The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-08-13
LOS INSANE ASYLUM
Might be All Right If Poor
Lo Ever Went Crazy.
IT'S A JOKE ON ONE SIDE
And Pretty Nearly a Clean
SwindIe on the Other.

| Guthrie, o. T., Aug. R-It IS SAID tnere
is not an insane Indian in the two ter
ritories. Apropos of this a letter from
Washington says:
A great deal of gratuitous advertising
| Is given nowadays to the governments
establishment Of a special asylum for
insane Indians. There is an appropria-
ton OF $4,000 for this purpose, and the
site selected Is near Canton, Lincoln
county, s. D. The plan contemplates
three-story main building with necessary
outbuildings, and there is some talk CT
| having enough Of the asylum ready by
/ next fall to begin removing the insane
| Indians thither.
Most Of the newspaper comment on this
institution Is approving in tone, the idea
seeming to be that the asylum was
much needed addition to the general
scheme of government beneficence TO the
Indians. No greater mistake was ever
made. The whole thing Is a humDug.
Its only use will be to draw a little more
money from the treasury in South Dako-
ia, without giving the Indians any id
ditional advantage. That congress should
have been led blindfold into this job is a
fresh evidence of the carelessness oftke
average member when IL comes to daling
with Indian affairs.
In tn first place, all the evidence points
to a great scarcity of insanity among the
Indians a a race. There is no reason why
insanity should assume any considerable
-. -,
of human beings most subject to insanity
ere the class whose cares keep them
continually worried, and the class whose
emotional nature predominates over their
reason. The Indian belongs to neither Of
these classes. He has no cause to worry
because the government takes care OF
him; and nature has not made him es-
pecially emotional. Senator Pettigrew,
who procured this appropriation for
South Dakota raked the Indian service
clean in his efforts to draw arguments
from agents in favor OF his plan. The
bulk of the best testimony that could Re
procured, hLwever. showed that. counting
together al: the insane, mildly deranga1
and harmlessly weak minded, there was
barely an average OF one Indian to an
dams in a gross population OF 10000.
This proportion is so small as to be al
most comical, when 1t is considered in
the light Of a project to found an ex-
elusive asylum for Indians. Thus far the
government had got on very we'll by
turning those insane Indians who seem
to need restraint over to the care OF
state asylums and charitable institutions
founded by religious bodies. A few have
been sent to the government hospital or
the insane in the District OF Columbia,
where they are maintained at a cost OF
about a dollar a day apiece. In the other
places the exuense has been still less. In
all the institutions where they have been
put they have had the same care as
other patients, and have got the benefit
of the skill of the trained aIienists in
charge.
Apart from the question of their good
treatment at moderate cost in institu-
lions near their homes there arises the
further consideration of accessibility and
climate. An Indian on a southwestern
reservation. accustomed to the lax win
tiers, etc. certainly does not gain by be-
ing set down in the midst of a Dakota
prairie simply because his mind IS unbal-
anced. The government has established
schools for Indian children all over the
Indian country, so as not to take the
young people any further than neces-
sary from the neighborhood in which
they have been acclimated by years Of
residence; why II should adopt differ
ent rule with a person of deranged mind,
who is presumptvely no better able TO
ward OF physical effects of climatic
changes does not appear.
It is now too late TO shed tears over
spilled milk, and congress was duly
warned that II was entering upon silly
enterprise before 1t went into this thing.
Secretary Bliss saw through 1t at the
outset, and made a very creditable adj
verse Recommendation, which congress
promptly proceeded to ignore. The only
thing that can be done now Is to cut off
the absurd treatment OF the job by The
newspapers which do not understand il,
and which assume, on general principles.
that any money appropriated for a gra-
thing. Happily, with the change OF poll
tics in the senate, We shall probably wit
ness a reorganization of the senate In
dian committee, with the chance that
legislation which gets into the hands OF
that committee here after will come ont
more infused with common sense and less
loaded with South Dakota