Charles 'Charlie' Clafflin, Tribal Head

Charles was a Menominee man

Biography

Charles Claffin was born in 1831 into the Menominee Tribe, Keshena, Wisconsin. He passed away on March 2, 1914, at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. He was buried in the Canton Asylum cemetery per Culp, L. L. “Plot of the Cemetery.” Received by Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Canton Asylum, 17 Feb. 1934, Canton, South Dakota, row 1 plot 96.

(Curator Note: The following is an extraction of the text from Disorderly Pasts: Kinship, diagnoses, and Remembering in American Indian-U.S. Histories by Susan Burch, as published in the Journal of Social History. She tells the story much better than I could. Though the words are by Susan Burch, the life is that of Charles Clafflin, Menominee Indian, and his extended family, "all were, according to Menominee custom, related".) This article will be placed in the profiles of all 8 extended family members. (note...indicates deleted text))

BIA Retribution, Canton Asylum Complicity
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As snowstorms pummeled Keshena, Wisconsin, in November 1917, tensions were running high on the Menominee reservation... In the face of gross mismanagement and hostility towards their culture and authority, Menominee leaders had launched repeated campaigns to remove the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Keshena superintendent and one of his assistants. They also clashed with the agency doctor.1 At the time, one U.S. inspector observed that the “antagonism and cross-purpose has reached the acute stage that may possibly lead to personal violence or probable tragedy.”2...Still, one can only wonder about the extent to which this community... anticipated the U.S. intervention during the second week of November: a collective dislocation of five members from Menominee Nation to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians.

...For Menominee people, violence and tragedy had long defined relations with settlers. Still, one can only wonder about the extent to which this community of barely more than 1,700 members anticipated the U.S. intervention during the second week of November: a collective dislocation of five members from Menominee Nation land to the Canton Asylum, a U.S. federal psychiatric facility in South Dakota specifically created in 1902 for American Indians.3 ...("actual Menominee names do not appear in this work as a way to honor these ancestors and their descendants").

...By the end of Tuesday, November 6, representatives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had shown up at several homes, taking away two men and three women who were then loaded on to trains headed to Canton, South Dakota. According to BIA documents, the men referred to as Peter Clafflin and Seymour Wauketch were brothers-in-law. The woman described in documents as Agnes Caldwell, a married mother of two young children, lived with her elderly parents in their home; teenager Christine Amour had attended the Government School with her sister in nearby Shawano; the twenty-two-year-old listed as Susan Wishecoby, daughter of John and Margaret, had grown up surrounded by extended family.4 All were, according to Menominee custom, related.

...No available sources recount the dislocation from Keshena to the Indian Asylum. Most likely they traveled the nearly five hundred miles on the “Milwaukee Road,” the Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul & Pacific line, which ran across Wisconsin and directly through Canton.5...Precious little is known about this moment in the lives of these five Menominee people. Sources about what followed remain uneven and fragmented. The story of what happened to these Menominee people and to their relatives in November 1917 (and the many months before and after it) exposes contested understandings of kin, diagnoses, and remembering...In particular, their stories vividly reveal the power of relationships and the asylum’s long reach.

...As writer Pemina Yellow Bird (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara) points out in her thoughtful critique of the Canton Asylum in Native history: “First, and most importantly, Native peoples generally do not have a notion of ‘insane’ or ‘mentally ill’ in our cultures. Indeed, I have been unable to locate a Native Nation whose indigenous language has a word for that condition.”

...In a letter to the BIA Commissioner, Agnes Caldwell explained in 1919 that she was writing to “kindly ask you if I could please going home . . . I like to go home to taeke care of my old folks they are to old to work I do the work when I an at home theiry wamet me to go home I would be glad to see my children and my old folks.”22 Like other institutionalized people at Canton, Agnes Caldwell understood that relationships defined worlds. She was a member of Menominee Nation’s Bear clan, and across her lifetime also identified as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Her petitions consistently emphasized kin relations as a primary justification for her return to Menominee land. Caldwell assumed others would recognize her family and family obligations. “You must know my pa ...Moses Little Bear,” she wrote. “I am his daughter.”23 “Please let me go,” she repeated

...Acknowledging Indigenous extended family connections—rather than exclusively individual experiences of institutionalization (and ableist medical labeling of individuals)—reveals significant patterns of oppression. Attention to kinship simultaneously reveals opportunities for collective survivance...kin relations remain vital in Native societies.30 Mutual support, generosity and sharing, a belief and practice of interdependence–defining qualities of many Indigenous nations—stem directly from kinship.31 Affinity, relationship, and collective experience drive its meaning. Affirming interdependence and belonging, kin relations nourish survivance.

