Initially revealed by The nineteenth.
In an previous black and white {photograph}, 4 nuns flank a priest at a U.S. navy hospital in Havana, Cuba. Their extreme expressions communicate to the cruel circumstances that they had confronted through the Spanish-American Conflict — from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota to navy camps in Florida, Georgia and ultimately Cuba.
The 4 Lakota Sioux ladies — Mary Anthony, Mary Joseph, Mary Gertrude and Mary Bridget — had been there to assist look after sick and injured troopers. Additionally they put their stamp on historical past as the primary identified Native American ladies to serve in the US navy.
At the moment, American Indians and Alaska Natives serve within the Armed Forces at 5 occasions the nationwide common — with the ladies serving in greater focus than another ethnic inhabitants. Practically 20 p.c of Native service members are ladies, in contrast with 15.6 p.c of all different ladies service members.
However as the primary Native American ladies to serve, these nurses confronted elevated scrutiny and racial prejudice from navy officers and the information media of the time. A handwritten word on every card recommending them for responsibility described the ladies as having “darkish” coloring, getting used to “extreme hardships, and privations, and publicity to warmth and chilly” whereas working as missionaries on Indian land and having the ability to “endure safely what most nurses can not endure,” in keeping with the U.S. Nationwide Archives and Data Administration.
The ladies had been members of a small non secular order of Native American ladies on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The preliminary focus of the order, based in 1892 by Father Francis Craft, a missionary priest from New York Metropolis, was on training. Then in 1898, the US declared struggle in opposition to Spain.
Craft had a medical background. The nuns shortly acquired nursing coaching and volunteered to function Army nurses. When ladies entered non secular life, it was conventional that they be given a brand new identify, sometimes the identify of a saint: Sister Mary Anthony, also called Susan Bordeaux, was 31; Sister Mary Joseph, also called Josephine Two Bears, was 31; and Sister Mary Gertrude, also called Ella Clarke, was 28, in keeping with navy data. It’s unknown how previous Mom Mary Bridget, also called Anna Pleets, was when she enlisted.
In 1898, the nuns signed contracts, which assured them a month-to-month $30 stipend. Greater than six months after they volunteered, Craft and the 4 Lakota ladies had been despatched to their first appointment: Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, Florida, the place one correspondent from the Sioux Metropolis Journal wrote that the “work of the sisters right here will likely be watched and adopted with nice curiosity.”
Fight had ended by the point they arrived, however Camp Cuba Libre, unexpectedly arrange after amenities in Tampa grew too crowded, offered little for the group at first. They arrived to seek out spoiling meat, decaying fruit and insufficient quantities of bread, in keeping with Cheryl Mullenbach’s e-book “Girls of the Spanish-American Conflict.” The medical doctors and nurses labored tirelessly to deal with gun and stab wounds, cuts, bone fractures, dysentery, typhoid, malaria and yellow fever.
They had been assigned to 2 wards put aside particularly for measles and mumps sufferers — which regularly included about 50 sick troopers. Sister Mary Bridget and Mom Mary Anthony lined the daytime hours, whereas Sisters Mary Joseph and Mary Gertrude took the evening watches.
Observers praised the ladies for his or her work. A reporter in Florida described Sister Mary Bridget as “fairly younger” with “an ever prepared and joyful smile” and “very sturdy, rugged, as if no quantity of fatigue might be an excessive amount of for her.” One newspaper headline in December 1898 learn, “4 Redskin Sisters Who Have Achieved Good Work in a Southern Hospital.”
Assumptions additionally knowledgeable how the ladies had been perceived: The 4 Lakota nuns had been “believed to be immune both merely due to their race or as a result of that they had survived yellow fever,” in keeping with Mullenbach. The thought, she wrote, was that their “Indian blood” made them extra capable of stand up to the poor circumstances.
The USA signed a peace treaty with Spain on December 10. However that didn’t imply the nuns’ service was ending. Officers determined that medical personnel would nonetheless be wanted as American troopers would stay in Cuba and the Philippines indefinitely. A number of days after the peace treaty was signed and fewer than two months after that they had arrived in Florida, the 4 nuns and Craft had been transferred to Camp Onward in Savannah, Georgia.
They didn’t keep lengthy in Georgia because the camp was in flux. Army items had been ready to see the place they might be wanted; many had already left for Cuba. On December 22, the group adopted, making their solution to Camp Columbia in Havana.
