Susan La Flesche Picotte

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Native American tribes were expelled westward from their homelands in advance of settlement by white farmers and others of the Northwest Territory and then areas acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. The endpoint for tribes from the area that are now Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri were the reservations created in South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma (then called Indian Territory). Life on reservations was extremely difficult. The land was often poor for farming, and the reservations required changes in lifestyles which were at odds with tradition Native American life. Government support and services, including healthcare, were irregular and insufficient at best. 

1885 Map of the Omaha Reservation (The David Rumsey Map Collection)

Susan La Flesche was youngest of the four daughters of Joseph LaFlesche (“Iron Eye”), the last official chief of the Omaha Tribe, and Waoo-Winchatcha (Mary Gale) (“One Woman”). 

Both of her parents were biracial, but identified themselves as Omaha. The La Flesche family symbol is the unstrung bow. 

 

Susan La Flesche Picotte

 

Dr. Susan Le Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital

In her childhood Picotte saw a white doctor fail to treat a Native American woman because of her race: “It was only an Indian and it did not matter. The doctor preferred hunting for prairie chickens rather than visiting poor, suffering humanity.” This incident, together with the death of her broth Francis as an infant, motivated Picotte to become a doctor. 

As a reservation doctor (the first Native American woman to be appointed to such a position), Picotte only made $500 per year, while other government doctors made ten times more, yet she still used her own money to buy medical supplies when there was a government shortage. Even after giving birth two her two sons, Caryl and Pierre, Picotte still continued to work and lecture, which was highly unusual at the time. Her husband Henry’s alcoholism fueled her involvement in the temperance movement.

1865 (June 17) Susan La Flesche born on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska

1879 Susan's older sister, Susette La Flesche ("Bright Eyes") Tibbles, serves as interpreter at the infamous trial of Chief Standing Bear

1889 Graduates at the top of her class the three-year Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania program in only two years and becomes the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree

1889-93 As reservation doctor, minimizes the number and effects of epidemics of smallpox, influenza, and diphtheria on the Omaha Reservation

1895 Begins suffering from a painful degenerative bone disease

1905 Henry Picotte dies from complications of tuberculosis, Susan La Fleshce Picotte begins representing the Omaha Tribe in talks with the government and becomes an active political voice for her people

1913 Opens a hospital for the reservation in Walthill, Nebraska

1915 (September 18) Dies from complications of surgery to alleviate her degenerative bone condition

1988 Susan La Flesche Picotte's hospital put on the National Register of Historic Places; declared a Historic Landmark in 1993

Papers of the La Flesche family: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/lib-arch/research/manuscripts/family/laflesche-family.htm