Nebraska Studies Feature
First Native American Physician 1889
Notable Nebraskan, Susan La Flesche Picotte was born on the Omaha reservation in northeastern Nebraska on June 17, 1865. She became the first Native American to earn a medical degree.
Susan’s father, Joseph La Flesche, also known as Iron Eye, was the last recognized chief of the Omaha. He had a big impact on Susan’s life. He encouraged his people, especially his children, to seek education. Susan and the other La Flesche children all were leaders who continued their father’s legacy of helping the Omaha make the painful transition to white society while still holding onto their own culture.
Doctor on the Reservation
While teaching at the Quaker Mission School on the Omaha Reservation, Susan La Flesche nursed the ill ethnologist and advocate of the Omaha, Alice Fletcher. Fletcher urged La Flesche to go back to school to get a medical degree.
In 1886, La Flesche attended the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. In 1889, she graduated with a medical degree, not only one year early but first in her class of thirty-six members as well.
After earning her medical degree, it was back to the Omaha Reservation for long, hard work. Dr. La Flesche was the reservation's only doctor, and she cared for more than a thousand people.
As a doctor, it was easy for Dr. La Flesche to see how changes caused by having to live in a white world were hurting her people. She did a great deal to help her people understand that they needed to make changes to protect their health. Dr. La Flesche wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs about alcoholism and tuberculosis.