. Their bodies are buried at what is now the Hiawatha Golf Course where a plaque bears the names of the 121 souls we know about. 

The conditions at the asylum were reported several times by Dr. Silk who would spend 6 days at the asylum his first visit and 21 days there his second visit. 

Dr. Silk would write scathing reports explaining it was a place of padlocks and chamber pots and even said fire extinguishers were kept locked in closets which would be useless if a fire broke out. He even suggested many of those being kept there were in fact sane.  

Another heartbreaking layer to this dark history would be when the asylum does shut down dozens of human beings that were considered mentally ill by the standards of the time where then shipped from Canton South Dakota to St. Elizabeths in Washinton DC.