Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series on “forgotten” ancestors who may not have been fully recognized for their achievements.
Raymond Wilson
Special to ICT
Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American to receive a medical degree and to be appointed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an agency physician.
She was born on June 17, 1865, on the Omaha reservation in Nebraska, the daughter of Omaha Chief Joseph La Flesche, known as Iron Eye.
Her parents advocated an acculturated approach that stressed picking and choosing positive aspects of the dominant culture, especially obtaining an education for their children.
Her brother, Francis, became the first Native anthropologist employed by the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. One sister, Susette, also known as “Bright Eyes,” was an author and a leading advocate of Indian rights and reform. Another sister, Rosalie, was an astute businesswoman.
A bronze statue has now been placed in her honor in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs has released a documentary film about her, “Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte.”
“I shall always fight good and hard even if I have to fight alone,” she is quoted as saying at the monument with the statue.
She attended a Presbyterian Mission School on the reservation, and in 1879 went to the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Returning to the reservation in 1882, she taught at the mission school.
In 1884, she entered Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia,and graduated as salutatorian on May 20, 1886. A recipient of scholarships from the Connecticut Indian Association and the BIA, she was then accepted as a medical student at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she graduated at the top of her class on March 14, 1889.
With her medical degree in hand, she accepted a position as a BIA physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School on August 5, 1889. By December, she was responsible for the health care of the entire reservation, which covered about 1,350 miles and included more than 1,240 tribal citizens.
She spent many hours a day tending to her patients, often traveling for miles and facing inclement conditions. Her grueling schedule caused her frail health to deteriorate, and she finally had to resign her position on Oct. 20,1893. She continued to suffer from declining health that included major digestive issues and increasing hearing problems.
In 1894, she married Henry Picotte, a Yankton Sioux, who was the brother-in-law of one of her sisters. The couple, who eventually had two children, moved to Bancroft, Nebraska, where she opened a medical practice for both Native and non-Native people, and garnered the respect of other doctors in the region.
Among the several health reform issues she addressed were better care of tuberculosis patients, the elimination of a common drinking cup, and the need to recognize the filth carried by house flies. She was also an ardent prohibitionist, detailing the devastating effects of alcohol abuse her people endured. Indeed, her husband, Henry, an alcoholic, died in 1905, leaving Picotte, whose health had continued to decline, to take care of her children and her invalid mother.
Picotte also favored the use of peyote in Native ceremonies, and she fought hard to protect her people from losing their lands.
Before her death on Sept. 18, 1915, she served on health boards and helped found a hospital in Walthill, Nebraska, in 1913. During an era of “proper” domesticity roles for women, her work and expertise in health care as a physician, which few non-Native women achieved, are extremely noteworthy.
The statue of her in Lincoln, Nebraska, was sculpted by artist Benjamin Victor, and was unveiled at a dedication ceremony on Oct. 11, 2021, that was attended by all Nebraska tribes.
Sources: La Flesche Family Papers, Nebraska State Historical Society; Joe Starita, “A Warrior of the People”; and Benson Tong, “Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.”
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