The man described in U.S. texts as George Caldwell (Menominee Nation), for instance, had complained that his wife Agnes had been held at Canton “long enough.”34 Rose Bear (Menominee Nation), Agnes Caldwell’s mother, sent numerous letters to her daughter, insisting that she needed to return to Keshena.35 Agnes’s sister Josephine Johnson (Menominee Nation) directly petitioned the BIA, claiming that Agnes Caldwell was needed to take care of their mother.36 In these exchanges, Agnes Caldwell’s kin detailed how institutionalization undermined the family’s well-being; they maintained that they understood best how to restore wellness.

So did Agnes Caldwell. As family correspondence described illness sweeping through her house and community in late 1919 and early 1920, Caldwell’s insistences intensified. Noting that her mother and husband could no longer provide full care for other family members, she pleaded with U.S. authorities to be allowed to look after her siblings, parents, and children. “We all want to see are children”37 she told the Commissioner, “We all want to see are folks.”38 For Agnes Caldwell, fulfilling her kinship roles, taking care of her elderly parents and sick children, overruled US-federal power and its medical labels. In Caldwell’s accounting, institutionalization undermined her health. “I am lonesome. . . . so sad . . . need to go home.”39

Caldwell’s self-assessment, like many others from Canton, challenged the BIA’s oppressive view of American Indian community and extended family. They affirmed that they belonged “at home.” Repeatedly in words and actions they demonstrated that they would never forget their Indigenous homes or their relatives who waited for them there.

As Native American historian Margaret Jacobs explains: "Indigenous communities defined family broadly and designated many caregivers beyond the biological mother and father, particularly grandparents. In many matrilineal Indigenous cultures, a mother’s brother played the fatherly role to his nephews and nieces, and a child might consider all his or her maternal aunts as mothers."41

This bears direct resonance with the people stolen from Keshena. Since their origins, Menominee people have placed strong value on the relationship between a mother’s brother and his nieces and nephews...the reality that Peter Clafflin and Edward Wauketch shared this cultural affinity holds meaning...As but one example: asylum reports detail that Peter Clafflin “helps with untidy patients.” In the male-segregated ward, would he have given care to nephew Edward? Or to another Menominee child incarcerated at Canton, referred to as Earl Mahkimetass.42...We are left only with speculation about whether and how this tradition was born out in the life of the woman referred to as Mary Clafflin Wauketch and her brother Peter Clafflin.

...That more than fifty Indigenous nations had members stolen away to Canton amplifies this story’s complexity.44 So, too, does the sizable presence of certain nationalities. During its thirty-two-year existence, from 1902–1934, the Indian Asylum detained nearly four hundred people. More than one-fourth (at least 105 people) were members of the Great Sioux Nation (including Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples).45 During the same period the BIA incarcerated seventeen Menominee people from Keshena. More often than not, multiple members of Indigenous nations concurrently inhabited the asylum wards...While their individual life stories varied, many if not all of the Native men, women, and children likely knew at least one other person as kin or recognized familial connections among them.

...To return to the opening story: the BIA removed multiple members of the Clafflin-Wauketch extended family to the Indian Asylum: in January 1909, just two months later, BIA agents dislocated an elder, Charles Clafflin, to Canton. His young adult grandson, Edward, was taken in April 1917; Charles Clafflin’s adult son, Peter, and his son-in-law Seymour Wauketch in November 1917; his daughter Mary (Edward’s mother and Seymour’s spouse) was removed to the South Dakota institution in January 1918.53 Part of the “rationale” for each being institutionalized was that they came from a family with presumed inherent mental defects.54 Asylum and Keshena Agency files suggest that Seymour Wauketch may have been placed at Canton as a “benevolent” act—to keep him with his son, Edward.55 The absence of formal white U.S. medical diagnoses for Seymour Wauketch and Peter Clafflin, while certainly not unique at Canton, takes on added potential meaning in the light of settler colonialism, ableism, and Native kinship.

