Factoid of the day (Continued)

While reading articles about smallpox epidemics, I came across this factoid in an article about Native American women veterans, many of whom served as nurses in the US Military.

Four Native American Catholic Sisters from Fort Berthold, South Dakota worked as nurses for the War Department during the Spanish American War (1898). Originally assigned to the military hospital at Jacksonville, Florida, the nurses were soon transferred to Havana, Cuba. One of the nurses, Sister Anthony died of disease in Cuba and was buried with military honors.

photo from NativeAmerican Veteran website.
and this site has their names:

The four sisters are, left to right, Sister Josephine Two Bears, Sister Ella Clarke, Sister Bridget Pleets, and sister Anthony Bordeaux. Sister Bordeaux died in Cuba and was given a military funeral. Sister Bridget Pleets treasured to the end of her life the apron on which dying soldiers had written their names and addresses so that she could write to their relatives.

and I ran across this book about the priest in the photo: the controversial Father Francis Craft...the sisters were sent to Cuba because of their expertise with "infectious disease"...and the Europeans who ran the church wasn't exactly pleased about him or his sisters, which probably explAins why the order fell apart and all the sisters ended up as laywomen.

what happened to the surviving sisters? LINK.

another article about women nurses in the Spanish American war HERE.