The Rapid City Indian Health Service Hospital formerly known as The Sioux San Hospital is an

Indian Health Service The Indian Health Service (IHS) is an operating division (OPDIV) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). IHS is responsible for providing direct medical and public health services to members of federally recognized Native ...

hospital located in

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City is the county seat of Pennington County, South Dakota, United States. It is located on the eastern slope of the Black Hills in western South Dakota and was named after Rapid Creek (South Dakota), Rapid Creek, where the settlement deve ...

. It was built in 1898 as a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

for

Native Americans Native Americans or Native American usually refers to Native Americans in the United States. Related terms and peoples include: Ethnic groups * Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian peoples of North, South, and Central America ...

and turned into a sanitarium in 1933.

History

Boarding school

Located in the west side of

, it started out as a

known as the

Rapid City Indian School The Rapid City Indian School was located in Rapid City, South Dakota, and has since been converted into both an asylum and a hospital known as the Sioux San Hospital. The school opened 1898 as part of the federal government's off-reservation b ...

in 1898. Members of the

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the (also spelled Tsitsistas, The term for th ...

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

Crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly, a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not linked scientifically to any certain trait but is rathe ...

, and Flathead tribes were forced into the government institution to be taught how to assimilate into European American culture and language. Abuse, neglect, and death were prominent. Runaways were caught and dragged back to the school. It was closed in 1933.

Sanitarium

The building remained empty for many years until the outbreak of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

in the early 1900s. The building was then converted into a massive

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

called the Sioux Sanitarium for Native American TB patients in 1939. These years were the worst in its history, as documented by Madonna Swan, a

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

woman who was held at the sanitarium between 1944 and 1950. Unlike sanitaria for white people, which offered restorative environments and experimental treatments, Sioux San was a place where Native Americans went to die. The patients were rarely allowed outdoors, and were often served contaminated food. After the patenting of

streptomycin Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, ''Mycobacterium avium'' complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, Burkholderia infection, ''Burkholderia'' i ...

, the hospital closed in the 1960s.

Present state

The building remained empty for several years. The hospital still has numerous unmarked graves around the campus, not only of the TB patients, but also of

Native American Native Americans or Native American usually refers to Native Americans in the United States. Related terms and peoples include: Ethnic groups * Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian peoples of North, South, and Central America ...

children. In 1966, after Native elders and community members agitated for better treaty-guaranteed health services, the building was reopened as an

clinic. In 2009, for the first time, the hospital temporarily cancelled all regular appointments due to an overload of

H1N1 Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (A/H1N1) is a subtype of influenza A virus (IAV). Some human-adapted strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and are one cause of seasonal influenza (flu). Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs ( swine influen ...

patients. In 2016, Congress appropriated $117 million to renovate the hospital, and plans were proceeding to demolish some of the historic buildings.

References

External links

Indian Health Service Sioux San (Black Hills Knowledge Network)
{{authority control School buildings completed in 1898 Tuberculosis sanatoria in the United States Hospitals in South Dakota Buildings and structures in Rapid City, South Dakota Hospitals established in 1933 1966 establishments in South Dakota Native American history of South Dakota Native American health