When
Susan La Flesche entered medical school in 1886, she had two strikes
against her: she was a woman, and she was a Native American. She
couldn't vote, and as a member of the Omaha tribe, she was not even
considered an American citizen. But she spoke four languages and
graduated at the top her class from the Women’s Medical College of
Pennsylvania three years later.
None of the
challenges of her education could fully prepare La Flesche for what she
encountered upon her return to the reservation as physician for the
Omaha Agency, which was operated by the Office of Indian Affairs. Soon
after she opened the doors to her new office in the government boarding
school, the tribe began to file in. Many of them were sick with
tuberculosis or cholera, others simply looking for a clean place to
rest. She became their doctor, but in many ways their lawyer,
accountant, priest and political liaison. So many of the sick insisted
on Dr. Susan, as they called her, that her white counterpart suddenly
quit, making her the only physician on a reservation stretching nearly
1,350 square miles.
She dreamed of one day building a hospital
for her tribe. But for now, she made house calls on foot, walking miles
through wind and snow, on horseback and later in her buggy, traveling
for hours to reach a single patient. But even after risking her own life
to reach a distant patient, she would often encounter Omahas who
rejected her diagnosis and questioned everything she’d learned in a
school so far away.
Nevertheless, she persevered.
Read the story of Susan La Flesche at Smithsonian.
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