...H. R. Hummer (similarly) invoked eugenic concerns about the broader Bear and Caldwell relatives to support his decision to detain Agnes Caldwell at Canton ultimately for seventeen years. Referring to one note from George Caldwell from October 1919, for example, the Canton administrator suggested to the BIA that Agnes Caldwell’s spouse likely “was not mentally alert” and thus his wife should remain at Canton. Hummer pointedly added that, “Another potent argument against her discharge is that she is well within the child-bearing age and any offspring must be defective.”60 He added examples in a letter shortly thereafter, insisting that Agnes Caldwell would only produce “feeble-minded, epileptic or idiotic children if she were permitted to be at large.”61 Emphasizing Agnes Caldwell’s eugenic threat to broader society, Hummer repeatedly described her as “over sexed. Mentally she is deficient.”62 Discounting her kin’s claims, he insisted that Mrs. Caldwell was “mentally unable to [return home and take care of her family] and the great danger of increasing the number of defective offspring should outweigh her wishes [to return home].”63 Institutionalization, Hummer argued, was best for Agnes, George, their family, and society at large.

...In a similar maneuver, he implied that Susan Wishecoby’s self-advocacy was a sign of “irritability” and “irascible nature probably being permanent.”68 Such “permanent” flaws, Hummer suggested, could endanger society across generations if Wishecoby were released and subsequently had children.69 Menominee and other Native people resisted these pathological labels and the related “treatments” white U.S. medical experts claimed were necessary. Numerous affidavits and letters from Canton’s incarcerated members directly countered the white U.S. dominant story of care, sanctuary, and benevolence that asylum administrators and BIA officials typically conveyed.70 They specifically challenged H. R. Hummer’s depiction that Canton Asylum resembled a safe and loving (white) household. “By rights they call this an Indian Asylum and then why don’t the Indians have it more like their home,” Susan Wishecoby wrote in 1921. “If I would of known I was coming to an Asylum I wouldn’t of come at all . . .”71

...Susan Wishecoby similarly drew attention to staff abuses. In a 1925 letter to Superintendent Hummer, she explained that staff “make most of the trouble for you” and that “I wish you would please learn them to rest us like human beings not like beast to be teasing all the time.”75 Wishecoby and other Native people confronted and challenged white administrators’ fraudulent claims of Canton and its staff as safe and nurturing. Their stories told of malnourished and undernourished people, of people writhing in physical pain as employees watched, of anguish, terror, and the harm of solitary confinement, of sexual violence, abductions, (and) of tuberculosis killing children and adults.76

...Agnes Caldwell, too, identified repeated abuses, if more obliquely. In 1920, she recounted to female staff that two male attendants—Louis Hewling and William Juel—had unlocked and entered the dormitory room she shared with Christine Amour.77 Superintendent Hummer and others accurately assumed that the men had had sexual relations with these incarcerated women. Caldwell and Amour expressed fear when the asylum administrator sought to conduct physical exams on them in the wake of this revelation. At the time, Hummer demanded the men’s resignations but primarily blamed the women for their (perceived) inherent moral deficiencies.78 The Menominee women were moved to a new room and placed under heightened surveillance.

...In 1933, Dr. Samuel Silk of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, (the other U.S. federal psychiatric facility) reinspected Canton. As was common procedure, he interviewed numerous incarcerated people as well as staff. This time, however, Silk’s conclusions buttressed the BIA’s growing desire to close the facility. Silk’s report affirmed what Native people already lived and knew but added institutional authority to the critique: the Indian Asylum was, according to Silk, a violent and aberrant facility, “a place of padlocks and chamber pots.”81 ...An important but often overlooked part of his expose´, however, was Silk’s rediagnosis of twenty incarcerated people, including, specifically, Agnes Caldwell, and several other Menominee people. According to Silk, a central “problem” was that Canton incarcerated “sane Indians.” To illustrate his point, the psychiatrist drew from Caldwell’s asylum medical files. Since her initial intake form in 1917, these reports described her as “Usually quiet and well behaved. Very neat and tidy, no mannerisms, correctly oriented, memory fair, education limited, judgment un-developed, no delusions or hallucinations, but is over-sexed. Mentally she is deficient.”82 Silk claimed that Caldwell had “no psychosis.”83
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Kin according to Menominee custom, 5 actual family members + 3 extended relations = 8
(parenthetical date indicates date admitted to the Canton Asylum)
Charles Clafflin (1/1909) father of Peter, grandfather of Edward
Peter Clafflin (11/1917) and Seymour Wauketch (11/1917) were brothers-in-law
Mary Clafflin Wauketch (1/1918) sister of Peter Clafflin, wife of Seymour Wauketch, and mother of Edward
Edward Wauketch (4/1917) son of Seymour nephew of Peter Claflin
Agnes Caldwell (11/1917)
Susan Wishcomby (11/1917)
Christine Amour (11/1917)
another Menominee child incarcerated at Canton, Earl Mahkimetass (Mahkitmass) (4/1917 and said to be 14 in 1927 which means he was admitted at 4 years of age, diagnosed with "imbecility"! Records show that he was 21 in 1934 release).

