Hoskee Yazzie

Hoskee was a Navajo man
(Curator NOte: BE ALERT. There are many persons named Hoskin or variations thereof, and many named Yazzi in the census of the Canyon Diablo district, This Hoskee Yazzi was born in 1904, this date must be maintained consistently.)

Leupp Indian Ruins - Sunrise Trading Post

"Francis E. Leupp was one of the best friends the Navajos ever had, at a time when they sorely needed friends. A former muckraking journalist, he was appointed Indian Commissioner by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905.

Leupp was already a member of the Indian Rights Association, and had written several articles about the appalling conditions in the off-reservation boarding schools, which he called "educational almshouses."

Upon his appointment, it didn't take Leupp's reporter's eye long to catch the inefficiencies in the Indian Bureau, and he prepared a plan for its gradual dissolution, much to the alarm of its many employees.

It was through Leupp's efforts the first of the "Aneth Extensions" was added to the tribe's northern border, and after Arizona and New Mexico became states and started clamoring for the "excess" lands of the Navajo, he quickly pushed through an allotment program to help Diné families hang onto their land in case the states made a grab (which they eventually did).

Unfortunately, Leupp was way ahead of his time. His policies were roundly attacked by the non-Natives and he was replaced the minute Roosevelt's term expired.

But Leupp Agency was named after him...

Unfortunately, through no fault of its own, Leupp was also the site of one of the more shameful chapters in American history: the internment of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.

There were several internment camps during World War II, but Leupp's — located in its old boarding school that had been damaged by a flood — was one of those known as "isolation camps" or "penal camps."

These were for Japanese the government had branded as "troublemakers," sometimes just for protesting their treatment or wondering aloud why the Army was rounding up Japanese-Americans while Italian- and German-Americans, who arguably were equally likely to be Axis spies, were walking around free.

Fortunately, the camp was only open for eight months, but it was long enough for the Japanese to lose their livelihoods. Some highly educated Japanese, their bank accounts frozen and their property confiscated, ended up moving to Phoenix and becoming gardeners.

Leupp was also the site of one of the first Indian boarding schools...

and education continues to be important to Leuppites today."
Source: Yurth, Cindy. “Leupp Has a History of Both Progress and Paranoia.” Navajotimes.com, 8 July 2013, navajotimes.com/news/chapters/071813leu.php. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Biography:

According to Carla Joinson in her book Vanished in Hiawatha, Hoskee Yazzie was admitted to the Canton Asylum on May 25, 1930, at the age of 13, from the Leupp Agency, AZ. He was diagnosed with idiocy (a person with a very profound intellectual disability, an intellectual disability, previously classified in a now obsolete rubric of developmental disorders as having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25, (no longer in technical use; considered offensive)).

On December 22, 1933, at the closing of the Canton Asylum, Hoskee Yazzie was transferred by train to the St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D.C., at the age of 16, where he died on March 11, 1936, of unstated causes. He was interred in the St. Elizabeths East Campus Cemetery

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

The St. Elizabeth East Campus Cemetery

Number, type of burials, and date range of use for sections in the East Campus Cemetery

Table 2. Native Americans Buried in the East Campus Cemetery

"The ledger gives no explanation why the remaining three graves (20-2-1472, 19-3-917, and 33-2-754A) were not used, although the presence of trees seems the most likely explanation. Sluby (2002:4-35, 2008:4) comments on the fact that the burial ledger identified the burials of a number of Native Americans, typically identified as “Indian.” What is not discussed is that many of these native people at St. Elizabeths came from the infamous Hiawatha Insane Asylum in Canton, South Dakota. The institution was begun in 1900 and was staffed by individuals with little or no training in psychiatry.

Many of the Native Americans at this institution were there only because they were traditional spiritual people or because they were disliked by the local Indian Agents. The Canton facility warehoused these individuals, many of whom were clearly not mentally ill, under the most inhumane conditions imaginable. There is also a cemetery at Hiawatha with 121 burials. As at St. Elizabeths, none of the graves were ever marked.

The Hiawatha facility was closed in December 1933. Some of the patients were sent home, others were sent to St. Elizabeths (http://sdgenweb.com/lincoln/hiawatha.htm; see also Yellow Bird 2002). At least 10 of the Native Americans identified in the St. Elizabeths East Campus Cemetery were originally from Hiawatha based on research by Ms. Frances McMillen (personal communication 2009).

