Understanding Different Perspectives - Susan La Flesche Picotte

Essay read at the Hampton Anniversary, May 19, 1892.

My friends, it is always pleasant to me to come home to Hampton at any time, but it is still more pleasant to come and report my work among my people. After I graduated at Hampton, in ’86, I took a three years’ course at the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia. I graduated there in ’89 and then took a four months’ course in the Woman’s Hospital. Then I went to the Omaha Agency, which is in Nebraska, about sixty miles from the city of Omaha, to practice medicine among the people on my own tribe.

The practice of medicine among the Indians is very different from the among the whites. The Omaha reservation is thirty miles long and fifteen miles broad. My practice covers that extent of the country. The roads are very bad and the Indians are scattered all over the reservation. I found I should have to do a great amount of travelling, so I bought a horse, keeping it in the Government stables.

I had received the appointments from the Government of physicians to the Government boarding school at the Agency. I began to work at the school not supposing I should have much work outside it in the tribe. There was another physician then. But I found that I had most of the practice in three months’ time, for I understood their language and they felt I was one of them so I had the advantage. After he left I had all the tribe on my hands.

There are 1244 of the Omahas. They are now civilized living in frame houses built by themselves and have excellent farms. But they live at great distances apart. I was soon obliged to purchase a buggy and team, for the roads are so bad that a single horse cannot be driven in a wagon, and after trying for some time to go about on horseback, I broke so many bottles and thermometers that I had to give that up.

I will give you a report of my work for the last six months. Some days I have my hands full. Many drop into my office. I have a very comfortable office built by the Government. They come for many things besides medicine; for help in business matters or questions of law and advice in personal affairs. I have to take a hand in their politics too for they need help of all kinds from any one who can give it.

Last summer from July to August and September, I had many patients. I went out visiting them every day, starting by seven of eight in the morning, driving six miles in one direction, and a great many more before getting back at noon. Then starting out again, it would often be eight or sometimes ten o’clock at night before I got back, with my horses tired out.

Diseases among the Indians are different in some ways from what they are among whites. They are very apt to run into epidemics. For instance, one person will have sore eyes, and almost immediately every woman and child in the tribe will have the same trouble. Last fall a number had it, but I told them not to use separate basins and towels, and many were saved from it. Then almost everyone had winter colds, and then in December, January, and February came the grippe. One Indian man came to me and said, “We are very grateful to you for coming to see us when we are sick, but we wish you wouldn’t go out in stormy weather. It will be too much for you.” I told him I had to, for that was my duty, and he said no more.

I will give you an illustration of one case that occurred last winter. Word came to me late one night that a young woman, a returned Hampton student, was very ill. She had consumption for a year and had taken the grippe. I started early the next morning, the mercury down to twenty degrees below zero, and drove six miles to her home. I found a one-room house; the whole family occupied it. The sick girl was lying in one corner of it, but the family had given up one quarter of the room to her. It was a pathetic sight, but no one at Hampton would need feel ashamed of that quarter of the room. Her bed had sheets and pillow-cases. Photographs of Hampton buildings and teachers were fastened thickly on the wall. A clock ticked on a shelf in the corner. The girl and everything in her quarter of the room were clean and neat as could be.

When I saw her I did not think she could live through the day. She looked up at me, but couldn’t speak. I asked the family why I hadn’t been sent for sooner. They said they could not send. Her husband could not leave her alone, as there was no one else left to care for her, and the old mother was blind. After giving her stimulants, she revived enough to tell me about herself. She had had no food for four days. I left medicine for her, which was all I had with me. Then I had to drive nine or ten miles across the reservation to see other patients, and could not get back to the school till five o’clock in the afternoon. Then I got a sled and drove back to her house, with two other Hampton students, taking with us milk, eggs, and beef. We cooked a meal for the family as well as for her, and stayed as long as we could. The girls who went with me were both teachers in the school and had to get back for their work. After that I went every day to see her as long as she lived; sometimes twice a day, often staying to cook a meal for the family. She lived two weeks. As four persons were sick in my family at the same time, I could not get there the day she died till too late to see her. They told me she has asked for me. The Hampton students I took out first to see her and other Hampton students did much for her comfort.

Some months I have a great deal of practice, others not so much. Last November I had only fifty-four patients. In December one hundred and twenty. In the last six months I have had over six hundred and forty patients, not counting those who came to my office for simple treatment, but those whom I visited. The distance being so great I cannot see all of them as often as I wish – sometimes only once in two or three days, when I would call three times a day if it were possible.
This is but a brief report, but it will show you that there is great need of work in many different directions.

Before closing I was to say one word to my Hampton brothers and sisters, now students here. Dear brothers and sisters, you have before you the presence and inspiration of our beloved principal, but we Hampton students now outside the School keep him always in our hearts.
And, General Armstrong, in the midst of our work for our people, the inspiration from your life grows most precious because then it shines out more and more in the darkness around us. My brothers and sisters, the least return we can make to our dear Principal for all of his life-work for us is to live as he would like us to life, so that everyone who looks at us can say, “A Hampton student lives as he should live.”

La Flesche, Susan. “My Work As a Physician Among My People.” The Southern Workman. v.21-23 (1892-94), p. 133.

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