The Critic's Choice

Book Review

Susan La Flesche Picotte: A Warrior of the People

By Joe Starita St. Martin’s Press New York 2018

Rabbinic Pastor De Fischler Herman Chaplain, Spiritual Director and Sage-ing Mentor Takoma Park, MD E-mail: [email protected]

Author Note The opinions expressed in this review are those of the author alone. The author has no financial conflicts of interest.

Introduction Born on the Great Plains at the close of the Civil War, a young girl from the Omaha tribe went one day to help care for a sick, elderly woman from her people. A white doctor from the Indian agency promised several times to come and never did. The child watched the old woman die an agonizing death. That child, the youngest daughter of the last Omaha tribal chief, vowed to become a doctor to treat and heal her people. A Warrior of the People by Joe Starita tells the compelling story of how Susan La Flesche overcame society’s biases to become the first Native American .

It may challenge us to imagine ourselves in the place of a Native American girl facing seemingly insurmountable odds in a white patriarchal society in the late 19th century. This well-researched and thorough narrative will illuminate and surprise the reader, demonstrating the value of higher education and the power of resilience and perseverance that propelled a remarkable girl to achieve her childhood dream.

Upbringing & Education Joseph La Flesche, the last Omaha tribal chief and his reservation’s principal trader, was remarkably successful. Witnessing his people’s poverty, hunger and disease, he fought for their needs, doing “everything in his power to confront corrupt agents and feckless government appointees. He was steadfast in making sure his people got everything they were owed.” (p. 44).

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Simultaneously, Joseph embraced assimilation, from wood frame homes and individual plots to white schools and the English language. He studied Christianity, walking a fine line between his native ways and his evolving new beliefs and teaching his values to his four daughters.

Susan, his youngest, was surrounded as well by strong women, most notably her oldest sister Susette, who paved the way as an activist and teacher. Susette, known more commonly among her people as Bright Eyes, taught Susan and their other two sisters in their primary years. In 1879 at age 14, Susan and her sister Marguerite left the familiarity of their reservation and headed to the same girls’ boarding school in Elizabeth, that had educated Bright Eyes a decade earlier. Susan’s thirst for learning, the novel experience of living in an urban environment teeming with white people, the educational opportunities that opened to her and support from influential benefactors, laid the foundation for her life’s trajectory.

While Bright Eyes traveled up and down the East Coast advocating for the rights of Indians, Susan immersed herself in arithmetic, reading, composition, philosophy, literature and physiology. Because there was no money for trips home during school breaks, Susan lived among the dominant culture of the white people for nearly three years and became adept at switching “effortlessly from Omaha to flawless English and back again.” (p. 66).

Returning to the reservation in 1883, the 18-year-old Susan took a job teaching at the Presbyterian Mission School when a middle-aged Harvard ethnologist named Alice Fletcher entered her life and changed its course. An activist, Alice had become close with Susan’s family in 1881 as a tireless advocate for keeping the Omaha lands in the hands of the tribal people when Congress passed a bill allotting them 160-acre parcels. The work to implement the legislation was arduous. When Alice came back in the summer of 1883 to resume the monumental task, she became quite sick. It was