Susan La Flesche Picotte Quotes

Susan La Flesche Picotte is known as the first Indigenous woman to become a physician in the United States. her father “Joseph LaFlesche” known as the last recognized Head Chief of the Omaha Tribe.

Susan La Flesche Picotte Personal Details

Susan La Flesche Picotte Quotes

#1. “It was only an Indian and it did not matter. The doctor preferred hunting for prairie chickens rather than visiting poor, suffering humanity.”

#2. “I’m not accomplishing miracles, but I’m beginning to see some of the results of better hygiene and health habits. And we’re losing fewer babies and fewer cases to infection.”

#3. “I know that I shall be unpopular for a while with my people, because they will misconstrue my efforts, but this is nothing, just so I can help them for their own good.”

#4. “The law protects the man who enriches himself through the foreclosures of mortgages, it does not protect the sacred right of the farmer to live a decent life and to earn a decent living.”

#5. “It is vital that every child in Nebraska, whether native, white, immigrant or offspring of a former slave, be afforded an opportunity to learn.”

#6. “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night.”

#7. “[T]his condition of being treated as children we want to have nothing to do with… the majority of the Omahas are as competent as the same number of white people.”

#8. “We who are educated have to be pioneers of Indian civilization. The white people have reached a high standard of civilization, but how many years has it taken them? We are only beginning; so do not try to put us down, but help us to climb higher. Give us a chance.”

#9. “From the outset, the work of an Indian girl is plain before her.… We who are educated have to be pioneers of Indian civilization. We have to prepare our people to live in the white man’s way, to use the white man’s books, and to use his laws if you will only give them to us…the shores of success can only be reached by crossing the bridge of faith.”

#10. “Intemperance increased…men, women, and children drank; men and women died from alcoholism, and little children were seen reeling on the streets of the town; drunken brawls in which men were killed occurred, and no person’s life was considered safe.”