(mournful music) - [Rose] One woman I met, she was always dressed so pretty.

I'll never forget the next morning, they said, "Oh, she died last night."

I said, "But I saw her on the street yesterday."

- [Narrator] They called it the Blue Death.

Men start with what appears to be ordinary flu, but within hours they turn blue from the ears over the face, and blood is coughed up from the lungs.

After that death comes.

(somber music) - [Lief] The 1918 flu was one of the biggest pandemics in world history.

50 million died worldwide.

It happened in the midst of a world war that moved millions of people around, across continents, across oceans, put them in dense camps together, in trenches, displaced people from war, moved labor forces around, all things that spread this disease.

- [Narrator] We who live away from crowds said "It won't happen here," but it crept in swift and took old and young.

- This was a new strain.

Young adults were most at risk because they had strong immune systems.

So their lungs became inflamed and filled with fluid.

This led to pneumonia for which there was no cure.

Patients drowned in their own fluids.

Because this particular strain of flu was so lethal to people in their twenties and thirties, Montana had a lot of people that were in that age group, and so Montana was in the top four states that were hit hardest in terms of the proportion of people that died.

(patriotic music) During World War I there were a lot of efforts to drum up patriotic support, to buy war bonds and tamp down any criticism of the war.

And so one result of that was the Sedition Act that was passed in 1918, which made it illegal to criticize the government and you could be put in jail for that.

And 70 or so people in Montana were actually put away in prison.

So you can imagine that had a pretty dampening effect on how people talked about this huge pandemic.

- [Reporter] No epidemic here.

Fear causes much illness.

- But as the pandemic worsened, it became clear that there was something much more serious going on.

- [Narrator] It was a terrible, terrible thing.

The paper was full of obituaries every day - [Narrator] John Scott dies from flu.

- [Narrator] Ellen Carroll dies of influenza.

- [Narrator] Ed Noble is very ill with the influenza.

- [Narrator] Miss Gladys Werner is ill with influenza.

- [Narrator] George Bradley is down with influenza.

- [Narrator] George Sharkey dies from the flu.

- [Narrator] Herman Walters dies from the flu.

- [Narrator] Jack Holland is very ill with the influenza.

- [Narrator] Alvin Bush was taken by an influenza.

- [Narrator] Miss Peterson dies from flu.

- Dorothy Brundage dies at hospital.

- [Narrator] Joseph Lyons dies Monday.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] Spanish influenza is hereby declared to be infectious, contagious, communicable, and dangerous to health.

- [Reno] In Butte, the ground froze early.

It was difficult to dig graves and they couldn't keep up with the deaths.

And so the caskets piled high.

- [Reporter] The city health department has closed all schools, churches, moving picture houses and billiard halls.

Chairs and tables have been removed from saloons, hotel lobbies and clubs.

- These regulations were hard on people and businesses.

There was also pushback against them.

- [Reporter] 23 men were arrested for congregating in a pool hall.

They declared they were playing a friendly game of cards.

- [Lief] Scientists at this time didn't really understand viruses, let alone this particular virus.

- [Narrator] Dr. Blake dies in Dylan.

True to the ethics of his profession, he answered calls day and night until he gave way.

- They didn't even know what it was.

There was no ability to create a vaccine or other medical treatments.

- [Narrator] My dad said it was sitting outside on the sunny side of the house, wrapped in blankets that saved him.

- [Reno] We always used quinine, ipecac, rhubarb syrup and whiskey.

(upbeat music) - In medical manners, my grandpa would make us eat a dab of sulfur on a teaspoon and he'd make us eat fat, deer fat, bear fat.

We'd have to scrape the fat off the roof of our mouths with our fingers.

- [Narrator] One man's father suggested going to the hot springs to recover.

But his doctor said, "No, if you go to the hot springs, you'll come home in a box."

- By January, the disease was raging through the Cheyenne Reservation, killing dozens in Lame Deer, Busby, Birney, and the ground could not be broken with a shovel.

