Susan La Flesche Picotte

National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (54752)

“I believe in the prevention of disease and hygiene care more than I do in giving or prescribing medicine, and my constant aim is to teach these two things . . .”

Susan La Flesche Picotte, quoted in “Pioneer Medicine Women: Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte,” The Medical Woman’s Journal 37 (1930): 20

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Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865–1915), the first Native American physician, was born on the Umonhon (Omaha) Reservation in Nebraska. After graduating from Pennsylvania Women’s Medical College (1889), she returned to the reservation, which had no hospital. “Dr. Sue” traveled by buggy to administer Western and ancestral medicine, accompanied by tribal medicine women. Presbyterians funded a hospital towards the end of her life, but tribal members, wary of Christianity and Western medicine, shunned it. Picotte also worked to reduce the spread of disease and is recognized for her contributions to Nebraska public health policy. 

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