Nuns Cross a 'Frightful Desert'

THE TREK OF THE SEVEN SISTERS A Man's Diary Records a Harrowing Trip to Tucson

When seven weary nuns arrived in Tucson on the night of May 26, 1870, everyone understood the magnitude of their brave triumph. Some 3,000 citizens turned out to greet the unlikely heroines. Children and women cheered from rooftops, while men fired guns and painted the sky with fireworks in recognition of a remarkable journey that easily could have ended in death.

Nineteen days earlier in San Diego, these Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet began the most dangerous leg of their harrowing trip. They endured desert temperatures nearing 125 degrees, terrible thirst and debilitating exhaustion, the threat of Apache attack, even the advances of lonesome cowboys they encountered along the way.

Summoned by the bishop to open a school in Arizona Territory, the sisters knew the perils of their undertaking and were afraid. But they accepted the assignment without hesitation, relying on faith to sustain them as they crossed the frontier, sometimes holding hands and singing as they went.

"It was, indeed, a beautiful sight," wrote Monica Corrigan, one of the nuns, "to see the Sisters at the lonely hour of midnight, crossing the frightful desert, singing hymns."

Sister Monica's 33-page diary offers a well-written, detailed account of what she called the "Trek of the Seven Sisters." With only slight exaggeration, one newspaper said the document matches "the best dramatic fiction of the West."

Monica was born Anna Taggart in 1843 in Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada. She was teaching mathematics at a university when she fell in love with John Corrigan. But Anna was Episcopalian and Corrigan a Catholic, and the relationship gave both families fits.

Showing the independence and even stubbornness that became her trademarks, Anna eloped with John and started a family in Kansas City. But in 1866, her life was shattered by a diphtheria epidemic that killed her husband and their two children, forcing the widow Corrigan to take a teaching job at a Catholic academy.

After many nights in the school chapel, praying and trying to make sense of the tragedy, Anna converted to Catholicism. She took Monica as her name and joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in St. Louis in 1867. She was 24.

Less than a year after taking her first vows, Monica set out to Arizona along with six other sisters. Five of them were French Emerentia Bonnefoy, Ambrosia Arnichaud, Euphrasia Suchet, Maximus Croissat and Hyacinth Blanc. The sixth, Martha Peters, was Irish.

The group departed St. Louis on April 20, 1870. After traveling almost 2,000 miles by rail, they reached San Francisco and took passage to San Diego on the steamer Orizaba. Traveling in a single wagon, the sisters and a young teamster embarked from San Diego on May 7. Ahead lay barely passable mountain roads, nights filled with the howls of wolves and the blazing deserts of southeast California.

The first days found the sisters in high spirits and abundantly energetic. Their Mother Superior, Sister Emerentia, marched ahead of the wagon, proudly holding up a Spanish lily in honor of St. Joseph, and Sister Monica and Sister Maximus went goldhunting.

"We proposed getting a sack and filling it," Sister Monica wrote. "Just think, a sack of gold! But we soon learned from experience that 'all is not gold that glitters.'"

Hardship soon overtook them. Because the covered wagon was too small to carry everyone, Sister Ambrosia volunteered to ride with the driver. "It is beyond description what she suffered in riding 200 miles in a country like this without protection from the rays of a tropical sun," Monica wrote.

They slept on rocks and underneath the wagon, and they struggled on foot over the Jacumba Mountains, some of the nuns collapsing from the effort. Then came the deserts to the east, stretching all the way to Yuma. The group moved during the cool of night, sometimes walking over sand too deep for wagon travel. The daytime sun beat down on them brutally, and when they found a spring, the water ran so hot and full of min-erals that Monica wrote, "We suffered more after taking it than before."

In one dreary place, the sisters passed the remains of 1,500 sheep, smothered in a horrific sandstorm.

The travelers stopped at ranches along the way and usually were served a meal. At one stop, Monica noted that several men were hanging around, and after eating "they became very sociable." A bit alarmed, she and the others hightailed it to the stable, seeking the driver's protection. But the men followed. Several blurted out marriage proposals, declaring that the sisters would do better to accept their offers than continue to Tucson, because they would all "be mas-sacred by the Indians" anyway.

The marry-us-or-die offer didn't sway the sisters' resolve. But Monica wasn't insulted. "The simplicity and earnestness with which they spoke put indignation out of the question," she wrote.

At another ranch, the nuns slept in the stable yard while a group of men nearby spent the night celebrating with whiskey and women. Monica didn't understand what was going on and asked the ranch cook to explain.

She recorded the abashed cook's reply: "Ladies seldom pass this way, and when they do, the men wish to enjoy their society."

The funniest episode occurred the night Sister Martha left camp to collect firewood. Spotting what she thought was a large stick, she grabbed it and pulled it toward her.

The stick turned out to be the leg of the driver, who lay resting among the leaves. When he sat up and yelled, Martha screamed so loud, it awakened the entire camp.

Four days into the journey, they stopped at a ranch where the owner provided water for the sisters to wash for the first time since they left San Diego.

