Snana and Mary

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Snana (Maggie Brass) and Mary Schwandt, about 1899The lives of Mary Schwandt, a 14-year-old German American, and Snana (Maggie Brass), a 23-year-old Dakota woman, became intertwined during the war. Mary’s parents and all but one of her six siblings were killed in Renville County on August 18. Mary was taken captive by a soldier from the Lower Sioux reservation.Mary E. Schwandt, 1862
 
Maggie’s seven-year-old daughter, Lydia, had died six weeks before the war broke out. Maggie arranged to have Mary Schwandt released from her captors, and then protected her from harm for the remainder of the war by hiding her and dressing her in Dakota clothing. Each of the women later wrote a memoir; in hers, Mary wrote to Maggie, “I want you to know that the little captive German girl you so often befriended and shielded from harm loves you still for your kindness and care.”Snana (Maggie Brass), about 1880
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