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A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America's First Indian Doctor Kindle Edition
"An important and riveting story of a 19th-century feminist and change agent. Starita successfully balances the many facts with vivid narrative passages that put the reader inside the very thoughts and emotions of La Flesche." —Chicago Tribune
On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche Picotte received her medical degree—becoming the first Native American doctor in U.S. history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country.
By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Native woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads. Her patients often were desperately poor and desperately sick—tuberculosis, small pox, measles, influenza—families scattered miles apart, whose last hope was a young woman who spoke their language and knew their customs.
This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice, then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people—physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually.
Joe Starita's A Warrior of the People is the moving biography of Susan La Flesche Picotte’s inspirational life and dedication to public health, and it will finally shine a light on her numerous accomplishments.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateNovember 1, 2016
- File size6109 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte rose to the level of near-sainthood in her dedication to medicine and her work among her Omaha tribe. Starita tells her fascinating story with a skill that kept me turning the pages. Dr. Picotte’s life of heroism against the toughest odds deserves to be more widely known; thanks to this fine and passionate book it will be."―Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains and On the Rez
"An important and riveting story of a 19th-century feminist and change agent. Starita successfully balances the many facts with vivid narrative passages that put the reader inside the very thoughts and emotions of La Flesche. This rebel's dogged determination is something of a roadmap and definitely an inspiration to those trying to break through 21st century glass ceilings."―Chicagco Tribune
"A layered, nuanced portrait of this country's first American Indian doctor. Starita is a fine writer...and presents a layered portrait of her as a person with vulnerabilities and anxieties as well as dreams and determination. La Flesche’s story is moving and illuminating, and Starita has done it justice."―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Thoroughly researched… Starita’s biography of this remarkable woman is both heartening and enlightening."―Booklist
"Rarely has biographer fallen more deeply in love with his subject. Starita’s admiration for Susan La Flesche shines through every story. As we read A Warrior of the People, we also become enamored with this intelligent, determined and hard-working woman of the Omaha nation. La Flesche devoted her life to educating herself and helping her people. By telling this important story, Starita has assured her a prominent place in American history. Our citizens will remember her the way we remember Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Mother Jones and Rosa Parks. Bravo, Joe. Thank you for introducing all of us to a new hero."―Mary Pipher, New York Times bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia
“In a literary landscape awash in portraits of Native Peoples from male perspectives ―from Custer to Sitting Bull, from Comanche Warriors to Buffalo Soldiers―this extraordinary story offers something else: What was it like to be an Omaha & Ponca woman in the late-1800s, navigating the collision between Manifest Destiny and Native nations and cultures? How do you become a doctor of Western medicine when white male America declares that the stress of college renders women infertile? How does it feel to be alone on the prairie, saving lives and wondering if you will die an old maid? If you’re looking for a taut, haunting, inspiring, honest narrative that answers these questions―and richly showcases a strong Native woman leaning in a century before that term existed―look no farther.” ―Dr. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne & Hodulgee Muscogee), President, The Morning Star Institute
"A Warrior of the People recounts the life of Susan La Flesche with the esteem and honor she deserves as America's First Indian Doctor. Joe Starita weaves an intricate, in-depth look into the mind, heart, and soul of this indomitable true Medicine Woman and I would recommend this book to all for its integrity and delicate humanity."―Irene Bedard, actor, producer, and star of "Smoke Signals
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Warrior of the People
How Susana La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America's First Indian Doctor
By Joe StaritaSt. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 Joe StaritaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08534-4
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Acknowledgments,
Author's Note,
1. The Arrow,
2. The Village of the Make-Believe White Men,
3. An Indian Schoolgirl and the Harvard Scholar,
4. Can Black Children and Red Children Become White Citizens?,
5. The Sisterhood of Second Mothers,
6. Dr. Sue,
7. Going Home,
8. The Light in the Window,
9. A Warrior of the People,
10. A Beginning and an End,
Bibliography,
Notes,
Index,
Also by Joe Starita,
About the Author,
Copyright,
CHAPTER 1
The Arrow
It's five A.M. on a midwinter morning, the mercury stuck at twenty below. Overhead, a canopy of constellations spills across the clean winter sky, the quarter moon a slim lantern hanging above the vast, black, desolate prairie.
