By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner
November 18, 2021
Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Indigenous woman to earn and receive a medical degree. Throughout her life, she was known for encouraging public health, discouraging drinking within the Omaha tribe, and working to prevent and treat tuberculosis. She also advocated for the protection and allotment of land to the Omaha tribe and proper compensation for the land.
Picotte was born on June 17, 1865, into the Omaha tribe, the daughter of the Chief-of-the tribe Joseph LaFlesche (Iron Eye). Her family came from a mix of different tribal backgrounds with her father being part Ponca and her mother being Omaha, Otoe, and Iowa. They lived on an Omaha reservation in eastern Nebraska.
From a young age, Picotte was inspired to do medical work and to be a physician after witnessing another Indigenous person being refused life-saving medical attention from a white doctor. This ultimately led to the woman’s death, which spurred Picotte to become a doctor for her tribe.
Picotte started out attending a mission school on the Omaha reservation where she lived. The school was meant to teach the children how to assimilate into a white, European American society and to encourage them to give up their Indigenous languages, culture, and religions. She would later go on to study for two years at the Elizabeth Institute in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
In 1882, she returned to the Omaha reservation and taught at a school there before leaving again to study at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia. She remained there for two years from 1884 to 1886. She graduated as salutatorian and then went on to apply to medical school shortly after.
She received admission at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania but was not able to afford tuition. She then campaigned to the Connecticut Indian Association to convince them to pay for her medical schooling. She proved that her mission was within the Victorian values that the group wanted to promote, so they paid for the majority of her schooling.
She was valedictorian and graduated at the top of her class on March 14, 1889, following her three years of intense study. In those years, she studied chemistry, anatomy, physiology, histology, pharmaceutical science, obstetrics, and general medicine.
Picotte began her medical practice in 1889, taking on her first job as a physician at the government boarding school. She was responsible for teaching the children about hygiene and staying healthy. While she was not obligated to take care of the members in her community, Picotte found herself caring for many members of the Omaha tribe as well as for the children of the school. She became widely-trusted for her medical knowledge.
Picotte also wanted to educate her community about preventive medicine and other public health issues like temperance. The Omaha reservation struggled with alcohol abuse. Picotte, as a reservation physician and a prominent member of the community, was well-aware of the damage that these practices caused. She went as far as supporting coercion and punishment to dissuade individuals from alcohol consumption within the Omaha community. Picotte continued to fight against alcohol for the rest of her life.
The rest of Picotte’s medical career revolved around public health issues in the wider community, including school hygiene, food sanitation, and efforts to combat the spread of tuberculosis. In 1907, she served on the Thurston County health board along with serving as the chair of the state health committee of the Nebraska Federation of Women’s Clubs. All of this was in an effort to educate people about public health issues, believing that the key to fighting the disease was education.
For several years, she traveled around the reservation caring for patients until December of 1892 when she became ill and was forced to be bedridden for several weeks. Shortly after, she resigned in 1893 to take care of her dying mother. This led to a break in her medical career. During that break, in 1894, she married Henry Picotte, a member of the Sioux tribe. They had two sons together, Caryl and Pierre. After the birth of her children, Picotte returned to her medical practice.
After a slew of legal battles following her husband’s death, Picotte began helping other members of her tribe to receive compensation for the land that they owned. She had struggled in selling her children’s land inheritance, so she taught others how to sell their land in the same way. She would go on to handle many inheritance issues within the community and campaign against the scams that businessmen would use to steal inheritance land without proper compensation to the members of the Omaha tribe.
Picotte suffered from chronic illnesses throughout her life in various forms. Ultimately, her health conditions did not hold her back, although they did cause her to go deaf partway through her life. She eventually died on September 18, 1915, after suffering from bone cancer. Despite her death, her legacy has been greatly-honored throughout the years for her medical contributions.
Picotte’s legacy will continue to live on along with her contributions to today’s medical field in terms of public health and disease education. Her achievement of being the first Indigenous woman to become a doctor was an inspiration to many within her tribe and will continue to be proof of what someone can do despite their circumstances.
{Information was retrieved from Changing the Face of Medicine, History.com, and Wikipedia.}
THE RETURN OF THE EYE 