Piestewa Peak
When a daring military operation rescued Jessica Lynch from the Iraqi hospital where she was being held as prisoner of war in 2003, an entire nation beamed with pride. The rescue team also brought back with them remains of eleven American soldiers who had perished in battle. Among the fallen was Lori Piesetewa, a 23 year old single mother who was a member of the Hopi Nation and lived in Tuba City, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation. Piesetewa is believed to be the first female Native American soldier to be killed in combat while serving for the United States military.
The tradition of Native American women aiding our armed forces goes back to the Revolutionary War. At the Battle of Oriskany, an Oneida woman named Tyonajanegen fought on horseback at her husband’s side. Tyonajanegen rushed into the fray when she saw her husband get shot in the wrist. The valiant married couple rode and fought side by side, Tyonajanegen loading her wounded husband’s rifle so he might shoot again and again.
Sacagewa is probably the most famous woman to serve our military, acting as guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Sacagewa joined the expedition only because she was the teenage bride of a French trapper named Touissant Charbonneau. Soon, Lewis and Clark’s regard of the French trapper had dropped considerably and their opinion of Sacagewa rose steeply. Historians like to joke that Sacagewa did everything Lewis and Clark did but with a child strapped to her back. The young woman’s ability to forage for wild artichoke’s, licorice, and prairie turnips kept the soldiers alive many times. She was responsible for one vegetable appearing in your local grocery store. The root salsify, was one of Captain Merriweather’s favorite dishes. Salsify looks like a dirty furry carrot but when you peel off the outer skin it reveals a white vegetable. Captain Lewis liked his salsify sautéed over the campfire with a little butter and green onions. Sacagawea was kidnapped as a child and raised by another tribe. While translating for Lewis and Clark, she was unexpectedly reunited with her long lost brother, now a Shoshone chief, and this led to honored treatment for the expedition. Upon their return to St. Louis, Sacagewa was honored with a commission in the military.
The last battle of the Civil War took place between two different Native American forces from the same tribe. Stand Watie rode his two companies of Cherokee Mounted Rifles past Union lines to burn down the Cherokee capital in the Oklahoma Territory; including torching down the famous Rose Cottage of his Cherokee rival; John Ross. Stand Watie, known to his people as Degataga or “immovable”, was the last Confederate general to surrender, laying down his sword on June 23, 1865.
Four Native American Catholic nuns from South Dakota served in the Spanish American War, working as nurses. By World War I the number of Native Americans women serving the military as nurses had expanded to over 800. Matthew Juan, a member of the Pima nation, was the first Native American soldier to die in World War I. The Pima continued their proud record of service to our nation in World War II with Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes was among the soldiers photographed raising the flag on Iwo Jima. This well published picture became one of the most heroic icons of the war.
When World War II broke out there were no dictionaries yet written of the Navajo language. The Navajo Codetalkers served in the Pacific theaters of action and spoke to each other in their native language. A recent movie starring Nicolas Cage, titled
Windtalkers recently commemorated the experience. My favorite story, however, was recorded by the journalist Ernie Pyle who described how the Navajo soldiers prepared themselves for the invasion of Okinawa, staining their faces with paint and improvising ceremonial dress with chicken feathers, seashells, coconut, and spent rifle cartridges. Pyle observed several thousand grim faced Marines watching as the Navajos danced and chanted before the battle. The Navajos even translated the Marine Corps Hymn into their native language. After the ceremony, as the convoy was headed into battle, Pyle asked a Navajo private if he felt that the ceremony had worked and the young man pointed to a rainbow hovering above the trucks.
Cozy Stanley Brown, who served as a Codetalker, described taking a Japanese scalp in one of the fierce battles for the tiny islands of the Pacific. Brown brought the scalp all the way back to his Arizona home so that a medicine man named Stewart Grayeyes could perform a purifying ritual. An Apache shaman named Willie Neal saw his reputation grow immensely. He taught seven Apache recruits the secrets of bat magic so that they might bob, flutter, and weave in such a way that they could learn to dodge bullets. All seven soldiers returned. The first American soldier to die in Desert Storm was an Apache.
The day after the tragic events of 9/11 a newspaper on the Sioux reservation proclaimed; “An attack on America is an attack on Indian land!” Today both our northern and southern borders are defended by special units of Native Americans. In the Arctic, a special unit of the National Guard known as the Eskimo Scouts includes sixty Native American women. In the arid deserts along the Arizona/ Mexico border a special band of
Native American trackers known as Shadow Wolves search the rugged arroyos and canyons for drug smugglers and potential terrorists on behalf of the Border Patrol.
Lori Piesetewa continued the proud traditions of Native American service and sacrifice for this nation when she became the first Native American woman to die in combat. Just as the role of both Native Americans and women have expanded in the military so has the risk. Lori was serving as a mechanic and leaves behind two small sons. To honor her, then Arizona governor Janet Napolitano changed the name of one of Phoenix’s more prominent landmarks to Lori Piesetewa Peak. The motion was clouded in controversy because of a law which states that a person must be dead for at least five years before a geographical feature can be named after them. Some people claimed the governor used strong arm tactics to push the measure through. Interestingly, no one came to the defense of the old name which was Squaw Peak. The word squaw is based upon some slang used by French trappers for the private parts of a Native American woman. Most Native Americans find the term highly offensive.
Much of the controversy about renaming Piesetewa Peak centered on the five year rule. Native American support for the name change has been vocal. Resident of the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Loren Victor, spoke at a hearing: “Native American people have been the recipients of many broken treaties over the years. Let’s break one more and rename that thing today.”
At the funeral service for Piesetewa, retired Army Chaplain, Hopi, and friend of the Piesetewa family, Caleb Johnson reminded listeners of the Hopi tradition which states that when a Hopi dies his spirit returns to the earth as a blessing of moisture for the parched desert earth. On the day the military aircraft carrying Lori Piesetewa’s remains touched down on American soil in Washington DC it snowed on the Hopi Reservation on a day unusually late in the year for such a meteorological event in the Painted Desert. The late snow, moistened the fertile earth and made sure that there would still be plenty of spring flowers blooming for Easter. Welcome home, Lori.
