{"id":1674,"date":"2019-08-01T08:52:52","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1674"},"modified":"2019-08-01T08:52:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:52:52","slug":"lutiant-van-wert-describes-the-1918-flu-pandemic-1918","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/21-world-war-i\/lutiant-van-wert-describes-the-1918-flu-pandemic-1918\/","title":{"rendered":"Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lutiant\nVan Wert, a Native American woman, volunteered as a nurse in Washington D.C.\nduring the 1918 influenza pandemic. Here, she writes to a former classmate still\nenrolled at the Haskell Institute, a government-run boarding school for Native\nAmerican students in Kansas, and describes her work as a nurse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear friend Louise:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So everybody has the \u201cFlu\u201d at Haskell? I wish to\ngoodness Miss Keck and Mrs. McK. would get it and die with it. Really, it would\nbe such a good riddance, and not much lost either! As many as 90 people die\nevery day here with the \u201cFlu.\u201d Soldiers too, are dying by the dozens. So far,\nFelicity, C. Zane, and I are the only ones of the Indian girls who have not had\nit. We certainly consider ourselves lucky too, believe me. Katherine and I just\nreturned last Sunday evening from Camp Humphreys \u201cSomewhere in Virginia\u201d where\nwe volunteered to help nurse soldiers sick with the Influenza. \u2026 All nurses\nwere required to work twelve hours a day–we worked from seven in the morning\nuntil seven at night, with only a short time for luncheon and dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Believe me, we were always glad when night came\nbecause we sure did get tired. We had the actual Practical nursing to do–just\nlike the other nurses had, and were given a certain number of wards with three\nor four patients in each of them to look after. Our chief duties were to give\nmedicines to the patients, take temperatures, fix ice packs, feed them at \u201ceating\ntime\u201d, rub their back or chest with camphorated sweet oil, make egg-nogs, and a\nwhole string of other things I can\u2019t begin to name. I liked the work just fine,\nbut it was too hard, not being used to it. When I was in the Officer\u2019s\nbarracks, four of the officers of whom I had charge, died. Two of them were\nmarried and called for their wife nearly all the time. It was sure pitiful to\nsee them die. I was right in the wards alone with them each time, and Oh! The first\none that died sure unnerved me–I had to go to the nurses\u2019 quarters and cry it\nout. The other three were not so bad. Really, Louise, Orderlies carried the\ndead soldiers out on stretchers at the rate of two every three hours for the\nfirst two days were there. Two German spies, posing as doctors, were caught\ngiving these Influenza germs to the soldiers and they were shot last Saturday\nat sunrise. It is such a horrible thing, it is hard to believe, and yet such\nthings happen almost every day in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repeated calls come from the Red Cross for nurses to\ndo district work right here in D. C. I volunteered again, but as yet I have not\nbeen called and am waiting. Really, they are certainly \u201chard up\u201d for nurses–even\nme can volunteer as a nurse in a camp or in Washington. There are about 800 soldiers\nstationed at Potomac Park right her in D. C. just a short distance from the\nInterior building where I work, and this morning\u2019s paper said that the deaths\nat this Park were increasing, so if fortune favors me, I may find myself there\nbefore the week is ended. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 All the girls have soldiers–Indian girls also. Some\nof the girls have soldiers and sailors too. The boys are particularly crazy\nabout the Indian girls. They tell us that the Indian girls are not so \u201ceasy\u201d as\nthe white girls, so I guess maybe that\u2019s their reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington is certainly a beautiful place. There is so\nmuch to be said in favor of it, that if I started, I don\u2019t believe I should\never get through. Odile and I have to pass by the Capitol, the Union Station,\nthe War Department, the Pension Bldg., and through the noted Lincoln park every\nmorning to our way to work. The Washington Monument (555ft. high) is within\nwalking distance of the Interior Department (where we work) and we walked there\nlast evening after work. It certainly is high and we are planning to go up in\nthe elevator some time to look over the city. We were going last evening, but\nthe place is closed temporarily, on account of this \u201cFlu\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the schools, churches, theaters, dancing halls,\netc. are closed here also. There is a bill in the Senate today authorizing all\nthe war-workers to be released from work for the duration of this epidemic. It\nhas not passed the house yet, but I can\u2019t help but hope it does. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Lutiant Van Wert to \u201cLouise\u201d (10\/17\/1918). Records\nof the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75. National Archives Identifier:\n2641556. National Archives at Kansas City, Kansas City, MO. Available via\nNational Archives (https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/exhibits\/influenza-epidemic\/records\/volunteer-nurse-letter.pdf<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lutiant Van Wert, a Native American woman, volunteered as a nurse in Washington D.C. during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Here, she writes to a former classmate still enrolled at the Haskell Institute, a government-run boarding school for Native American students in Kansas, and describes her work as a nurse. Dear friend Louise: So everybody has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":374,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1674","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1674\/revisions\/1675"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}