The group arrived in Cuba about one week earlier than the American navy occupation was formally set to happen. The Spanish navy was nonetheless on its manner out and there was unrest amongst among the Cubans who weren’t on board with an American occupation. Throughout this time, the medical professionals at camp handled Individuals, Spaniards and Cubans alike. The camp, at an elevated location with a view of the ocean on one aspect and mountains on the opposite, didn’t have water traces; inhabitants needed to trek half a mile to the closest clear water.
The nurses had barely gotten began when, in February 1899, they had been knowledgeable that the U.S. navy was terminating their contracts. The group’s standing with the Roman Catholic Church was additionally in query. For many years, Craft’s “eccentricities and outspokenness” saved him in fixed battle with each authorities and church authorities. His phrases and actions repeatedly threatened “to detonate the powder keg of Catholic-government relations,” in keeping with The Catholic Historic Evaluate.
The explanation for his or her unhealthy standing with the Church and the tip of their navy contracts has been contested by numerous historians. Based on the Lakota Instances, Craft had renounced his affiliation with the Catholic Church earlier than the struggle began after accusations of abuse led to his banishment from all tribal reservations. However in keeping with the Smithsonian American Girls’s Historical past Museum, Craft’s order of nuns was dissolved due to false rumors began by a disgruntled former Indian Division agent who resented his termination. Based on Mullenbach, this drama with the Catholic Church again dwelling “had caught up with the priest.”
Craft claimed that “conservative churchmen who opposed the extra progressive concepts that he supported” demanded that he and the nurses ought to be expelled from the island, Mullenbach wrote in her e-book. Craft additionally accused an archbishop in Cuba of concentrating on the ladies due to their race and performing with “the previous hatred in opposition to the Indian sisters.” Mullenbach wrote that Craft claimed officers had additionally beforehand tried to “ship the sisters again to the Indian camps.”
Not beneath contract with the Army, the nurses and Craft determined to journey about 100 miles southwest to Pinar del Rio Province, the place they volunteered at a medical facility, caring for each sick troopers and civilians.
“Every thing went properly,” Craft stated, in keeping with Mullenbach. “Cubans and Spaniards had been as properly happy as Individuals with the American sisters and their work as nurses and physicians among the many poor.”
The nurses had been welcomed in the neighborhood, even becoming a member of a neighborhood parish choir.
“We’ll stay right here with the military except different means are discovered to drive us away,” Craft stated in April 1899.
Nevertheless, inside months, the state of affairs shifted. On October 15, Mom Mary Anthony, who had caught pneumonia in Florida, succumbed to her sickness and died. She was buried within the native cemetery, the place she stays, with navy honors, in keeping with navy data. Craft wrote of her loss of life: “She was a lot beloved by the troopers whom she had nursed again to well being on the sacrifice of her personal life and American troopers mingled their tears and prayers with these of Cubans and Spaniards who beloved her for her care of their orphans and sick.”
And by December, two of the opposite nurses needed to depart.
“I need to come dwelling as a result of I get sick and really sad,” Sister Bridget wrote in a letter to a priest pal again in the US, asking for assist getting dwelling. The ladies had been in “poor well being,” “not robust” and had been posted to 5 completely different hospitals in 4 months, in keeping with navy data.
Sisters Gertrude and Bridget returned to North Dakota inside a month. Sister Joseph, who had stayed longer with Craft in Cuba to run an orphanage, ultimately joined them in 1901.
The group’s struggle service, nevertheless temporary, didn’t go ignored in Washington. All 4 ladies had been awarded the silver crosses of the Order of Spanish-American Conflict Nurses. The U.S. Home of Representatives additionally acknowledged the 4 Lakota nurses’ contributions to the struggle in February 1899. On the time, Craft wrote that the nurses had “proved what they may do with the identical care white Sisters get,” in keeping with Mullenbach.
One affected person, in keeping with Mullenbach’s e-book, who had been handled by the nuns in Cuba added: “We should always give our consideration to the woman nurses who’re within the service. They’re the kindest, gentlest and most affected person of creatures and deserve a world of credit score from the wives and the moms of the boys in blue, and their names and heroic deeds ought to be chronicled on the pages of our nice, grand and wonderful nation’s historical past.”
However that chapter was closed. The three surviving nuns, not in a spiritual order, returned to the usage of their former names, and married. Craft later moved to Pennsylvania to grow to be a parish priest, the place he stayed for almost 20 years earlier than his loss of life in 1920.
Story Continues
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