She's walking to the barn, through the snow, layered in muffs, mittens, and scarves. Still, her ears are numb, her face frozen, her breathing labored.
She steps inside the barn, carefully placing a small black bag on the buggy seat. For a time, if it were less than a mile, she would just walk. Then she took to slinging the black leather bag across her saddle, making house calls on horseback. But bouncing across the rugged terrain took its toll on the glass bottles and instruments, so she eventually bought a buggy, bought her own team.
Inside, her two favorite horses wait impatiently, snorting thick clouds of steam into the ice-locker air. She grabs their harness, hitches them to the buggy, guides them out of the barn. Then she climbs in and gets her chocolate mares, Pat and Pudge, heading in the right direction, their ghostly white vapor trails hanging in the frigid blackness.
It's early January 1892, a month her people call When the Snow Drifts into the Tents. The woman in the buggy, the one lashing her team to move faster, is a small, frail twenty-six-year-old, a devout Christian who also knows her people's traditional songs, dances, customs, and language, a woman who just recently acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of open prairie now blanketed in two feet of snow — a homeland of sloping hills, rolling ranch land, gullies, ravines, wooded creek banks, floodplains, and few roads.
The air crushes her face, stings her ears. She pulls a thick buffalo robe over her shoulders to buffer the subzero winds, lashing the horses' flanks again and again until the buggy picks up the pace, its wheels moving over one ridge and then another, through deep drifts covering the remote hillsides of northeast Nebraska.
In the darkness they keep moving, keep going, and all the while, over and over, her mind keeps drifting to the same recurring thought:
Can I find her?
Will I get there in time?
* * *
They were known as the Omaha–Umon hon. In the language of her people, it meant "against the current" or "upstream," and their Sacred Legend, their creation story, said the Omaha had emerged long ago from a region far to the east, a region of dense woods and great bodies of water.
"In the beginning the people were in water. They opened their eyes but they could see nothing. ... As they came forth from the water they were naked and without shame."
In the beginning, in their eastern homeland near the Ohio River, the Omaha encountered many problems. Having emerged naked from the water, they were cold and wet and hungry, and so — meticulously and methodically — they began to look for solutions, and by and by, they found them: clothing, fire, stone knives, arrows, iron, dogs. Over time, they emerged as a practical people, a people who craved progress, who time and time again looked to conquer hardship and inconvenience with a straightforward determination, with their own ingenuity and technological innovations.
Century after century, perhaps beginning as far east as the Great Lakes, the Omaha followed a mosaic of waterways — first to the west and southwest down the Ohio and then west and northwest up the Missouri. By the middle decades of the eighteenth century, they occupied large swaths of land in northeast Nebraska and northwest Iowa, where they eventually established permanent villages along the banks of America's longest river.
In their Missouri River settlements, the Omaha lived in both igloo-shaped earth lodges and buffalo-hide tipis. Their village was divided into ten clans, and each of the kinship clans had a specific duty when it came to the tribe's most important event: the spring planting ceremonies. Each spring, usually by the middle of May, the women in the village flocked to the fields along the floodplain and began the ritual corn planting, seven kernels to a hill. Soon, varieties of beans, squash, and pumpkins also found their way into the fertile soil.
* * *
This was her land, their land, the land of her people, and now she was riding across it in the dark and bitter cold in the month When the Snow Drifts into the Tents. Below the snow lay the prairie, an endless carpet of grass that had nurtured herds of buffalo once estimated at more than forty million. Her people believed the buffalo had been a gift from Wakonda, and the great beasts had helped sustain their way of life for several centuries. But now, as the nineteenth century wound down, the endless wild herds — slaughtered at first for traders, then by railroad mercenaries and sportsmen, and finally as an instrument of government policy — had been reduced to fewer than a thousand, reduced to near extinction.