They wrapped the bodies in canvas tarps and stored them in sheds until spring.

Epidemics take away the people that you love and they take away your history and your language and your ceremonies because the important people that knew that information had not had the opportunity to transfer it to a younger person as it should have been done.

So the people had to be incredibly frightened.

- You can imagine that it would've been just very traumatic for people, but you'd have cases where you would go to a house and there might be a dead child in the house and the other members are there, but they're too sick to do anything with the body.

And then of course, if one or both of the parents died, we had children that were orphaned as a result of this pandemic.

Pandemics are crises, so you get a sense of where the fault lines are in a society.

This was a time when there was also not much of a social safety net for people.

So you had to work to pay your rent.

But do you go out and potentially get this disease, spread it to the rest of your family?

So there was a great deal of fear and uncertainty around the disease.

(patriotic music) The pandemic hit at a time when many of the healthcare workers had been sent off to go to war.

And so they asked for volunteers and mostly women to go to houses to help with people who were quarantined and isolated.

- [Rose] So I became nurse, cook, chore girl, and messenger in our neighborhood.

I had a beautiful little black mare, Maritza.

I raised and trained her and she knew every foot of our community, where the snow drifted deepest and where glare ice was hidden.

That winter, the Northern Lights flamed and flickered with unusual brilliance, guiding me home.

- Some women objected to what was in fact an extraordinarily dangerous situation, but they then were publicly shamed for being lazy.

- [Narrator] Ms. Garrigus contracted the fatal malady after serving voluntarily as a nurse at the emergency hospital.

- [Narrator] In the midst of so much fear and loss, people helped each other as best they could.

- [Narrator] My twin sister, Lenore, and I were in high school in Virginia City.

Our home economics class made masks of gauze to wear in school.

- [Rose] My dad rode a horseback seven to 10 miles every day to take care of three families.

My dad pumped water, he split wood for the stove and fixed them something to eat.

- [Narrator] On Thursday of this week, the influenza became so bad that we couldn't publish a paper until Sunday as every available person was needed to help care for the sick.

- If you have an ill person and a well person, the well person is the one who's going to care for the ill person regardless of gender.

Sure, it shows that the change is possible, but because the change is associated with a profoundly negative event, often they're going to try to go back to the way they think things should be.

(pensive music) - In 1918, life expectancy takes a huge dip, and yet a lot of history books don't even mention it.

It's the forgotten pandemic.

- [Narrator] The 1918 flu killed more Americans than World Wars I and II combined.

- The survivors often were very reluctant to record their memories of these traumatic events because they didn't want to relive them.

So there's a profound loss of our national memory of this major health crisis.

- [Narrator] But the stories that follow are not forgotten.

(dramatic music) (gentle music) - We were hoteliers and we were the maintenance people.

My three brothers and I and my dad.

Every year we patched the roof and re-tarred the roof.

One day, on the hotel roof, we were taking a break sitting on five gallon cans and dad says, "Gord, do you know what a, do you know what a death rattle is?"

(dramatic music) Well, in 1918, my dad, Walter Dean Jr. Was living at the commercial hotel in Forsyth with his mom, Grace.

His family life was complicated.

His mom and dad were separated.

They were both Main Street business people.

Grandpa Dean, he had a jewelry and drugstore and Grace ran the commercial hotel.

It's all about competition between their two businesses.

His criticism of her having the commercial hotel (sad bluesy music) and her saying, "Well, we're succeeding in spite of that."

Grandpa Dean was a photographer by avocation.

He always had his camera with him and he was taking pictures of everything that was happening in town.

But every picture he ever took of my grandma, she looks pointedly angry.

(sad bluesy music) Junior had to go back and forth between his mom and his dad.

He could go anywhere he wanted to go and he had even more freedom than most kids.

He just did whatever the hell he wanted to do.

He would go swimming in the river, he might go fishing.

I think he was also a lonely child, so he missed out on maturing in how to treat other people.

For instance, if he were giving you a lecture on vitamin C and how many milligrams you should take a day and it went on and on.

