Dr Susan La Flesche Picotte

Throughout time, the abilities of women were often underappreciated. It was thought that women couldn’t be successful in business, research, and especially medicine. Eventually, however, people began to realize that women were being sold short, because they could do many jobs as well or better than men. Within that area of women who were underappreciated, also fell women of other races than white. Nevertheless, very slowly that perception too began to change. On March 18, 1889, Dr Susan La Flesche Picotte made history as the first Native American woman to graduate from medical school, finishing at the top of her class at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.

La Flesche Picotte began her love of medicine as an eight-year-old child on Nebraska’s Omaha Reservation. While living there, La Flesche Picotte experienced a formative moment…staying at the bedside of an elderly Omaha woman in agonizing pain, waiting all night for the white doctor to arrive. The woman died overnight and the doctor never appeared. For La Flesche Picotte there was more than devastation, there was anger at the absolutely unnecessary death, simply because the people on the reservation were considered expendable. “It was only an Indian and it [did] not matter,” she later recalled…that if the old woman had been white, the doctor would have rushed over at the very first notice.

La Flesche Picotte studied at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and, at just 24 years old, and a year ahead of schedule, she graduated at the top of her class. Although her colleagues urged her to stay and practice on the East Coast, she chose to return to Nebraska to serve her community. Soon after, she became the only doctor for more than 1,200 people in the Omaha and nearby Winnebago Tribes, covering over 400 miles. After marrying in 1894 and having two sons, she kept caring for patients across the reservation, often bringing her children along on house calls. In 1913, with the support of her husband and donations, she opened the first privately funded hospital on a reservation, determined to help anyone in need, whether white or Native. She chose to ignore the race of a person, after experiencing discrimination over race. She did not want to carry that forward into life. La Flesche Picotte was a dedicated advocate for temperance on the reservation. Alcohol, brought to the Omaha tribe by white fur traders, had deeply harmed the community…her own husband died from complications related to alcoholism. She campaigned to the state legislature, urging them to stop whiskey peddlers from selling on the reservation, and eventually convinced the Office of Indian Affairs to ban liquor sales in towns established there. It was one of her greatest contributions to her people.

La Flesche Picotte dealt with chronic illness herself for much of her life. While in medical school, she struggled with breathing problems, and after several years working on the reservation, she had to take a break in 1892 due to chronic pain in her neck, head, and ears. She recovered but fell ill again in 1893 after a horse-riding accident left her with serious internal injuries. Over time, her condition led to deafness. As she grew older, her health worsened, and by the time the new reservation hospital opened in Walthill in 1913, she was too frail to run it alone. In early March 1915, her suffering intensified, and she passed away from bone cancer on September 18, 1915. The following day, services were held by the Presbyterian Church and the Amethyst Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. She was laid to rest in Bancroft Cemetery, Nebraska, near her family. Her sons went on to lead full lives…Caryl served in the US Army during World War II and later settled in El Cajon, California, while Pierre spent most of his life in Walthill raising three children. Over her career, La Flesche Picotte cared for more than 1,300 patients across a 450-square-mile area.