The Spanish-American War Nurses
All were members of the Lakota Tribe
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K.B. Schaller
Left to right: Sister Josephine Two Bears, Sister Ella Clarke, Sister Bridget Fleets, and Sister Anthony Bordeaux (who died in Cuba and was given a military funeral).
As the 1800s drew to an end, tribal women began to enter the armed forces as nurses. In 1898, the Daughters of the American Revolution Hospital Corps contracted four Native American Indian Catholic nuns as nurses to serve in the Spanish-American War.
Beginning in the spring of 1898 and lasting fewer than four months, it was the first war involving the United States in which nurses were assigned as a special, quasi-military unit.
All four Native American nurses were members of the Lakota Tribe from Fort Berthold, South Dakota where they worked for the War Department.
Initially, they had no...
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