We would wait until an in-law, who didn't know what they're getting into, would wander into the conversation and we would excuse ourselves.

He didn't mind who the audience was.

The lecture would go on.

But he became extremely skilled in several areas.

He was very hardworking, had great acumen in business, and he was an amazing musician.

He's probably the best clarinetist I've ever heard.

(train whistling) (train chugging) Remember that Forsyth is a railroad town.

So railroaders lived there and passengers lived there.

That was why the hotel was built.

There was a small mezzanine above the lobby.

And so when salesmen came to town to sell their wares to the Main Street merchants, they would take their displays with their little models and go up to this mezzanine and they'd set up and the business people from town would all come down and they'd put in their orders.

(people chattering) And so it was a social and commercial center of the town.

(mournful music) When the Spanish flu came, the hotel became a hospital.

I didn't hear the story until my dad, one day on the hotel roof says, "Do you know what a death rattle is?

Human beings never make that noise until they're dying."

He says, "I was sleeping right down there inside the room right by that window and I couldn't sleep because right across the window well there was a woman dying and she had a death rattle and it lasted all the way into the middle of the night.

And finally it ended and I knew she was dead."

Later I was talking to my mom about it and she said, "Oh yeah," she said, "Your dad lived at the hotel with his mom.

And when they had all those flu victims up there, he had to go in the morning and knock on the doors to find out who was alive and who was dead.

And as soon as he'd see that somebody wasn't breathing, he would go down and get the desk clerk and the two of them would handle this deceased person, haul them down the back steps where the local undertaker had a casket waiting, sitting on two sawhorses and he was only nine years old."

(pensive music) Had to have been traumatic for him.

Later on, he was obsessed with health, from how to lift to what to eat, to the newest bone building calcium supplement, way before healthy living became mainstream.

So maybe that had something to do with his going through that epidemic.

There was a kit for everything.

Last year, I opened a wooden box that I hadn't opened ever.

It was his clarinet and saxophone repair kit and every single thing you'd need to fix a clarinet, it's a little time capsule of my dad's personality in there.

Even with a loving wife and six children, he still thought in terms of I have to keep my world organized.

(thoughtful music) (upbeat jazzy music) - [Rose] It is a great adventure to be born with dark skin.

While traveling about you meet many people who don't like the idea.

This is what puts you to the test.

(upbeat jazzy music) - By about 1910, there were 18,000 African Americans in the five largest Western cities, and the movement to the West was one of seeking land, seeking job opportunities or, in some instances, simply trying to escape the overt racism of the South.

Rose Gordon's parents migrated from Kentucky on to White Sulfur Springs and were part of the larger pattern of migration post emancipation.

(upbeat jazzy music) There is this anecdote of Rose Gordon being delivered by a native American woman, a Crow woman.

And upon her delivery, the Crow woman makes the statement that this is the first white baby in the community.

What does this mean for her to be called a white baby?

From this Crow woman's perspective, she was part of that white colonial project.

She was being included as part of the white community.

- [Rose] I began my school days at age six and liked it from the start.

I had a marvelous teacher.

She was so kind and refined.

She treated her pupils all alike.

- Rose Gordon's parents found employment working as a waitress, as working as part of the railroad industry, and then over time developing their own business, in this case a cafe.

(people chattering) So Rose developed her friendships in that were active in Helena.

- [Rose] There were many fine colored families in Helena at this time.

I always visited the home of Mrs. Dorsey and her three daughters, Lena, Carrie and Emma.

- Rose and her friends read not only local black newspapers, but most probably some of the larger national ones like the "Chicago Defender" as well.

Because of the independent black newspaper, we begin to see this sense of a shared identity emerging, particularly around pushing back against the racism of the era.

- [Rose] I graduated at the top of my class from White Sulfur Springs High school.

My teacher told me to prepare a speech as valedictorian.

I was the only colored girl in the class.

