On Mar. 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche Picotte, MD became the first American Indian woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree when she graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.  In July 1889, La Flesche became the government physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School in Nebraska.

La Flesche married Henry Picotte in 1894 and the couple moved to Bancroft, Nebraska, where she set up a private practice, serving both white and non-white patients.  Along with her busy practice, Picotte also raised two sons and nursed her husband through a terminal illness.

In 1906 she led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to lobby for prohibition of alcohol on the reservation. In 1913, two years before her death, she saw her life’s dream fulfilled when she opened a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska.

Today, the hospital houses the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Center dedicated to the work of Picotte and the history of the Omaha and Winnebago tribes.