But her people were still there, still living on their prairie homeland, where many had eventually come to learn a harsh lesson of life on the American Great Plains: Adapt — or perish.
In late June, when the crops had taken root and begun to mature, the entire village broke camp, fanning out across the western plains for the annual buffalo hunt, a critical time to lay in a good supply of winter meat, a plentiful stock of hides. By late August — the month When the Elk Bellow — the Omaha were on the lookout for a sign, for something blossoming on the endless plains outside their tipi village: the prairie goldenrod. Year after year, this had been the signal to tear down the tipis, pack up, and head back to their Missouri River homeland, where abundant fields of ripened corn, beans, squash, and pumpkins were now ready for harvest.
For the women in the village of the Upstream People, their many jobs and tasks had one ultimate objective: to preserve and conserve life. But that life was often hard, a ritualized cycle of physical labor the tribe depended upon to stay in sync. Season after season, year after year, it was women who prepared the fields, planted the seeds, harvested the crops, tanned hides, lugged water, gathered wood, maintained the tipi, collected wild plants and herbs, cut buffalo meat into strips, cooked food, quilted, sewed, bore children, and raised the family.
Omaha women — like many others in tribal encampments scattered across the Great Plains — commanded positions of great respect within the social fabric of the village and held a good deal of power within the tribe. Over time, men and women acquired an equal standing within the delicately balanced rhythm of Omaha tribal life.
In their traditional villages, men did not look down on women or treat them as inferior. If a task proved too difficult physically, the husband would often help out. And before making any important change or doing anything that would affect the family, the husband first consulted his wife.
In 1869, seventeen years after publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe offered a contrasting view of the relationship between men and women, a view she saw as commonplace for traditional wives in nineteenth-century mainstream America. "The position of a married woman," she wrote, "... is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband. ... Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earn a fortune through her talents, he is sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny at all. ... In the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence."
Among the Omaha, it was women who managed all household affairs and who owned the lodge and all its contents. They were free to marry whomever they wished, could reject parental suggestions, and had the power to divorce. If a woman decided to end a marriage, she often placed all of her husband's belongings outside the lodge, an unmistakable sign that their union had ended.
From early on, young girls were never left unprotected. They were not allowed to go far from the lodge unless accompanied by an adult. And in many Indian tribes, a girl's first menstruation often was an important event, something sacred, something to be celebrated — an honor recognizing her passage into womanhood, forever binding her to the fertility of Mother Earth. Some tribes also believed that menstruating women were spiritual beings so powerful they could be called upon for enlightenment, for guidance, for advice. Sometimes they left their homes during the heaviest four days of the cycle and stayed in menstrual huts with other women, engaged in lively discussions across a variety of subjects, often about their children.
Among the Omaha, children were sacred and there were ceremonies celebrating the arrival of a newborn. The people did not believe children were born with original sin or that they were even yet members of the tribe. Instead, they believed babies were living things who had entered the cosmos, joining all other living things. So on the eighth day, a priest conducted a ceremony welcoming the baby into the universe. Soon the baby had a pair of new moccasins, with a small hole cut into the sole of one of them. This was done so if a messenger from the spirit world, where the dead reside, should ever come for the child, the child could simply say: "I cannot go on a journey — my moccasins are worn out!"
The Omaha held a second ceremony once the child could walk, a ceremony that established the child as a distinct person attached to a specific clan with a recognized place in the tribe, a ceremony designed to give the child strength, identity, and self-discipline. In the Turning the Child Ceremony, the mother walked her child to a sacred tent, its entrance facing east, a fire burning in the middle.
"Venerable man!" the mother called out to the priest. "I desire my child to wear moccasins. ... I desire my child to walk long upon the earth."
Then she dropped her child's hand and the child entered the tent alone. The priest guided the child toward the fireplace, saying: "I speak to you that you may be strong. You shall live long and your eyes shall be satisfied with many good things." The priest then lifted the child by the shoulders and, facing east, turned the child completely around, repeating his words until the child had faced all four directions. The ceremony ended when the priest put the new moccasins on the feet of the child. The priest then made the child take four steps, symbolizing the journey to a long life.
