Juanita Casildo

Juanita was a Pueblo woman (Pueblo of Laguna tribe)

Their reservation lies in parts of four counties: In descending order of included land area they are Cibola, Sandoval, Valencia, and Bernalillo Counties. It includes the six villages of Encinal, Laguna, Mesita, Paguate, Paraje, and Seama.

View in Pueblo Laguna, N.M. 1883-1885

Wittick, Ben. [View in Pueblo Laguna, N.M. 1883-1885?]. Photograph. Denver Public Library Special Collections, Denver, CO. Ben Wittick Collection. Laboratory of Anthropology.Web.01/13/2023. <https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/i...>.

Albuquerque Indian School c. 1885

Wikipedia contributors. "Albuquerque Indian School." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Sep. 2023. Web. 13 Jan. 2024 @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque_Indian_School

Biography:

Juanita was born to unknown parents in c. 1868. While a young girl age 17 in 1885, the date of the photos above, she attended the Albuquerque Indian School and it was from there that she was admitted to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, after 1902, diagnosed with toxic insanity (toxic insanity is a combined mental and physical result of congenital thyroid hormone deficiency and/or insanity, a category that includes cretinism and insanity related to pellagra or alcohol use. Pellagra is a systemic disease caused by a severe deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3).)

Like other government boarding schools, AIS was modeled after the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, using strict military-style discipline to strip students of their native identity and assimilate them into white American culture. (Wikipedia contributors. "Albuquerque Indian School." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Sep. 2023. Web. 13 Jan. 2024.)

Juanita died on June 22, 1908, at the Canton Asylum according to "Vanished in Hiawatha" by Carla Joinson, and was buried in the Canton Hiawatha Cemetery tier 5 plot 2 according to the Feb 17, 1934 letter to the commissioner from Dr. L.L. Culp following the closing of the asylum.

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

Research Notes:
-was included in the 1910 list of patient diseases but the census roll is damaged and the first 10 female patients are missing.
-no 1908 census is available, no censuses are available before 1910.
-question, we know she was admitted by the Alburquerque School but it seems likely that admission as later than school age, so how is the school involved?

Further Reading:
United States, Congress, National Parks Service, and Ann Baggerman Frej. Pueblo of Laguna: A Project Report, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1984, pp. 1–88. @ http://npshistory.com/publications/hcrs/laguna-pueblo.pdf

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Sources:

1908 Jun 22 - "South Dakota, Grave Registration Records, 1940-1941", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:CYRJ-SPMM : Fri Dec 15 09:52:47 UTC 2023), Entry for Juanite Casildo,
no image

1908 Jun 22 - Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14491642/juanita-castildo: accessed 12 January 2024), memorial page for Juanita Castildo (unknown–22 Jun 1908), Find a Grave Memorial ID 14491642, citing Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA; Maintained by Graveaddiction (contributor 46528400).

1910 Aug 4 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=675, Table 7-2 Form of mental disease of those admitted since opening of the Asylum

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

Long Time Owl Woman 8-25-08 · Juanita Casildo 6-22-08 · Mary Fairchild 4-29-07