- W. E. B. du Bois, in some of his early work, gives us the concept of double consciousness and he suggests that for African Americans at that time, there was this need to think of oneself in this tunis is the term he uses, that you are are not only going about your life as a person, but that you're always aware you're being observed as a member of a different race.

- When I looked through the curtain and saw the crowd, I was nervous as a cat.

(people chattering) Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

My speech is titled "The Progress of the Negro."

The effect of slavery on the South made white people indolent and in some cases brutal.

- Here is a black woman in Montana speaking boldly and overtly about the reality of racism.

- Colored soldiers have fought in the Civil War, the Indian wars, and now the Spanish American War.

They have earned the protection of our honorable flag.

The people of the colored race have shown themselves worthy of enjoying full rights and citizenship.

(audience applauding) I worked at the commercial hotel from 1904 to 1908.

Mrs. Hoffman owned the hotel.

She had a daughter close to my age, Mabel.

I was sometimes homesick for mama and my friends.

Had it not been for Mabel, I would've been very lonesome at times.

Mabel was a grand girl.

She bought all the new songs and we would learn them.

(upbeat jazzy music) I had been there about a year when I received a comic Valentine.

The more I read it, the worse it sounded.

- [Mabel] "Ah, there you dark skinned daisy.

You think you are a Butte with your thrashy trashy trinkets and your bargain counter suit.

A chocolate you are in color, but a caramel you are not for that requires some sweetness.

The thing you haven't got."

- [Rose] I showed it to Mabel and she said- - [Mabel] "Isn't it cute?"

- [Rose] I said, "Cute?

I think it's terrible."

- [Mabel] Rose, I sent the Valentine to you.

Don't you think it's funny?

- [Rose] I was all bogged down about it.

I knew she meant no harm.

- This anecdote is troubling because it is so representative of the way racism was expressed at this time.

There is often a sense among white people that the absence of people of color means that there's not a problem with racism.

So when influenza arrives, the call goes out for nurses.

There were many black nurses who were ready and willing to serve with the Red Cross and in the armed services as nurses.

But due to the realities of segregation at that era, they were not allowed to until the very end of the World War I conflict.

And only 15 African American nurses were allowed to serve with the Red Cross.

And then when someone like Rose and her mother come into the community, stereotypes are in the media, in the conversations, in the textbooks, even in a relationship that was otherwise fairly positive.

But then the racism pops up.

So after working for a while as a hotel clerk, she ended up applying for nursing school but couldn't afford to go.

- [Rose] Mr. Conrad is the owner of White Sulfur Springs and he is building up a health resort here.

I shall study massage and physical therapy to accompany the mineral baths.

- So the path that Rose ends up pursuing of alternative medicine is actually very much in sync with the traditions of folk healing and folk medicines that have been part of the African American community from pre-slavery through to the period that we're talking about now.

- [Rose] When the influenza came, people were so afraid.

They wouldn't even come near the sick.

- So the call goes out for nurses.

And despite the racism that Rose continued to encounter, she answered the call and she ended up nursing both white and black families.

- [Rose] I nursed one family where there was no hope for the mother.

Her fever was 104.

She passed away.

Her husband and little daughter were gravely ill too.

I gave them buttermilk and hot whiskey to sweat out their fever.

(water trickling) - The story of Rose Gordon gives us this exemplar of a member of an oppressed community being able to maintain dignity and be valued member of her local community in the midst of that nested reality of racism.

- [Rose] When you take a ride and gaze upon the beautiful hills, valleys and running streams and all the colors of nature, it is difficult to believe that the Creator made this only for one color.

It is our different colors that make this world a beautiful place.

Rose B. Gordon.

(gentle music) ♪ Oh come all you fellas ♪ ♪ So young and so fine ♪ ♪ And seek not your fortune ♪ ♪ Way down in the mine ♪ ♪ It'll form like a habit ♪ ♪ It'll seep in your soul ♪ ♪ Till the blood in your body ♪ ♪ Runs black as the coal ♪ ♪ Where it's dark as a dungeon ♪ - Because my grandmother was born in Finland, I asked her tons and tons of questions.