Throughout the long journey of the Omaha people, as far back as anyone could remember — whether encamped in forests, along shorelines, or by riverbanks, in summer or winter, in tipis or earth lodges, hunting or farming — there was often a recurring question, a question that formed part of their identity, a question that seemed to be deeply embedded in the Omaha's cultural lifeblood. It's a question that had sprung from their Sacred Legend, one that had been asked over and over:
What shall we do to help ourselves?
How shall we better ourselves?
* * *
The bones in her face and ears ached from knifing through the numbing air. They'd gone three miles but had another three to go, maybe more, the horses pounding up steep, snowy hills, pounding down the back side, snorting heavily, clouds of steam littering the air.
The darkness had started to fade a little now, the snow on the distant hills faintly blossoming in the soft winter light.
She stood up in the buggy, scoured the prairie in the dim dawn, looking for a solitary silhouette, looking for an outline perched on the distant horizon. But she couldn't see it, so she sat back down and whipped her team, yelling at them to go, to keep moving.
She has to make it. She has to find the one-room cabin somewhere on this frozen winter prairie. Though years apart, she and the young girl inside had gone to the same school — the same normal and agricultural college in Virginia, where after the great war they had sent the sons and daughters of black people and the sons and daughters of red people to learn how to become more like white people.
She can't let the girl down. She can't let all the others down, the ones who pushed so hard, all the time, to get her papers filed, her payments made, her books and clothes and housing and train fare taken care of. She can't let them down. But most of all, she can't dishonor his memory.
She cannot let her father down.
* * *
Their Virginia school was about 130 miles from Monticello, home of the third president of the United States, a restless, thoughtful, complex philosopher, lawyer, architect, and amateur scientist who had long harbored dreams of expanding the fledgling nation's borders to the Missouri River — and far beyond.
In Jefferson's view of democracy, the lands between the Mississippi and the Rockies, which the Louisiana Purchase had just made available, would become a bedrock of educated citizen-farmers, men and women who would create a new world order, who would become the foundation for a stable, prosperous, industrious, moral America.
So it wasn't long before her people — and many other tribal people long braided into the geographic fabric of the Great Plains — began to see the pool of fur traders, explorers, and adventurers start to expand. And with it came more and more government agents, more soldiers and peace parleys, and more and more treaties gobbling up more and more of the original native lands.
Francis La Flesche, the nation's first Indian ethnographer, would later note a feeling that was beginning to spread among the tribal villages scattered between the great rivers and mountains:
"The white people speak of the country at this period as 'a wilderness,' as though it was an empty tract without human interest or history. To us Indians it was as clearly defined as it is to-day; we knew the boundaries of tribal lands, those of our friends and those of our foes; we were familiar with every stream, the contour of every hill, and each peculiar feature of the landscape had its tradition. It was our home, the scene of our history, and we loved it as our country."
But by and by, the old way of life began to disappear — and in some years, so did the Omaha. The bustling fur trade up and down the Missouri, linking St. Louis with the Upstream People, had introduced something the Omaha could not fight, could not overcome, were helpless against.
By the time Lewis and Clark arrived in the late summer of 1804, wave after wave of epidemics had taken a toll, none more fearsome than the smallpox epidemic of 1800–1801. Sealed inside their earth-lodge homes, often living in three-generational units, the once robust, healthy people had no resistance to, no immunity from, the rapid, fatal spread of the disease, a disease that sometimes claimed entire families in a single week. By the time the disease had run its course, it was believed that more than half of the Omaha Tribe had died of smallpox.
In one form or another, these diseases would continue to stalk the people throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
For the Omaha and all the others, the opening years and the opening decades of the nineteenth century all seemed to get progressively worse, step by step. For many of those years, the Upstream People were led by Big Elk, a chief of considerable strength, wisdom, courage, and insight. Among his people, Big Elk was revered for his visionary powers, for a unique ability to look down the road and foretell what the future might bring. And more and more as the decades wore on, as he saw more and more of the old way of life disappearing, his frustration and despair began to mount.
