March 15, 2019
Hi there, ,
In native language, Omaha means "against the current."
We all sometimes feel we are paddling upstream, seeking some beacon to strengthen and guide us.
Today's beacon is an Omaha tribal woman who embraced the best of two cultures to save her people.
She Faced Double Trouble:
Racism and Sexism
Susan La Flesche needed a strong stroke to swim upstream when she set
out for medical school in 1886.
This was thirty-five years before Indians were allowed American citizenship, and an era when people believed the stress of attending college would injure women's reproductive organs.
Susan proved herself, becoming the first Native American western medical doctor.
She'd assimilated into the white world to get a medical education. Then she returned to the Omaha reservation where she served more than a thousand patients scattered over 1,300 square miles.
First, a little context to set the stage for this determined and courageous woman.
The Omaha Tribe thrived, farming and hunting, in the eastern woodlands of Ohio until whites arrived and forced native peoples to retreat west. By the 1700's the tribe had adapted to survive on the plains of what is now Iowa and Nebraska.
Under the leadership of Chief Blackbird, the Omaha became politically and militarily strong by taking control of the fur trade on the upper Missouri River.
Then a small pox epidemic struck in the early 1800s, killing Chief Blackbird and a full ninety percent of the Omaha people.
Shortly, the tribe found itself pinched between a surge of white settlers rushing west, claiming homesteads and native plains warriors pushing back.
They had little option but to accept one treaty after another gobbling up their hunting grounds and destroying their ability to survive on their own.
Five deals with the federal government between 1815 and 1865 left them with a small reservation on the banks of the Missouri River, where Susan La Flesche was born in a buffalo skin tipi.
That summer the tribe's men left for their final buffalo hunt. In the following years as Susan grew into a toddler and a young girl, the Omaha people faced a dilemma. Without the life-sustaining buffalo, would they assimilate or die.
At the age of eight, Susan made a decision. She had sat up all night with a sick woman. The doctor was called from the nearby mission, but he did not come. Through the night as the woman's condition worsened, he was summoned another three times.
The woman died the next morning, and the doctor still had not shown up. To Susan it was clear. “It was only an Indian and it did not matter.” She determined then that she would do whatever she could to help her people survive.
At age ten, she went to a Presbyterian mission school. She knew the Omaha's traditional songs, beliefs, customs and language, now she learned English and became a Christian.
At 14, she went east to attend a girls’ school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, followed by studies at Virginia’s Hampton Institute, a school founded to "civilize and educate" Native Americans and children of former slaves.
The long years she spent away from her homeland on the Nebraska prairie were difficult. One class especially took her mind off being homesick. The human skeleton and anatomy absorbed her interest.
Susan decided she would be a doctor, though most medical school barred women. One of her only options was the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. She applied, was accepted and funds were raised for her to attend. She graduated with a medical degree in 1889, one year early and first in her class of thirty-six women.
After graduation, Susan turned down job offers in the east because her plan had always been to return home and provide medical care to the Omahas. But she'd been gone twenty years and thoroughly adopted white ways.
In the beginning few on the Omaha reservation trusted her. Then, apparently, all it took to turn people in her favor, was a good outcome with one patient. As the story goes, an 8-year-old boy she treated for some childhood ailment recovered within 24-hours.
Soon, she was making house calls from early morning into the dark of night. If a patient lived less than a mile away, Susan walked for the visit. She made further trips on horseback, and finally got a buggy, pulled by two horses for the long trips. In winter, she often made those in subzero temperatures and two feet of snow.
Eventually, "Dr. Sue" (left) had a small office where she performed operations.
“I’m not accomplishing miracles,” Susan wrote to her sisters, “but I’m beginning to see some of the results of better hygiene and health habits. And we’re losing fewer babies and fewer cases to infection.”
Doctor Sue, as she was called, believed strongly in preventative care. She worked to pass on what she's learned to aid her people in protecting themselves against diseases introduced by whites. She explained how insects carried disease. She preached against sharing drinking cups to stop the spread of tuberculosis. And she warned against drinking alcohol.
As we now know, alcoholism is a serious disease that doctor's orders rarely cure. Susan's husband Henry Picotte, a Sioux from Yankton, S.D., died of tuberculosis exacerbated by alcoholism when the couple's two boys were young.
As a single mom, caring for her elderly mother, Susan grappled with troubles women still find difficult today. She soldiered on, part social worker, friend and healer, giving her people hope when sometimes hope was in very short
supply.
Some credit her as a factor in the survival of the Omaha Nation. The small pox epidemic in the early 1800s nearly decimated the Omaha tribe, reducing it from roughly 3000 people to 300. By Susan's time, a century later it had rebounded to roughly 1200.
Today 5000 tribal members are enrolled in the Omaha Nation.
Each August during the first full moon, the Omaha's hold a festival and celebrate the harvest the same way they have for who-knows-how-many hundreds of years.
On her house calls, Susan shared the tribe’s traditional customs, songs, stories and dances she had learned as a child.
In her last years of life dedicated herself to one more dream.
Susan wanted a modern hospital on the Omaha Reservation and she undertook the project with a strong statement of Indian self-determination. The small hospital was built and outfitted with modern equipment--without a single dollar from the federal government or from the white women's organizations that offered help on the reservation.
The hospital opened in 1913, though by that time Susan was not longer practicing medicine. Her own health had deteriorated, in a large part due to the 20-hour days she had worked for ten years.
Some credit Susan La Flesche Picotte as major force in the survival of her people and their culture. She died in 1915 at the age of 50.
I can close with no better words than those expressed by Biographer Joe Starita.
“Susan La Flesche understood that the purpose of life was not to try and avoid pain and suffering. That was hopeless,” Starita says.
“Susan believed that the purpose of life was to find a purpose, and then to find the courage to live out that purpose."
Kudos to Social Justice Books for celebrating Women's History Month by spotlighting grassroots women’s history in the United States in the form a booklist you will not want to miss.
The site features one book a day including stories you might never have heard before like that Elizabeth Peratrovich, a woman in the forefront of the fight for civil right by Native Alaskans. Fighter in Velvet Gloves just hit shelves in February.
Also featured is a picture book about labor leader Emma Tenayuca who I've written about in the past.
That’s Not Fair!/No Es Justo! includes text in both Spanish and English telling the story, not of Emma's union fights in San Antonio, Texas, but of young girl whose intelligence and compassion started her on the journey to stand up for workers'
rights.
Fannie's story was featured March 11th and I'm ever so grateful whenever anyone helps share the story of this courageous woman.
In addition, a huge thank you to Marguerite Crowley Weibel for her review of Standing Up Against Hate earlier this week. Marguerite's blog Not For Children Only is perfect for readers like me! She reviews children's books
that appeal to adults and explores many uses and ways to enjoy children’s literature. Thank you, Marguerite!
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To find out more about my books, how I help students, teachers, librarians and writers visit my website at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com.
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