I was probably a museum nerd back when I was 12 because I was going through photographs with my grandmother and writing in pencil who was in the photographs.

What 12-year-old does that?

(gentle upbeat music) My dad's side of the family were Finnish immigrants, 100% Finnish immigrants.

By 1900 they were in Red Lodge.

A lot of other immigrants came there, the Italians, Germans, Irish, for a better way of life and jobs in the mines.

My great-grandfather, Johann Henrik Kolinni who was six foot and he was a tough man.

And if there was a fight in town (blows thudding) (fighters groaning) and if they weren't fighting fair, he'd break it up and make 'em fight like men.

He ended up with a nickname, Molinsky, from the Italian people.

I kind of think that Molinsky meant badass.

(gentle music) My great-grandmother, Sarah Lukininn, she lost her husband Johann in a cave in.

She had to have been devastated losing her husband and she had four small children by this time.

Sarah must have ended up with some sort of amount of money from the the mining company when her husband died.

And between that and then selling her house, she was able to buy 160 acres.

And then a couple years after that she added the adjacent 240 acres.

So my grandfather being the only son, he was the mainstay for the ranch.

So he had to stay and didn't end up being drafted into World War I.

My grandfather would've been 20 years old at that time of influenza.

First his younger sister Sadie was stricken with influenza and died.

And then three months after that, his older sister Jenny, died of influenza and left two small children, a 2-year-old daughter Leola, and a three month old baby, Joseph.

So when Jenny died and left her husband Joe Haggerty with the two small children, he worked in the mines and that's why he just didn't feel like he could raise a 2-year-old girl and a three-month-old baby on his own.

The baby was put up for adoption immediately and was adopted by a couple in Northern California and then later Leola was adopted by another family in California.

So John not only lost his two sisters, but he also lost his niece and nephew.

It had to be a trying time.

I really don't think that he ever thought he would ever see Leola or Joe, Joseph, ever in a later life.

But one day it happened.

(gentle music) It was just a typical day on the ranch and a knock on the door came.

And here this tall young man was there and the young man was obviously angry and said, "Who is the dirty son of a bitch that put me up for adoption?"

Jack Coker is his name by now.

He was a very to the point, (laughs) harsh kind of person.

So I know my grandfather had to have been like a deer in the headlights.

But he invited him in and said, "You need to hear the whole story."

(pensive music) My grandfather sat Jack Coker down and explained to him what happened.

That not only his mother died, but his aunt died in the influenza and it was a real hardship.

(pensive music) Jack did get to meet his father later, but they never had a very good relationship.

So Jack ended up being very good friends with my grandparents.

Jack would come and visit us.

He ended up being a pilot and had small planes.

And I remember once being on top of the haystack and Jack flying right over the top of our heads (engine roaring) to swoop in on us.

He's here 'cause he'd come back annually.

And then his son continued to come back and he brought his kids and his sister's kids back and we have developed a really great family relationship with them.

And I still talk to his son monthly.

As I think about hearing this story, the thing that gets me the most is that side of the family is very small because of the influenza and what happened.

So I don't have much other than Jack's son Craig now and his kids.

That's what's left of the family.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] In the 50 years before the influenza, the Blackfeet had been through devastating health crisis.

- When you talk about the smallpox epidemic, starvation winter, tuberculosis, the influenza, we'd lost 2/3 of our population.

- Children at boarding schools were particularly vulnerable.

These kids are all crammed together.

Their sleeping spaces are together, they're eating all together and they have communal bathrooms and they were stressed.

They were away from their family.

It just made them so much more susceptible.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] In the fall of 1918, Woodrow Lazy Boy, a three-year-old Blackfeet child collapsed with fever.

It was the influenza.

(mournful music) - We had to adapt 'cause we were losing so many people.

- My great-grandparents, Julia and Chief Wades in the Water, invited the Red Cross to come in.

They and other families like the Medicine Owls, the Last Stars, the Wolf Tails, Mrs. Bull Calf, Mrs. Shampine and Mrs. Powell.

