Celina Pilon

Celina was (reported) a Chippewa woman (but her tribal origin is unknown)

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 in 1898 as part of the federal government's off-reservation boarding school movement for Native Americans and was shut down in 1933 to become a tuberculosis center. The hospital in the past few years has been listed on the market and is currently being considered for demolition, even though local tribes had tried to claim back the land in the past.

Three reservations were close enough to the school to enroll students: the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Cheyenne River reservations. Towards the 1900s, approximately 650 children went to Rapid City Indian School from Wyoming, Montana, and western South Dakota. In 1909, students enrolled at the Chamberlain Indian School in South Dakota who had come from the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Indian Reservation were transferred to Rapid City.

The early 1900s to 1930s showed many families wanting to keep their families together, prompting the school to keep their lower grades available to keep up enrollment, as many boarding schools split up the younger elementary grades from the older grades. Some students and families who decided to have their children attend Rapid City decided so based on the extensiveness of the course catalog and due to the fact that the parents or relatives of these students gained jobs at the school.

The school was closed in 1933 to become a tuberculosis sanatorium, named Sioux Sanatorium or "Sioux San," splitting up the families within the school by taking younger students to a different boarding school and the older students to another. The land was split into three lots owned by the federal government, with the Sioux San Hospital being the last remaining structure of the school. In 2014, sixteen tribes from South Dakota, North Dakota, and Nebraska requested that the land be turned back over to tribal care because the land is listed as a plot of spiritual land guaranteed to the Sioux Nation under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.

Source: Wikipedia contributors. "Rapid City Indian School." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Jan. 2024. Web. 30 Mar. 2024.

Further Reading:
1. “An Inconvenient Truth by Rapid City Journal - Issuu.” Issuu.com, Rapid City Journal, 2 May 2017, issuu.com/rapidcityjournal/docs/siouxsantab_fullproof. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.
2. Schafer, Amelia. “Uncovering the History of Rapid City Indian School.” ICT News, 23 Oct. 2023, ictnews.org/news/uncovering-the-history-of-rapid-city-indian-school.
3. Dahlberg, Mackenzie. “Remembering the Children and What Their Lives Looked like at the Rapid City Indian Boarding School.” NewsCenter1.Tv, 10 Oct. 2022, www.newscenter1.tv/things_to_do/remembering-the-children-and-what-their-lives-looked-like-at-the-rapid-city-indian-boarding/article_6cf5f82e-5438-5456-bf8b-f9612587f813.html.
4. Lakota Times. “Children of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School to Be Honored on Native American Day - Lakota Times.” Lakota Times -, 4 Oct. 2018, www.lakotatimes.com/articles/children-of-the-rapid-city-indian-boarding-school-to-be-honored-on-native-american-day/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.

The original headstone marking Wounded Knee survivor Mabel Holy’s grave in Rapid City’s Mt. View Cemetery. Researchers located the grave in 2017 after more than a century of anonymity. Note Holy’s name was misspelled.

Biography:
There is not much known about Celina before her admission to the Canton Asylum. Per Dr. Culp's letter dated February 17, 1934, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, she was 1/4 Chippewa committed from the Rapid City Indian School. Her parents are unknown.

From Carla Joinson in her book Vanished in Hiawatha, Celina was admitted to the Canton Asylum on November 25, 1911, and she died there on October 11, 1922, at age 35. This would provide a calculated date of birth c. 1877.

The letter dated February 17, 1934, from Dr. L.L. Culp to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs confirms the date of death and further indicates that Celina was buried at the Canton Hiawatha Cemetery in tier 6 plot 41.

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

Research Notes:
-A search of Chippewa Indian census reports from known Chippewa reservations and agencies fails to turn up the name Celina Pilon.
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Sources:

1917 Jul 28 - 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=880, line 58, Census of the Canton Asylum, female, page 2

(Curator Note: this document dated 1918 is in the 1917 Narrative, it seems to have been post-dated. The 1918 census is different!)

1917 Oct 1 - 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=778, line 67, census of the Canton Asylum School

1918 Jun 30 - 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=887, line 25, female census of the Canton Asylum

1920 Jan 30 - "United States Census, 1920", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6J7-FP6 : Sun Mar 10 22:26:49 UTC 2024), Entry for Celina Pilon, 1920, pg. 652/1130, line 22,(age 32), census of the Asylum for Indians, Canton Township, Lincoln County, South Dakota

1920 Jun 30 - 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=899, line 28, Canton Asylum female census

1921 Jun 30 - "United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:68Z4-CZ7N : Sat Mar 09 21:31:12 UTC 2024), Entry for Celina Pilon, 1921, pg. 509/522, line 31, female census, Canton Asylum

1922 Jun 30 - 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=1042, line 29, female census, Canton Asylum

1922 Oct 14 - "South Dakota, Grave Registration Records, 1940-1941", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:CYZP-7J2M : Fri Mar 08 15:25:14 UTC 2024), Entry for Celina Pilon, no image
Name Celina Pilon
Sex Female
Age 35 years
Birth Year (Estimated) 1887
Death Date 14 October 1922
Event Type Burial
Event Place Presho, Lyman, South Dakota, United States
Cemetery Indian Asylum

1922 Oct 14 - Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14493715/selena-pilon: accessed March 30, 2024), memorial page for Selena Pilon (unknown–14 Oct 1922), Find a Grave Memorial ID 14493715, citing Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery, Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA; Maintained by Graveaddiction (contributor 46528400).
(Curator Note: It is not known where the name Selena came from as documentation is not shown, What we have from identified sources is ALL refer to her as Celina.)

1922 Oct 14 - 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

Sallie Seabolt 7-12-22 · Selina Pilon 10-14-22 · Mrs. Twoteeth 1-10-23

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See this source for possible resource information on Celina Pilon as a student
“Rapid City Indian School Records, 1897 - 1933 | South Dakota State Archives ArchivesSpace.” Sdarchives.lyrasistechnology.org, sdarchives.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/22438. Accessed 2 Apr. 2024.
"The Rapid City Indian School was one of 28 off-reservation boarding schools built and operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The school existed from 1898-1933 to serve Indian children of the Northern plains—including Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, and Flathead. The buildings were later used to house the Sioux Sanatorium, an institution established to treat Indians with tuberculosis."
(Curator Note: from the above note it can be seen that Chippewa Indian children were NOT served by this institution.)