When I realize all the work that God has given me to do, it almost takes my breath away to think how little justice I can do to it. But it is a comfort to turn and do the next thing to relieve some poor soul’s trouble.
Susan La Flesche was born in 1865. Her people, the Omaha’s, lived in tipis and earth lodges. They hunted buffalo and grew corn. As a child she did not know that she would grow up to become the first doctor to her people. She would also build a hospital, a library, and help build a school. A devout Christian, Susan also led Bible Studies and other services at her church. Believing that Jesus died for every culture, Susan also kept many of her tribal practices.
Susan was born in a tipi but lived in a small wood-frame structure most of her childhood. She attended a school built by missionaries. There she learned about the man who was both a god and a man. The humble carpenter that she learned about promised salvation and an afterlife to his believers. Susan put her faith in him. Many Indians[1] were pressured into accepting one culture or the other. But for the rest of her life Susan found a way to balance her Christian beliefs with her own traditions.
One day as a child Susan watched an old Indian woman die because the local white doctor would not give her care. Later she credited this incident with the inspiration she received to seek training as a physician. She sought only to help her people for the rest of her life. To do this, she needed to get an education. Susan’s father believed in education for his daughters and so he encouraged her to go to college.
Susan went back east to the Hampton Institute, the nation’s first school of higher education for non-whites, to study. Susan did well and achieved the rank of salutatorian. A mentor, Martha Waldron encouraged her to apply to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1889, after two years of study at WMCP Susan graduated at the top of her class. She stayed in Philadelphia to finish her internship and then returned home to help the Omaha people. The government hired her to care for 1200 people in their boarding school.
Susan had become a doctor. She could suture wounds, deliver babies, and treat many illnesses. She spoke four languages – English, French, Omaha, and Otoe. But as a woman and a Native American she could not vote or even call herself a citizen under American law. She persevered to help her people as best as she could.
Over time, Susan continued to nurture her well-balanced life as a tribal woman from the Nebraska plains. She stayed close to her family, but she also attended church weekly. She participated in religious studies and had a regular prayer life. Her peers elected her secretary of the Young Women’s Christian association. Susan gathered young and old people and conducted mini lectures on the importance of good hygiene. She also devoted one evening each week to teaching them to sing, “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and other songs in both English and Omaha.
In 1894, Susan married Henry Picotte and they moved to Bancroft, Nebraska. There she set up a private practice helping both white and non-white patients. Susan raised two sons and nursed her husband through a terminal illness. He died from tuberculosis which had been intensified due to his drinking problem.
For twenty-five years Susan worked hard every day serving people who had tuberculosis, influenzas, cholera, conjunctivitis, malaria, dysentery, rheumatism, colds, fevers, and strep throats. She was the only physician on the reservation which covered 1,350 square miles. Tragically, many diseases could have been avoided or at least lessened in degree of severity if not for the alcohol problem. Her own husband, a good man, had succumbed to this terrible scourge.
Alcoholism was a big problem on reservations and so Susan joined the temperance campaign. She went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for prohibition on the reservations. Some legislation got passed. She convinced the Office of Indian Affairs to ban liquor sales in towns formed within the reservation boundaries. Still, whiskey peddlers, caring only for how much money they could make, hung around the reservations to ensnare the tribespeople. Sadly, many Indians pawned clothes or sold land for pennies on the dollar to buy more alcohol. Susan tried to encourage her people to stay away from alcohol.
For twenty-five years Susan battled with the daily ills of her people. Susan dreamed of building a hospital for her tribe. Before that she made house calls on foot often walking for miles, or sometimes with a horse and buggy. Though she would risk her own life, sometimes the patient would reject her treatment because she was a woman or because she had studied at white man’s schools. She did not let this stop her but served anyone she could. She only saw the suffering and pain and was thankful to God that she could do something to help.
After Henry’s death in 1905, Susan and her two young sons, and elderly mother moved into a new home that Susan had designed and built in Walthill, Nebraska. Susan supervised the construction making sure that there were plenty of windows for fresh air and sunshine. She insisted on a large living room, so she had a place for many bookcases. There she not only had her medical books, but many great works of literature. She could quote equally well from Shakespeare and the Bible.
At this time, she was also working as a missionary for the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. She contacted them with a plea to help her build a hospital. The Omaha babies were dying and old people were suffering. The people had a long way to go to the nearest hospital over hazardous roads. Susan watched a grandmother and mother and daughter succumb to tuberculosis because they had not received a proper examination.
The church listened to her. Several months later, the Presbyterian Board committed $8,000 to build a fully equipped, modern hospital in Walthill. The Religious Society of Friends in Massachusetts, the Quakers, contributed $500. Many people gave concerts and had other fundraisers to help the cause. Women’s organizations donated funds for furnishing the rooms and for medical equipment.
Finally, Susan had collected enough money to build a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska, the first modern hospital in Thurston County. On January 8, 1913, a crowd including Walthill’s very own Indian doctor, gathered to see the one and one-half story building with large windows and screened-in porches completely paid for without any government money.
The hospital was open to Indian and white, young and old, farmers and lawyers, pregnant women, and anyone with colds, rashes, cuts, broken bones, fevers, chills, or any other medical problem. They could be treated in English or Omaha. The hospital functioned as the only place for care for miles around for many years. It closed in the 1940’s and today it is a museum.
Susan had been struggling with a bone disease which began in her ears many years earlier. In 1915 she underwent an operation. When the doctor opened her up, he could see that the disease (later identified as bone cancer) had spread very far. He did a second operation and removed more bones. At first Susan seemed to do better, but finally succumbed on September 18, 1915.
The next day, Sunday, there was standing room only at her home as people came from far and wide to say good-bye to the woman who had saved so many lives. Three Presbyterian ministers conducted the ceremony. When they finished speaking, an elder from the Omaha tribe offered the closing prayer in the language of their people.
Susan was buried beside her husband in a cemetery outside the city of Bancroft where she had lived with Henry and the boys for so many years.
Today, the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Center honors her legacy. The 1913 hospital was restored to create a community center and wellness clinic for the Omaha Tribe and the residents of the Walthill area.
[1] In the 1800 the Native American were known (erroneously as we now know) as Indians. All of the literature up until mid-twentieth century uses the term “Indian” and so in the interest of historical correctness, I will use the term here.