The Blackfeet Red Cross educated other tribal members about mask wearing and quarantine.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] The influenza came at a time when the Blackfeet faced further invasion by Euro Americans and pressure to abandon our own culture.

- [Cheryle] Taking away the land base that we had occupied and used for thousands of years.

- We had crisises all around us, ready to destroy us as a people.

We went into our hearts and from that heart is the unconditional love and trust we have for our people and our way of life.

(mournful music) (woman speaking in foreign language) (vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Cheryle] My great grandparents understood that our culture was under attack.

- [Leon] When the federal government wanted the Blackfeet to form a police force, elders directed them to the Crazy Dog Society (speaking in foreign language).

- [Cheryle] It's a way that we kept peace and order among tribal members.

- [Leon] Wades in Water, a member of the Crazy Dogs, became chief of police on the Blackfeet Reservation.

- And then later he appointed my great grandma Julia as a police woman too.

And she was actually the first Indian policewoman in the country.

And together they practiced forms of policing that were accepted by our people already, worrying about restitution or letting them go and telling them, you know, okay, you need to change your behavior.

You're embarrassing your family or you're embarrassing our people.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Cheryle] My great grandparents were leaders within the Crazy Dog society.

One of the most effective things they could do was to activate the Crazy Dogs.

- When an elder like that stands up and asks for help, everybody stands up and asks "How?

How fast can we do this?

And what exactly do you need?"

And they'll do it.

Word spreads very fast, when you have an organized group of people that are, their primary goal is the care of the people.

- The members of the Crazy Dog Society are very well respected.

If you can think of them coming to your home and visiting you in person, the words would be accepted, the practices would be accepted.

- So when you talk about getting the word out, you had to travel.

If we went from Heart Butte to Dupuyer, that's 35, 40 miles, well by horseback, that's a long .

By wagon that's a long ways.

- [Cheryle] Julia wanted to do something that would help to end the influenza epidemic.

And so she sponsored a sun dance.

The sun dance is a holy ceremony.

It's multifaceted, it's not something easily explained.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - She prayed and the people that performed the sun dance prayed for the end to the epidemic.

And I believe that that helped.

Julia and Chief Wades in the Water tried so very hard to advocate for our people and to use whatever mechanisms they could to make things happen.

They had a relationship with Glacier National Park and Great Northern Railroad.

Julia and Wades in the Water get to spend some time with those people.

And a lot of those people were very influential.

And my great grandparents, they would get to share those issues that we needed help and advocacy for.

- [Leon] Winold Reiss was a German artist who painted portraits of the Blackfeet people, the Amskapi Pikanni, for the great Northern Railroad calendar print.

- My great grandfather's portrait, he created his own border for that portrait.

So a winter count is drawings that are done usually on a buffalo hide.

They show the happenings of a year.

And in this case it was drawings of his life, different events that he felt was important and wanted to capture.

One of 'em shows the nation's capitol.

And that was when he went to Washington DC and advocated for a a tuberculosis ward And it was through that advocacy that there was later a wing there in Galen for native people to go to.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - They were able to cross a divide that a lot of people would not have been able to.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - Grandma and Grandpa Wades in the Water died before I was ever born.

But that doesn't mean that I don't know them.

And that's a wonderful feeling, to know their history.

And I know the kind of people that they were.

So my great-grandparents were truly loving and caring people and they cared not only for their family, but for their community.

And I think that will make it so that their story will live on.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Narrator] Miss Hazel Leonard became the bride of Mr. Solomon Yoder yesterday afternoon.

She wore a tailored suit of golden brown.

Mrs. Yoder graduated from the State Hospital of Wyoming and has won a prominent place for herself among the trained nurses of our city.

(upbeat music) - This generation of women who had the opportunity not only to attend and complete high school, but in many cases also to attend and complete college.

And this occurred between the 1880 and 1920.

Teaching was both a really important professional development for women in this era and also a pathway to all kinds of other forms of engagement, civic engagement, political engagement, community engagement.

