Although Mary Fields (c.1832-1914) worked unpaid at St Peter's Mission in Montana for 10 years, the bishop ordered her to leave due to complaints about her bad temper and constant fighting with the hired men, one time with a gun. Mother Amadeus set her up in a restaurant in the nearby town of Cascade, but Mary went bankrupt because she allowed so many people to eat on credit.
Next, Mother Amadeus went to the government and asked them to give Mary a mail route; she got the route between Cascade and the mission (about 12 miles away), and delivered mail from 1895 until 1903. (The United States Post Office did not hire or employ mail carriers. Instead, it awarded route contracts to those who submitted the lowest bid and posted a bond to prove were able to finance the route.)
After 1903, Mary supported herself by taking in washing and turned her home into a laundry. One day, she encountered a man who owed her $2 (about $62 in 2021); although she was about 70 years old, she knocked him to the ground with her fist, and then declared his debt was paid.
She was so highly regarded in the community that when her home was destroyed by fire in 1912, the townspeople donated lumber and rebuilt it for free. She didn't know her own birthday, but when she celebrated the school closed in her honor. She was an avid baseball fan, and became the mascot of the local team. She was the only reputable woman permitted to drink in the bars, and she ate for free at the hotel. Cowboy artist Charlie Russell (1864-1926) lived in Cascade briefly, and included Mary in an 1897 pen-and-ink drawing called "A Quiet Day in Cascade." Montana native
Gary Cooper (1901-1961) met her when he was a child, and wrote about her in a 1959 article for Ebony magazine.