Part of the “rationale” for each being institutionalized was that they came from a family with " presumed inherent mental defects".54

Burch, Susan. “Disorderly pasts: Kinship, diagnoses, and remembering in American Indian-U.S. histories.” Journal of Social History, vol. 50, no. 2, 28 Apr. 2016, pp. 362–385, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shw028. (See the document for end notes)

His profile is part of the The Canton Asylum One Place Study.

Research Notes:
-28 in the 1860 census
-62 in the 1894 census
-76 in the 1906 census
-75 in the 1905 census wife is Susan
-Tribal Head per 1900 census (Susan may have died, her name is crossed out), a Peter Beaupree is introduced as a nephew?
-possible brothers William and Albert per land deal 1853, names are shown in the land assessment book

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1853 Jun 18 - "United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:628P-PHKK : 26 July 2023), Charles Claflin, 1853, Land PUrchase Agreement, 182/237, Green Bay, Brown, Wisconsin, United States

1860 Jun 30 - "United States Census, 1860", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MW9Q-YYW : Fri Oct 06 23:42:32 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Claflin and Mathew Sneff, 1860, pg. 248/324, line 12, census of Gibralter, Door County, Wisconsin, United States, Charles is 28

1891 JUn 30 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QRVT-1NT2 : Thu Oct 05 16:32:44 UTC 2023), Entry for Chas Claflin, 1891, pg. 213/622, line 530-533, census of the Menominee, Green Bay Agency, WI.

https://archive.org/details/indiancensusroll172unit/page/n123/mode/...

1894 Jun 30 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QRFR-XP3Z : Fri Oct 06 14:24:59 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Clafflin, 1894, pg. 510/622, census of the Menominee, Green Bay Agency, WI.

1895 Jul 26 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:74PS-W8MM : Fri Oct 06 21:15:07 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Claflin, 1895, pg. 71/599, line 120, census of the Menominee Indians, Green Bay Agency, WI

1896 Aug 20 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7HSB-ZFN2 : Fri Oct 06 04:37:09 UTC 2023), Entry for, 1896, pg. 204/599, line 120, census of the Menominee Indians, Green Bay Agency, WI

1900 Jun 13 - "United States Census, 1900", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MSTX-K44 : Wed Oct 04 02:49:20 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Claflin and Susan Claflin, 1900, pg. 865/924, line 13-20, Menominee & Stockbridge Indian Reservations, Shawano, Wisconsin, United States (External Repository Name: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA))

1903 Jun 30 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPTN-HYNJ : Fri Oct 06 18:03:58 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Clafflin, from 1900 to 1999, pg. 205/771, line 106-108, census of the Menominee Tribe of Indians, Green Bay Agency, WI

1905 Jun 1 - "Wisconsin State Census, 1905", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MM74-1ST : 4 March 2022), Charlie Clafflin, 1905, pg. 2/16, Menominee Reservation, Shawano County, WI.

1906 Jun 30 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPTJ-N7D8 : Fri Oct 06 17:48:05 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Clafflin, 1906, pg. 457/771, line 115, census of the Menominee, Shepard Township, Green Bay Agency, WI

1910 May 13 - "United States Census, 1910", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MPFS-XKP : Fri Oct 06 02:29:26 UTC 2023), Entry for Charles Clafflin, 1910, pg. 83/1082, line 12 (inmate!), United States Indian INsane Asylum, Canton Township, Liincoln County, South Dakota

1914 Mar 2 - Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14493942/charlie-chafflin: accessed 26 October 2023), memorial page for Charlie Chafflin (unknown–2 Mar 1914), Find a Grave Memorial ID 14493942, citing Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA; Maintained by Graveaddiction (contributor 46528400).