They were known collectively as the new woman.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Hazel Leonard grew up in the coal mining town of Monarch, Wyoming.

As a young woman, she nearly died of appendicitis.

Hazel remembered waking up in the hospital after surgery, grateful to be alive.

Inspired by the doctors and nurses who cared for her, Hazel vowed to become a nurse.

In 1911, Hazel graduated from the nursing program at Wyoming State Hospital in Sheridan.

- For many new women, nursing was the goal and many of them were inspired by the example of Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross.

And it was their ultimate ambition to become a trained nurse, which usually included two and in some cases three full years of training and practice.

So she was very justifiably proud because nursing had only recently become (upbeat music) - [Narrator] 1914 found Hazel sharing an apartment with her sister and mother in Great Falls.

(upbeat music) In 1915, Hazel met Solomon Yoder, a gray eyed bachelor who also hailed from Monarch, Wyoming.

He would take her to the theater and they would walk together and they shared their dreams for the future.

In 1915, they married.

(drums tapping) - [Narrator] Nurses wanted, trained.

Army nurses will be paid $75 per month by the federal government.

- [Narrator] Hazel answered the call.

She was stationed at the University of where the student Army Training Corps lived in tents behind the oval.

(drums tapping) Influenza had reached beyond Fort Missoula to invade the ranks at UM.

- During World War I, roughly 20,000 women worked for the US military, the Army, or the Navy.

They were employed by the US government and about half of them served overseas.

So about half of them served stateside.

And Yoder was one of the people who took part in that expansion of nursing as a woman's profession.

- [Narrator] Mrs. Yoder was an invaluable helper.

The university should record its deep appreciation of the spirit, which prompted Mrs. Yoder to fight the perils of the influenza.

- [Narrator] October 19th, some of the fellows collapsed during drill.

Next thing we know, they have the influenza.

Today they moved the fellows, beds and all, up to the gymnasium.

October 21st.

I'm feeling pretty tired tonight.

I have a little cold.

October 25th.

This being sick isn't any fun.

The first symptom is being tired.

The second is having the blues.

You sleep.

When you wake up your back and legs ache and ache and ache some more.

You feel like a toy balloon that someone stuck a pin into.

- The catch to the whole era of the new woman was that you could pursue a professional career, but you had to do it in service to others.

The feminine professional ethic of self-sacrifice.

Hazel Yoder's career was tragically cut short when she contracted influenza.

- [Narrator] Hazel's family gathered around her hospital bed and her condition improved.

She was sitting up, talking and enjoyed a meal.

Solomon felt it all right to return to Red Lodge.

(somber music) But when Saul arrived home, he got the news.

A heart complication took Hazel before he could return.

- [Narrator] It is hard to describe the grief and disappointment we all felt when she was taken down.

- She died in the line of duty while she was employed by the US military.

So her husband Solomon applied for a widower's pension and he was repeatedly denied despite the university president's efforts to have Hazel Yoder recognized as a veteran.

In 1919, Jeanette Rankin sponsored a bill to establish compensation for family members of military who lost their lives, which is not what people think of when they think of Jeanette Rankin because she's our most famous pacifist.

But she was a pacifist who understood that military members have families and those families have needs and they deserve to be compensated.

- [Narrator] Although she was so short a time at the university, her memory is clear in our minds through her quiet, efficient manner, her cheerful disposition and her unfailing kindness.

Of her it may be said, as truly of a soldier in battle, that she fell in action in defense of her country.

(pensive music) (dark tense music) (vocalist singing in foreign language) - The Crow people were no strangers to the ravages of epidemics because they'd already seen what smallpox could do.

The average teepee held seven family members.

Only one out of those seven may have survived the smallpox epidemic.

So when the Spanish flu came in 1918, they had those memories, that trauma, that's embedded in those that survived that influenzas are dangerous.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Reno] Frances Garrigus was an Absalooke woman, Crow, and her mother, a quarter Crow, supplied land for the family ranch.