"I am like a large prairie wolf," he said, "running about over these barren prairies, in search of something to eat, with his head up, anxiously listening to hear some of his fellows howl, that he may dart off towards them, hoping to find a friend who has a bone to divide."
In 1837, as a guest of the U.S. government, Big Elk visited Washington, D.C.
Like those who had gone before him and the many chiefs who would follow, Big Elk returned from the urban East Coast to the rural plains of Nebraska a profoundly changed man.
With his own eyes, he had seen the flood of whites, in numbers unimaginable. He had seen their cities, their bustling stores and markets, their shops and schools, their government buildings and houses, their neighborhoods and neatly laid-out streets.
When he returned, the shaken chief, who had participated in some of the early treaty sessions, called the Omaha people together and told them of his trip east:
"My chiefs, braves, and young men, I have just returned from a visit to a far-off country toward the rising sun, and I have seen many strange things. I bring to you news which it saddens my heart to think of. There is a coming flood which will soon reach us, and I advise you to prepare for it. Soon the animals which Wakonda has given us for sustenance will disappear beneath this flood to return no more, and it will be very hard for you. Look at me; you see I am advanced in age; I am near the grave. I can no longer think for you and lead you as in my younger days. You must think for yourselves what will be best for your welfare. I tell you this that you may be prepared for the coming change. ... Speak kindly to one another; do what you can to help each other, even in the troubles with the coming tide."
More and more, Big Elk began to tell his people that the old way of life was doomed, that they could not continue to walk down that road. He told them things many did not want to hear, that they would have to change. That they would have to begin to try to understand the ways of the whites, to embrace them, to integrate some of the new ways into the old ones.
To adapt — or perish.
Before his death in 1853, Big Elk, the third member of his family to lead the tribe, faced a difficult decision: Who would succeed him as chief of the Omaha?
He knew he needed someone whose vision was compatible with his own. He knew he needed someone with strength and integrity. Someone who could begin to assimilate the Omaha into the new world order.
He needed someone like Joseph La Flesche.
(Continues...)Excerpted from A Warrior of the People by Joe Starita. Copyright © 2016 Joe Starita. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B01C2TAAOC
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press (November 1, 2016)
- Publication date : November 1, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 6109 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 320 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #630,466 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #414 in Native American History (Kindle Store)
- #548 in History of Anthropology
- #1,737 in Medical Professional Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Joe Starita holds an endowed professorship at the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Previously, he spent 14 years at The Miami Herald – four years as the newspaper’s New York Bureau Chief and four years on its Investigations Team, where he specialized in investigating the questionable practices of doctors, lawyers and judges. One of his stories was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. Interested since his youth in Native American history and culture, he returned to his native Nebraska in 1992 and began work on a three-year writing project examining five generations of a Lakota-Northern Cheyenne family. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge – A Lakota Odyssey, published in 1995 by G.P. Putnam Sons (New York), won the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Award, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history, has been translated into six languages and is the subject of an upcoming documentary. Starita’s most recent book – “I Am A Man” – Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice – was published in January 2009 by St. Martin’s Press (New York) and has gone into a seventh printing. The book tells the story of a middle-aged chief who attempted to keep a death-bed promise to his only son by walking more than 500 miles in the dead of winter from Oklahoma to Nebraska to return the boy’s remains to the soil of their native homeland. En route, the father unwittingly ended up in the cross-hairs of a groundbreaking legal decision in which a federal judge in Omaha declared - for the first time in the nation’s 103-year history - that an Indian “is a person” within the meaning of the law and entitled to the same Constitutional protections as white citizens.