Bronze plaque on burial stone - Names of Indians Buried in Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery @ https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=183486
Long Time Owl Woman 8-25-08 · Juanita Casildo 6-22-08 · Mary Fairchild 4-29-07 · Lucy Reed 4-19-07 · Minnie LaCount 7-5-06 · Sylvia Ridley 6-12-05 · Edith Standingbear 5-13-05 · Chur-Ah-Tah-E-Kah 1-2-05 · Ollie House 7-19-04 · Asal-Tchee 2-11-09 · Alice Short 4-17-09 · Enas-Pah 9-30-09 · Baby Ruth Enas-Pah 10-14-09 · Agnes Sloan 2-14-10 · E-We-Jar 10-4-10 · Kaygwaydahsegaik 10-14-10 · Chee 5-4-11 · Emma Gregory 3-12-12 · Magwon 3-23-12 · Kay-Ge-Gay-Aush-Eak 3-12-13 · Kay-Zhe-Ah-Bow 6-22-12 · Blue Sky 6-20-14 · Louise McIntosh 4-12-15 · Jane Burch 2-1-16 · Dasue 5-20-16 · Maggie Snow 7-10-16 · Lupe Maria 10-27-16 · Lizzie Vipont 4-17-17 · Mary Peirre 5-16-17 · Nancy Chewie 2-7-18 · Ruth Chief-On-Top 5-15-18 · Mary G. Buck 12-14-18 · Cecile Comes-At-Night 8-12-19 · Maud Magpie 4-24-20 · Poke-Ah-Dah-Ab 12-26-20 · Sits-In-It 1-26-21 · Josephine Wells 6-29-21 · A. B. Blair 8-6-21 · Josephine Pajihatakana · Baby Caldwell 1-31-21 · Sallie Seabolt 7-12-22
Selina Pilon 10-14-22 · Mrs. Twoteeth 1-10-23 · Kayzo (Kayso) 3-27-23 · Josephine DeCouteau 4-9-23 · Jessie Hallock 6-12-23 · Marie Pancho 10-17-23 · Ebe Sirowboy 8-11-28 · Kiger 7-2-29 · Mary Bah 8-25-30 · Cynia Houle 1-19-32 · Drag Toes 2-24-32 · Charlie Brown · Jacob Hayes 10-4-07 · Toby 3-6-06 · Trucha 11-17-05 · Hon-Sah-Sah-Kah 10-23-05 · Big Day 7-3-05 · Fred Taksup 2-6-05 · Peter Greenwood 9-22-05 · Robert Brings Plenty 5-20-03 · Nadesooda 2-8-08 · Toistoto 5-17-08 · James Chief Crow 10-24-08 · Yells At Night 11-21-08 · John Woodruff 5-15-09 · George Beautiste 5-30-09 · Baptiste Gingras 12-19-09 · Lowe War 12-24-09 · Silas Hawk 5-12-10 · Red Cloud 12-7-10 · Howling Wolf 3-30-11 · Antone 4-4-12 · Arch Wolf 7-2-12 · Frank Starr 4-28-13 · Joseph Taylor 9-20-13 · Amos Brown 5-1-21 · James Crow Lightening 3-6-21 · John Martin 4-4-22 · Red Crow 4-8-22 · James Blackeye 5-6-22 · Abraham Meachern 11-10-22 · Aloysious Moore 5-12-23 · Tom Floodwood 9-29-23 · James Black Bull 2-9-26 · Benito Juan 3-24-26 · Seymour Wauketch 6-1-26 · Anselmo Lucas 12-19-26 · Chico Francisco 4-21-27 · Roy Wolfe 3-31-28 · Matt Smith 11-30-28 · Two Teth 7-18-30 · Pugay Beel 9-14-31 · Herbert Conley 3-17-33 · Jack Root 10-30-33 · Charlie Clafflin 3-2-14 · John Hall 5-27-14 · Amos Deerr 7-13-14 · Ne-Bow-O-Sah 12-18-14 · Thomas Chasing Bear 2-2-15 · Dan-Ach-Onginiwa 3-29-16 · Joseph Bignane 5-20-16 · Walkkas 1-21-17 · Steve Simons 10-8-17 · James Two Crows 11-26-17 · F. C. Eagle 9-5-18 · Andrew Dancer 11-21-18 · Apolorio Moranda 1-14-19 · Harry Miller 4-25-19 · Herbert Iron 5-20-19 · Fred Collins 6-4-19 · John Coal Of Fire 6-20-19 · Joseph D. Marshall 11-21-19 · Willie George 11-23-19 · James Hathorn 11-29-19 · Ira Girsteau 3-27-20 · Edward Hedges 5-21-20 · Omudis 6-5-20 · Guy Crow Neck 7-29-20 · John Big 8-25-20 · A. Kennedy 2-19-21
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