E-nas-pah

E-nas-pah was a Northern Navajo (Dine') woman

The Navajo Nation

The Five Agencies of the Navajo Nation
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Shiprock, also known as Tsé Bitʼaʼí, is a volcanic neck in San Juan County, New Mexico, that's 7,177 feet above sea level and 1,583 feet above the Navajo Nation's high-desert plain. The peak is the remnant of an eruption that occurred 30 million years ago, and is made of fractured volcanic breccia and igneous rock called minette. The name "Shiprock" comes from the peak's resemblance to a large 19th-century clipper ship, while the Navajo name, Tsé Bitʼaʼí, means "rock with wings" or "winged rock". This name refers to a legend about a great bird that brought the Navajo to their present lands, and the peak has the appearance of a bird with partially folded wings when viewed from the southwest. It was originally known to the Navajo as Ship Rock.

Biography:

According to Carla Joinson in her book Vanished in Hiawatha, E-ns-pah when admitted to the Canton Asylum was pregnant, on April 5, 1909, and diagnosed with manic-depressive insanity (Manic-depressive insanity is characterized by the recurrence of groups of mental symptoms throughout the life of the individual, not leading to mental deterioration. The chief symptoms usually appearing in the manic phase are psychomotor excitement with pressure of activity, flight of ideas, distractibility, and a happy though unstable emotional attitude. In the depressive phase we expect to find psychomotor retardation, absence of spontaneous activity, dearth of ideas, and depressed emotional attitude) and was also tubercular at the time, and died at age 26. She delivered her baby, who was named Ruth, prematurely in August 1909, and who later died at the asylum on October 14, 1909. Therefore 1909-26 = b.c. 1883.

The letter dated February 17, 1934, from Dr. L.L. Culp to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, stated that E-nas-pah was committed from Shiprock, New Mexico, died at the Canton Asylum on September 30, 1909, and was buried in the Canton Hiawatha Cemetery tier 5 plot 12. Her daughter Ruth was buried with her in the same grave a month later.

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

Research Notes:
-Pregnant on admission, had a premature female child in 1909, about 4 months after arrival. Daughter Ruth died four months after that! *records confirming the birth of four separate children born to the following women: E-nas-pah (Diné) (at the Asylum?).
-Died of pulmonary tuberculosis one month after giving birth to her daughter.
-In a letter written to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Superintendent of the agency at Shiprock, New Mexico, a man named W.T. Shelton, wrote regarding E-nas-pah (Diné), who died of pulmonary tuberculosis one month after giving birth to a baby girl. As Shelton indicated in this letter, Hummer was “very anxious to dispose of the child,” and one month later, she was buried next to her mother in the cemetery adjoining Canton’s grounds.43 These painful events demonstrate the key role that Hummer, the Office of Indian Affairs, and U.S. officials played in the destruction of Indigenous life. In an era in which Indianness was itself defined as a pathological state of being, the loss of life at the Canton facility was the most extreme iteration of this ideology. These realities challenge previous discussions (Putney 1984, Joinson 2009) of the institution as a place where “patients” resided, and instead demonstrate the role the facility played as a violent, settler space where Indigenous lives were intentionally destroyed. The routinized fact of Indigenous death at this institution suggests that Canton was a place of chaos, social death, and homicide.44 [16-125]
-The Navajo census of 1885 lists only husband and wife by name, children by daughter or son are not listed or are listed with "no name". Only the ages are listed so it is impossible to link a name to an age for confirmation. Occasionally, an elder daughter or son has a given name. It is infrequent when more than one child is named. This 1885 census has 13,003 entries, no E-nas-pah as a 2-year-old nor as a 16-year-old.
-Listed at age 41 in the 1910 Indian census = b. 1869?
-Spelling error? Many listings for E-nus-pah, but no listings for E-nas-pah.
-There is no 1909 asylum census available, she does NOT appear in the 1910 asylum census.

Recommended Reading:
1. “The Navajo Nation - Naabeehó Bináhásdzo.” West Coast Aerial Photography, Inc, 14 Nov. 2016, www.photopilot.com/blog/the-navajo-nation/.
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Sources:

1909 Sep 30 - Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14491678/enas-pah: accessed March 22, 2024), memorial page for Enas Pah (unknown–30 Sep 1909), Find a Grave Memorial ID 14491678, citing Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA; Maintained by Graveaddiction (contributor 46528400).

1909 Sep 30 - Hilton, M. (Ed.). (2023, July 10). Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians Historical Marker. Historical Marker. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=183486 Photo by Ruth VanSteenwyk, July 10, 2023, courtesy of HMdb.org

Alice Short 4-17-09 · Enas-Pah 9-30-09 · Baby Ruth Enas-Pah 10-14-09 · Agnes Sloan 2-14-10

1910 Aug 12 - Camp Verde School: 1910-27; Canton Insane Asylum: 1910-22, Series: Superintendents' Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports, Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408 @ https://catalog.archives.gov/id/155854182?objectPage=676, line 112, Table 7 Form of mental disease of those admitted since opening of Asylum