Post by blackcrowheart on Mar 27, 2006 16:59:38 GMT -5
Medicine Woman (profile)
Everyday History: Doctor cared for her people on reservation
BY DAVID HARDING
WORLD-HERALD CORRESPONDENT
She was born in a tepee but raised in a frame house. Medicine men
intrigued her as a child, but she studied at an East Coast medical
school, where she graduated at the top of her class.
Born in 1865, Susan La Flesche Picotte grew up on the Omaha Indian
Reservation in northeast Nebraska at a time of profound change.
Homesteaders, European immigrants and Eastern investors poured into the
state as treaties confined the tribes to an ever-shrinking land base.
Susan's father, Joseph La Flesche, was the last traditional chief of the
Omahas. He went to Washington, D.C., for the signing of the treaty in
1854 that shrank the tribe's homeland to its reservation in the
Blackbird Hills. The grandeur and urban clamor of Washington reinforced
Joseph's belief that whites were taking over the world and the best
defense for Indians was to school themselves in the white ways.
So he and his family lived in a two-story frame house instead of the
traditional earthen lodge, and he sent his children to the nearby
Presbyterian mission school. When Susan was 14, she and her sister
Marguerite enrolled at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New
Jersey. After three years there, they returned to the reservation and
worked at the mission school. In 1884, the sisters went off to college
at the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
Susan graduated with honors and was encouraged to go on to medical
school at the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia. An Indian rights
group in Connecticut paid most of her college expenses, and she lived at
the YWCA. She and her classmates were fascinated by medicine, even
though it was not considered a proper female career. They took secret
delight when a visiting male medical student fainted one day during a
surgery.
After graduation and a prestigious internship, Susan returned to the
reservation in 1889 and spent the rest of her life caring for her
people.
She started as the government physician at the reservation school, where
her sister Marguerite was the lead teacher. Before long, the government
built her an office and put her in charge of health care for the
reservation. Her office filled with people who looked to her for advice
on religion, law and business, as well as health issues.
With patients scattered over more than 1,300 square miles, Susan had
trouble serving them all. "After trying for some time to go about on
horseback," she once told an audience, "I broke so many bottles and
thermometers that I had to give that up."
She bought a buggy and a team of horses, and when a flu epidemic hit the
reservation in the winter of 1891, she rode out to visit patients nearly
everyday, despite temperatures of 15 to 20 degrees below zero. She
sometimes took food and cooked meals for the sick and their families.
Susan's own health suffered from her grueling routine. She resigned from
her medical position in 1893 to recuperate. The following year she
married Henry Picotte, a Sioux Indian. They lived part of the time in
Bancroft, where she had a private practice serving Indian and white
patients. She always left a lantern in her window so the sick knew where
to find her.
Like her father, Susan was deeply involved in the movement to abolish
alcohol. She played a large role in convincing Congress to ban alcohol
sales in Walthill and Rosalie. The ban took effect in 1906, a year after
her husband's death from alcoholism.
She found her greatest satisfaction in starting a hospital that served
Indian and white residents in the area. The hospital opened in Walthill
in 1913, two years before she died of bone cancer. It served patients
until the 1940s, and in 1993 the building was declared a National
Historic Landmark. It now houses a museum honoring her life and work.
Reach David Harding at (402) 553-5704 or second.story@cox.net.
Everyday History: Doctor cared for her people on reservation
BY DAVID HARDING
WORLD-HERALD CORRESPONDENT
She was born in a tepee but raised in a frame house. Medicine men
intrigued her as a child, but she studied at an East Coast medical
school, where she graduated at the top of her class.
Born in 1865, Susan La Flesche Picotte grew up on the Omaha Indian
Reservation in northeast Nebraska at a time of profound change.
Homesteaders, European immigrants and Eastern investors poured into the
state as treaties confined the tribes to an ever-shrinking land base.
Susan's father, Joseph La Flesche, was the last traditional chief of the
Omahas. He went to Washington, D.C., for the signing of the treaty in
1854 that shrank the tribe's homeland to its reservation in the
Blackbird Hills. The grandeur and urban clamor of Washington reinforced
Joseph's belief that whites were taking over the world and the best
defense for Indians was to school themselves in the white ways.
So he and his family lived in a two-story frame house instead of the
traditional earthen lodge, and he sent his children to the nearby
Presbyterian mission school. When Susan was 14, she and her sister
Marguerite enrolled at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New
Jersey. After three years there, they returned to the reservation and
worked at the mission school. In 1884, the sisters went off to college
at the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
Susan graduated with honors and was encouraged to go on to medical
school at the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia. An Indian rights
group in Connecticut paid most of her college expenses, and she lived at
the YWCA. She and her classmates were fascinated by medicine, even
though it was not considered a proper female career. They took secret
delight when a visiting male medical student fainted one day during a
surgery.
After graduation and a prestigious internship, Susan returned to the
reservation in 1889 and spent the rest of her life caring for her
people.
She started as the government physician at the reservation school, where
her sister Marguerite was the lead teacher. Before long, the government
built her an office and put her in charge of health care for the
reservation. Her office filled with people who looked to her for advice
on religion, law and business, as well as health issues.
With patients scattered over more than 1,300 square miles, Susan had
trouble serving them all. "After trying for some time to go about on
horseback," she once told an audience, "I broke so many bottles and
thermometers that I had to give that up."
She bought a buggy and a team of horses, and when a flu epidemic hit the
reservation in the winter of 1891, she rode out to visit patients nearly
everyday, despite temperatures of 15 to 20 degrees below zero. She
sometimes took food and cooked meals for the sick and their families.
Susan's own health suffered from her grueling routine. She resigned from
her medical position in 1893 to recuperate. The following year she
married Henry Picotte, a Sioux Indian. They lived part of the time in
Bancroft, where she had a private practice serving Indian and white
patients. She always left a lantern in her window so the sick knew where
to find her.
Like her father, Susan was deeply involved in the movement to abolish
alcohol. She played a large role in convincing Congress to ban alcohol
sales in Walthill and Rosalie. The ban took effect in 1906, a year after
her husband's death from alcoholism.
She found her greatest satisfaction in starting a hospital that served
Indian and white residents in the area. The hospital opened in Walthill
in 1913, two years before she died of bone cancer. It served patients
until the 1940s, and in 1993 the building was declared a National
Historic Landmark. It now houses a museum honoring her life and work.
Reach David Harding at (402) 553-5704 or second.story@cox.net.