100 years ago in Spokane: Nurses graduate, and eye the battlefield overseas

More than two dozen Spokane women graduated from the “rush” nurse’s aid classes held in the Old National Bank building.

Many of them planned to continue on with a one-month intensive training course in local hospitals, after which they would be eligible to work overseas in wartime hospitals, or in domestic Red Cross hospitals as assistants to registered nurses.

From the native beat: Chief Red Fox Skiuhushu of the Northern Blackfeet Tribe in Montana arrived in Spokane after a 7,000-mile trip on horseback.

Chief Red Fox said he he went to Washington, D.C., and New York and back again in a journey that had taken him nearly four years. The purpose of the trip was to “create public sentiment in favor of this freedom (full U.S. citizenship) which we think the Indians are fully entitled.”

He said he met twice with President Woodrow Wilson, who is “heartily in favor of full citizenship.” Red Fox, a college graduate, said Wilson “mounted my pony in front of the White House.” Not all of their time was spent traveling. Red Fox took special studies for two summers at Columbia University and delivered a number of speeches.

Red Fox was accompanied by a cousin on the journey and “rode the same horses for the entire 7,000 miles, and have them now in Spokane.” They were on their way to an Indian council near Yakima.