In the last 3 ½ years, Starita has given more than 150 talks on Chief Standing Bear, the legal significance of the landmark legal ruling for Native people and why this powerful story still resonates in the 21st century. Those talks have included invited appearances at the Miami International Book Fair, the Chicago Tribune Literary Festival, C-Span’s Book Talk, a joint appearance with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Smithsonian Institution, a presentation to 5,000 National Education Association members and a speech to more than 500 minority lawyers and judges at their 2011 annual conference. In July 2011, the NEA presented Starita with the Leo Reano Award – a national civil rights award for his long-standing work on behalf of Native people.
Recently, he has completed a new book project – a biography of Dr. Susan La Flesche, an Omaha Indian born in a buffalo hide tipi in 1865, who graduated as the valedictorian of her medical school class in 1889 at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, becoming the first Native doctor in U.S. history. The book will be released by St. Martin’s Press in November 2016.
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Customers find the story fascinating and well-researched. They describe the writing style as engaging and enjoyable. The book is described as an excellent read that young women should consider. Readers appreciate the simple facts and pacing of the story.
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Customers find the story engaging and interesting. They appreciate the well-researched account of the first Indian doctor in the US. The book is enlightening and thought-provoking, with an interesting perspective on Native American history. The storytelling brings Susan LaFlesche's struggles to life in a compelling way, inspiring readers.
"...From a woman's perspective, it is enlightening and thought provoking." Read more
"Engaging writing style and intriguing information about the life and work of Dr. Susan La Flesche who used her brilliance to uplift and help people..." Read more
"Excellent historical account of the first Indian doctor in the US. Starita has written several books about the Native Americans of the plains...." Read more
"...It is a true story and takes place in Nebraska. Not only was Susan a warrior doctor, her siblings were famous also. Great read!" Read more
Customers enjoy the writing style of the book. They find the descriptions vivid and the biography engaging.
"...The book is well written and the descriptions are vivid. From a woman's perspective, it is enlightening and thought provoking." Read more
"Engaging writing style and intriguing information about the life and work of Dr. Susan La Flesche who used her brilliance to uplift and help people..." Read more
"...Starita takes the factual accounts of her life and writes a very readable narrative." Read more
"...It is a great read and very informative and well written. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and a must-read for young women and men. They describe it as a wonderful account of a remarkable woman.
"...An inspirational true story and a 'must read' for all young women and men." Read more
"...It is an okay book, but there was too much repetition in many places, and other parts that seemed lacking in explanation...." Read more
"...Not only was Susan a warrior doctor, her siblings were famous also. Great read!" Read more
"...This was a book club choice and I tried three times to read it being a good participant but failed...." Read more
Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the simple facts and compelling story. The author writes an excellent biography of an intelligent and determined woman against all odds. They describe her as inspiring and radiating new light of hope.
"...Occasionally a person rises above these challenges and radiates new light of hope. Dr. Susan Flesche Picotte was a woman of distinction...." Read more
"A fascinating and fully researched chronicle of the first female American Indian doctor and the personal and professional struggles she faced as her..." Read more
"...The author sticks to simple facts but the story is compelling. Thoroughly researched...." Read more
"...What an inspiration Dr. Susan is. The book gives good insight on the view of women and minorities in the U.s. and the world." Read more
Customers find the book engaging. They praise the remarkable career of Susan La Flèche, the first Indian physician to become regular. They also mention that the author has captured the area and its people well.
"...Susan LaFlesche was an amazing woman from the Omaha people who defied the odds of racism and gender to become a 'warrior' doctfor her people...." Read more
"...Doctor of Native American heritage who worked so hard and diligently for her people. It is a true story and takes place in Nebraska...." Read more
"...Northeast Nebraska, I can say that he has captured the area and its people very well...." Read more
"The remarkable career of Susan La Flèche, the first Indian to become a regular physician, and an important leader of the Omaha tribe...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2024I liked the history about the first indian doctor in United States. Omaha indians were very progressive. This book will give you insight into the struggles of the original people who settled in North America, and the struggles they incountered assimilating with emigrants.
