Above: General Ulysses S. Grant (fourth from left) and his staff, including Ely S. Parker (second from the right) in the late spring, 1864. At the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, in 1865, Parker (Seneca) was the highest-ranking American Indian in the Union army, a lieutenant colonel. As General Grant’s secretary, he drafted the terms of surrender.


Right: Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (Six Nations of the Grand River), photographed here in 1919, was the first Native Canadian registered nurse. After Indian Act restrictions prevented her from pursuing training to be a nurse in Canada, she sought this training in the United States. In 1917, at the age of 27, she volunteered for the U.S. Medical Corps and served in a hospital in France, treating soldiers who had been shot or gassed. She was the only Native woman among the 14 Canadian nurses who served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War I.


Taken together, each of the 16 narratives in the exhibition chronicle a distinguished but largely unheralded part of Indigenous military history that merits acknowledgment and respect. No exhibition, particularly one as mod-


est as “Why We Serve,” could fully capture the complexity of this Indigenous legacy. By necessity, we made difficult decisions about what content to include. The stories selected are meant to inspire readers to explore further into Native veterans’ histories. The exhibition features Native servicemen


and servicewomen whom some people might recognize. For example, most people may know about the code talkers, who helped Al- lied forces achieve victories during World Wars I and II. They might have also heard about Lieutenant Colonel Ely S. Parker (Seneca), the highest-ranking American Indian in the Union Army, and Specialist Lori Piestewa (Hopi), who served in the Iraq war in 2003, when she became the first known female American Indian service member killed in combat. It also includes lesser-known stories about


individuals and events, those that are typically left out of conventional accounts of American military history. For example, the four Lakota nuns who served as nurses during the Span- ish–American War and the Alaska Territorial Guard, made up of thousands of Alaska Natives


38 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2020


PHOTO BY MATHEW BRADY, NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTO NO. 524444


PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN MOSES


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