With fitting delicacy, Monica remarked, "You may imagine our condition," adding that one of the nuns suffered 22 bleeding sores caused by lacerations from cactus needles.

On May 13, six days out, the trek almost ended in tragedy when the sisters tried to ferry across the Colorado River. They were aboard a raft-wagon, horses and allwhile two men on the opposite bank tugged ropes. One of the horses lurched forward, nearly pitching the whole contraption into 17 feet of rushing water. Another horse fell on the raft, stopping the wagon's progress.

The bishop's envoy, Father Francisco Jouvenceau, met the sisters at Arizona City, later renamed Yuma. The group attended Mass there and, according to the diary, found "inexpressible consolation."

Fortified in spirit, and now stocked with good provisions and a cook, the party set out again on May 17. Ahead lay more barren desert, broken only by the Gila River, which they followed for 20 miles.

On May 21, they reached Oatman Flat, west of Gila Bend, and inspected the graves of the Oatman family, killed by Indians 19 years earlier. The dreadful sight reminded Sister Monica of death's proximity, casting "a damper over our spirits, as we had no certainty of not meeting the same fate."

Two days later, the sisters stayed at the home of a kindhearted Irish blacksmith at Maricopa Wells. On May 24, they sought shelter from the sun in the ruins of old build-ings, only to have their modesty challenged by the arrival of "a troop of nude Indians."

But they were friendly. While Monica scribbled notes in her journal, "a noble war-rior" spotted Martha resting on some old cowhide, "stole softly up and sat down beside her as her guardian angel."

Later, the sisters passed through the valley of the Pima Indians, where the older Indian women dressed their hair with a mixture of mud and water, "which has the double effect of destroying vermin and keeping their hair in its place."

That night, 16 soldiers rode into the nuns' camp, near what is now Sacaton. The troops probably were sent from Fort Lowell in Tucson, about 75 miles away. But who ordered them out remains unclear. The post commander later said an unknown messenger, very respectable but hasty in manner, arrived at the fort with a request for a detachment to protect some travelers.

But to Monica, the soldiers' appearance presented no mystery whatever. She considered them evidence of providence, believing that "our good Father, St. Joseph" had sent them.

"At the time we were not aware of how much we stood in need of their escort," Monica wrote. "We might, in all probability, have been massacred by the savages, had they not been our safeguard."

Accompanied now by troops, an advance greeting party from Tucson and some miners who happened along, the caravan fell into a somber mood as it approached Picacho Peak, an Apache ambush spot.

Monica described the road winding through a narrow pass where Indians hid, throwing out poisoned arrows at passersby. "The place is literally filled with gravessorrowful monuments of savage barbarity." Each member of the party gripped a firearm, including Father Francisco. "The soldiers rode about like bloodhounds in search of prey. In passing through the Peak, the horses began to neigh. 'The Indians! The Indians!' was echoed from every mouth.

"Whip and spurs were given to the horses -we went like lightning-the men yelling like so many fiends, in order to frighten the savages. The novelty of the scene kept us from being afraid."

The next day, the group pushed to within 15 miles of Tucson. The citizen escorts asked the nuns to camp there and enter the town in the morning, where a grand celebration was planned. "You see they were very proud of us!" Monica wrote.

But Father Francisco convinced the citizens to continue. Three miles from town, they were met by a procession headed by four priests on horseback. As the nuns came into sight, the priests dismounted and ran toward them in greeting.

Men bearing lighted torches escorted the sisters into Tucson. The loud welcome included "balls of combustible matter. thrown in the streets" as the procession passed. "At each explosion Sister Euphrasia made the sign of the cross," Monica wrote.

The sisters moved into a simple adobe home near St. Joseph's Academy next door. One of the first secondary schools in the Territory, it remained open until 1969.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet went on to establish other schools, orphanages and hospitals in Tucson and across Arizona, where the order remains a force today.

Sister Monica lived a long and selfless life, marked by an inability to accept limitations in the face of a job that needed doing. She taught in Tucson and Yuma, and in Prescott she helped establish a hospital for injured miners. She was known to stand in saloon doorways on payday, ordering thirsty miners home to their families.

When she needed money, Monica rode a mule into remote mining camps in the Bradshaw Mountains to take up collections. Even though she was terrified of snakes and didn't care for mules, she went anyway, usually wielding a stick to beat off rattlers.

Sister Monica Corrigan died in Kansas City on Dec. 22, 1929, at age 86. She was the last of the famous seven sisters-sheltered, convent-trained nuns whose bravery in the service of others became an example to all. AH ADDITIONAL READING: Enjoy more Old Arizona true adventure tales with Stalwart Women: Frontier Stories of Indomitable Spirit, by Leo W. Banks. To order, call toll-free (800) 543-5432 or go online to arizonahighways.com.

Leo W. Banks of Tucson was educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph in his hometown of Boston.

Illustrator Stefano Vitale, of Venice, Italy, has found inspiration in the simplicity of folk art from the Southwest and Mexico.