The book is well written and the descriptions are vivid. From a woman's perspective, it is enlightening and thought provoking.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2024Enjoyed reading about her.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2017Engaging writing style and intriguing information about the life and work of Dr. Susan La Flesche who used her brilliance to uplift and help people at a time in history when a woman had to overcome racial and gender inequality. An inspirational true story and a 'must read' for all young women and men.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017Excellent historical account of the first Indian doctor in the US. Starita has written several books about the Native Americans of the plains. I Am a Man (2009) was critically acclaimed narrative about Chief Standing Bear who defied US government relocation to return his son's remains to be buried on Ponca sacred land. His subsequent arrest and trial resulted in the Court's recognition of Indians as having the same rights as other citizens. Susan LaFlesche was an amazing woman from the Omaha people who defied the odds of racism and gender to become a 'warrior' doctfor her people. Starita takes the factual accounts of her life and writes a very readable narrative.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2021I wish I could give this book more than three stars, as the story of this little known woman is just amazing. It is an okay book, but there was too much repetition in many places, and other parts that seemed lacking in explanation. The author also seemed to jump back and forth in time, when writing the story in a more linear fashion would have painted a clearer picture.
As a descendant of European immigrants, who has lived the majority of her life within a couple hours of Dr. La Flesche Picotte’s home, this book stirred all kinds of emotion: why had I not heard of this story before, in school or at the local history museums I’ve been to so many times (as a child and an adult)? Was so little heed given to Native Americans because “we” did not identify them as people like ourselves? How could we have dismissed their culture and perspective so fully as “primitive”, rather than rich and layered? Why did we think we needed to help them become “white”? Did Susan realize what she had lost in an attempt to appease white people and become more like them — when it was clear that her status as an Indian would always be foremost in their minds?
Despite its faults, this was more than a worthwhile read.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2019All about the Doctor of Native American heritage who worked so hard and diligently for her people. It is a true story and takes place in Nebraska. Not only was Susan a warrior doctor, her siblings were famous also. Great read!
- Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2016Throughout time people have struggled in circumstances of quiet desperation. Occasionally a person rises above these challenges and radiates new light of hope. Dr. Susan Flesche Picotte was a woman of distinction. She became the first Native American woman doctor, married and raised two children, battled tuberculosis and alcoholism on the Omaha Indian reservation, testified before Congress for better health conditions, and started her own hospital.
Joe Starita powerfully captures Dr. Susan’s warrior spirit in this non-fiction account. Her humility and implacable spirit led her to fight for right regardless of odds against her. Immersion in her story inspires the reader to try even when challenges seem insurmountable.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2016A fascinating and fully researched chronicle of the first female American Indian doctor and the personal and professional struggles she faced as her beloved frontier changed forever. Mr. Starita's scope of primary research sources is wide ranging and enlightening, including personal letters and papers culled from the collections of most of the story's principals. He is also adept at putting this woman's history into a wider social context that is both historical and referential to today. Having grown up on the Omaha reservation in Northeast Nebraska, I can say that he has captured the area and its people very well. The daughter of the last Chief of the Omahas, she was, in a way, a pioneer who went the other way--from the West to the East and back again--and made history on her long journey.
Top reviews from other countries
- KayeReviewed in Germany on March 10, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging book
Great book, prompt delivery. Item as described
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on January 24, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure dedication
The amazing story of a women who gave so much of herself for her people. She fought through with so many Government officials
for all the human rights they deserved and was able to get many injustices rectified. She persevered in acquiring an education that was very dificult for her as an American women and became a Doctor, a dream she had for many years.
- BburtonReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 21, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Brilliant read. I could hardly put it down. A must if you are interested in American Indian history.
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on January 30, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read
Well written informative book. Illustrates the injustices of indigenous peoples and the life of one very courageous woman
- Mark HooperReviewed in Canada on April 21, 2017
5.0 out of 5 stars My wife loves the book! She found it to ...
My wife loves the book! She found it to be a true inspiration not just for women but women facing so many barriers. And what she had accomplished in such a short lifetime. And she was so truly dedicated to her people !