Although Sluby (2008:4) lists 19 Indians, six of these are listed incorrectly and an additional four are entirely omitted. Table 2 provides a corrected list of the Native American burials. To this list, McMillen has been able to add at least 11 additional names: Madeline Dauphinais, Kitty Spicer, Rose Wash or Washa, Yazza Sonna, Gondosayquay, Ollie Yarlott, Peter Picotte, Joanna Augusta, Joe McEwin, Mary Westerman, and Oscar Hope."

Source: Saint Elizabeths Hospital Cemetery Restoration Project, Trinkley, M., Hacker, D. Southerland, N., PRESERVATION ASSESSMENT OF  ST. ELIZABETHS EAST CAMPUS CEMETERY, WASHINGTON, DC 1–102 (2009). Columbia, SC; Chicora Foundation, Inc. https://chicora.org/pdfs/RC514.pdf

Research Notes:
-In the 1931 census from the Leupp Agency Hoskee Yazzi is a surname, as is Yazzie. If one has an English given name the surname tends to be Yazzie.
-In the 1931 census there are 16 males with the name Hosteen or Hoskee or Hoska Yazzi…others named just Hostten or Hoskee…none 13 years old and all living in the jurisdiction of 1790 line items in the 1931 census.
-There is a family of Johnnie Bima (mother (F)) lines 1742-1747 that in earlier censuses include the name Hosteen Yazzi who is not there in 1931 which seems to confirm this is the family and Hosteen went to Canton in 1930 which is what Joinson says. Johnnie is single in 1931.
-In the 1929 census Hoskie Yazzie is there but his birth is 1904 which would make him 26 at commitment, older than what Joinson says
-Grandson Hoskie Yazza? (Age is much closer to being young age 13-Navajo tribe, Hopi Indian). The Leupp Agency is in the Navajo Reservation very near the Hopi Reservation but Hopi and Navajo were NOT related!
@
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPS2-ZHLF (Curator Note: Hoskee Yazzie was NOT Hopi)
-Yazza Hoskie can be a female name also
-I reviewed the 1920 census when he should have been 3 years old and found nothing. I reviewed the 1930 and 1931 censuses when he should have been 13 and found nothing.

Further Reading
1. Saint Elizabeths Hospital Cemetery Restoration Project, Trinkley, M., Hacker, D. Southerland, N., PRESERVATION ASSESSMENT OF  ST. ELIZABETHS EAST CAMPUS CEMETERY, WASHINGTON, DC 1–102 (2009). Columbia, SC; Chicora Foundation, Inc. https://chicora.org/pdfs/RC514.pdf
2. Two Bears, Davina Ruth. “Shimásání Dóó Shicheii Bi’ólta’ - My Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s School: The Old Leupp Boarding School, a Historic Archaeological Site on the Navajo Reservation - ProQuest.” Www.proquest.com, Aug. 2019, www.proquest.com/openview/5ecde497dafe1da4a639ffed379aa0f1/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y. Accessed 25 May 2024.
3. Yurth, Cindy. “Leupp Has a History of Both Progress and Paranoia.” Navajotimes.com, 8 July 2013, navajotimes.com/news/chapters/071813leu.php. Accessed 6 June 2024.
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Sources:

1930 Jun 30 - Canton Insane Asylum: 1923-33; Cantonment School, pg. 370/1140: 1910-27, Series: Superintendents' Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports 1910 – 1935, Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408 @ https://catalog.archives.gov/id/155855298?objectPage=350, line 42 (as Hos Kee Yazzie), Canton Asylum male census

1931 Jun 30 - Canton Insane Asylum: 1923-33; Cantonment School, pg. 370/1140: 1910-27, Series: Superintendents' Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports 1910 – 1935, Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408 @ https://catalog.archives.gov/id/155855298?objectPage=370, line 45 (as Hoskee Yazzie), Canton Asylum male census

1932 Jun 30 - Canton Insane Asylum: 1923-33; Cantonment School, pg. 370/1140: 1910-27, Series: Superintendents' Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports 1910 – 1935, Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408 @ https://catalog.archives.gov/id/155855298?objectPage=390, line 48 (as Hos Kee Yazzie), Canton Asylum male census

1933 Jun 30 - Canton Insane Asylum: 1923-33; Cantonment School, pg. 370/1140: 1910-27, Series: Superintendents' Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports 1910 – 1935, Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20408 @ https://catalog.archives.gov/id/155855298?objectPage=427, line 47 (as Hos Kee Yazzie), Canton Asylum male census