Susan La Flesche Picotte

Who was Susan La Flesche Picotte?

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first American Indian woman to become a physician in the United States. She was Omaha and of Ponca, Iowa, French and Anglo-American descent, she grew up with her parents on the Omaha Reservation. She went to college at the Hampton Institute and, in 1889, got her medical degree at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

LaFlesche Picotte worked in Nebraska, providing health care to her Omaha people for much of her career. In private practice after 1894, she also had European-American patients. In 1913 she founded a hospital on the Omaha Reservation at Walthill, Nebraska, the first on any reservation to be privately funded. After LaFlesche Picotte died two years later, the hospital was renamed in her honor. Later it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. Today it serves as a museum featuring her work and the history of the Omaha and Ho-Chunk tribes, and also has a center for the care of children.