Frances' mother Maggie Geisha Hundley was one quarter crow, one quarter Piegan and half French.

Orphaned as a young child, then raised by her white stepfather and five succeeding white stepmothers, Frances' mother learned to move through the Euro-American world, sometimes passing as white.

So Frances grew up with a Crow mom who knew how to navigate white society.

And Frances was also a descendant of a white father.

So Crow, Piegan, French and American.

This was the mix of cultures in the Montana.

Frances' parents valued education (upbeat patriotic music) and so she blossomed in high school.

The only girl on the debating team.

When I open my lips, let no dog bark.

In 1908, Frances' parents separated.

Frances lived with her father during the school year.

Like many native youth, Frances loved the new sport of the basketball and she became captain of the Billings High girl's team.

(crowd cheering) (vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Reno] Frances spent summers with her mother among the Crow.

The summer after her junior year, she took a job waitressing for Great Northern Railroad, but within two weeks she was fired for trying to organize a union.

Frances was way ahead of her time.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Montana in 1916 and went on to become the first Indigenous woman at UM Law School.

By 1917, Frances was one of only three women in a class of 117.

At that time, the law was coded male.

Being female within a masculine profession was not easy.

That sense of aloneness, nowadays we would call the imposter syndrome.

She's thinking I've gotta work twice as hard as everyone else to prove that I belong here, that I'm smart enough to be here.

So in the absence of her natural kinship system, she was smart enough to recreate her own sense of kinship, to make friends that would replace her (people chattering) - [Narrator] If you take advice from Frances, you can never come to harm, for she goes about the campus with a law book 'neath her arm.

(people chattering) - Frances graduated from the UM Law School in 1918.

She'd absorbed her mother's Crow values as she excelled in the white world.

Frances planned to serve as an attorney in the court of Judge Ben Lindsey, the progressive reformer who pioneered juvenile law.

Lindsey believed that the youth who ran afoul of the law should be helped instead of thrown in prison.

He wanted to hear from the kids themselves.

Frances' choice to seek out Judge Lindsey and get trained in his court, tied directly to her Crow cultural values on children.

Children are allowed to explore the world in their own manner.

And when they make mistakes, they're re-guided.

They get a chance to do things right.

Restorative justice is what it's all about.

Teach them the skills of becoming an adult.

So it's a transfer of knowledge from the generation before to the generation that's coming.

And she really saw herself as having a vital role in that process.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - [Reno] Inspired by Judge Lindsey's work, she wanted to train at his court in Denver.

To fund her move from Montana to Colorado, she taught business students at Carbon County High School.

(somber music) During the influenza, the schools closed and local officials urged the teachers to volunteer as nurses.

Frances answered the call.

(mournful music) - [Narrator] Miss Garrigus contracted the fatal malady after serving voluntarily as a nurse at the emergency hospital.

- [Reno] After a brief battle, she died on October 30th, 1918.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] In the death of Miss Garrigus, Carbon County High loses a valued member of our staff.

And our community loses a ready, willing, and capable worker.

- [Reno] To move physically and spiritually with grace and pride, Crow women are leaders and in modern days we're warriors in the boardroom instead of the battlefield.

In Frances' time, she could demonstrate that in the classroom as a teacher, as a healthcare worker during the influenza and just being part of the community, a responsible person taking care of everybody.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - Frances Garrigus gave all that she could give during the time of influenza.

Her ambition to work with Judge Lindsay and to bring his pioneering practices back to Montana was cut short by the virus.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) - But the dreams that she had are there for those of us that follow, to try to make them come true in other ways.

That's us being us, from our own standards of strength and kindness and love.

And you must be able to be human enough to do that for everybody.

(vocalist singing in foreign language) (somber music) - [Narrator] Those who lived through the 1918 influenza knew great loss and fear, but also found new depths of generosity and courage.

(mournful music) (mournful music continues) (mournful music continues) (vocalist singing in foreign language) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle wistful music) (gentle wistful music continues) (peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) (peaceful music continues)