June 17, 1865 – Birth of Susan La Flesche, First Native American Woman To Receive a Medical Degree

Susan La Flesche was born on this day in history on the Omaha Reservation in eastern Nebraska. Both of her parents were biracial and had lived for periods of time beyond the borders of the reservation. Her father, Joseph La Flesche, who favored assimilation, became the principal leader of the Omaha tribe in around 1855. Her mother, Mary Gale, was the daughter of Dr. John Gale, an Army surgeon stationed at Fort Atkinson.

As a child, La Flesche saw a sick Native woman die due to a white doctor refusing to treat her. She later recalled how strongly this affected her, and led her to seek training as a physician caring for people on the reservation.

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, early 1900s. Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society

After being home-schooled for several years, she was sent to the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey, and returned home at age 17 to teach at the Quaker Mission School on the Omaha Reservation for two years. There, a fellow teacher encouraged her to go back East and earn her medical degree, which she did.

She enrolled at Hampton Institute in Virginia, one of the nation’s first schools of higher education for non-white students. In 1878, it had established a program for teaching Native Americans, which lasted until 1923. The resident physician there was a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) and encouraged La Flesche to apply there as well.

After only two years in a three-year program at WMCP, La Flesche graduated in 1889 at the top of her class. She remained in Philadelphia to complete year’s internship, and then returned home to provide health care to the Omaha people at the government boarding school, where she was responsible for some twelve hundred people.

La Flesche married Henry Picotte in 1894 and the couple moved to Bancroft, Nebraska, where she set up a private practice, serving both white and non-white patients. The couple had two sons, Carl and Pierre. At the same time, she cared for her family, her ailing mother, and later, her ailing husband. (Her husband died in 1905.)

Susan LaFlesche Picotte with her mother and sons, Carl and Pierre, at their Bancroft home

In 1906 she led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to lobby for prohibition of alcohol on the reservation. She also campaigned to prevent and treat tuberculosis, which then had no cure, as part of a public health campaign on the reservation.

In 1913, two years before her death, she saw her life’s dream fulfilled when she opened a hospital in the Omaha reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska.

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital, also known as Walthill Hospital or Dr. Susan Picotte Memorial Hospital, was the first hospital for any Indian reservation not funded by government money. It served the community as a hospital until the 1940s, and has had a variety of other uses since. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital

At the age of only 50 years old, she died on September 18, 1915 after an illness of three years.