The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West (4 page)

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Authors: Chris Enss

BOOK: The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West
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Georgia survived her failed marriage and was determined to never again get involved with anyone who expected her to make concessions with her career. Her devotion at that point was solely on her beloved dogs and her practice.
In 1910, Doctor Arbuckle Fix converted an old barn into a sanitarium. It was a place where patients could undergo physical or spiritual treatment and stay as long as they wanted. One of the first patients was a cowhand struggling with a toothache. Georgia was awakened late at night by the urgent cry of a man in great pain. He couldn’t wait for the itinerant dentist to make his way to town and pleaded with Georgia to remove the offensive tooth. She reluctantly agreed.
The cowboy took his place in one of Doctor Arbuckle Fix’s chairs and she instructed him to grab the arms tightly and keep still. She then ordered the man’s friend to hold his head in place. Once everything was in order, she began the procedure. The man wriggled and screamed as the doctor tried to coax the tooth out of his mouth with a pair of crude forceps. The man’s legs buckled and the spurs on his boots raked across the doctor’s foot. She yelped. “Watch it there,” she warned. “I’m not a bronco, you know.” Georgia went on with her work and after several more minutes, the tooth finally broke free.
Doctor Fix’s generosity extended beyond the medical care she gave her patients. She opened her home to women teachers in the area who had no place to live and to civic organizations that had no place to meet. Missionary societies, benevolent groups, drama clubs, and library clubs gathered in her front room to plan fundraisers and special events. As an advocate of health education, she donated her time to help teach at various county schools and even donated a microscope for students to study germs and fungi.
Georgia’s home and sanitarium were warm, inviting locations where animals, as well as humans, were made to feel welcome. Along with a few dogs, cats, and goats, a variety of birds resided with Doctor Arbuckle Fix. At one time she had thirty-three canaries, a parrot, and an owl. Children who proved they could care for a pet were given one of her birds as a present. Friends and associates boasted that she was “truly gracious to all creatures.”
After a particularly rough and wet house call trip in 1916, Doctor Fix developed a bad cold that left her an asthmatic. Frequent trips to the dry California climate brought her some relief, but not enough to sustain her life. She eventually died from the breathing condition on July 26, 1918, in San Diego, at the age of sixty-eight. Those with her at the end stated her last words were from the book of Psalms.
Doctor Fix’s body was brought back to Nebraska and she was buried near her home in Gering. Many local citizens attended her service. She was remembered as someone who “went about doing good.” Even in death she proved that statement to be true. She left her life savings to the community, to build a home for the needy. The inscription on her tombstone at the West Lawn Cemetery reads: IN MEMORY OF DOCTOR GEORGIA A. FIX, PIONEER PHYSICIAN. SHE PASSED AWAY IN 1918 AFTER THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF FAITHFUL SERVICE IN THE NORTH PLATTE VALLEY.
SUSAN LA FLESCHE PICOTTE
 
FIRST FEMALE NATIVE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN
 
 
I have lived right with them for over twenty years practicing
medicine, attending the sick, helping them with all their financial
and domestic business and anything that concerned their personal
family life.
—Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, 1914
 
 
Twelve-year-old Susan La Flesche wiped the perspiration off the brow of an elderly Omaha Indian woman stretched out on a cot before her. The woman’s sad eyes found Susan’s, and she lifted her feeble hand out for the girl to take. Susan helped the frail patient raise her head and take a sip of broth. Almost as if the effort had been overwhelming to her delicate frame, the ailing Native American fainted. Susan gently laid the woman’s head onto a pillow and dabbed her warm cheeks with a cool cloth.
The light from a gigantic moon streamed through the open flap of the buckskin tepee situated on the Omaha reservation near Macy, Nebraska. Susan left the sick woman for a moment to peer out into the night. She lingered a bit and listened to the sounds of the evening. With the exception of the cries of the coyotes in the far distance, all was quiet. It was late, and the elderly woman’s breathing was labored. A messenger had been sent out four times to get help, but the physician, hired by the government to care for sick and dying Omaha Indians, would not come. He was hunting prairie chickens and could not be persuaded to visit the reservation. It was 1877, and the health of an Indian woman was inconsequential to the white reservation doctor.
 
AT THE AGE OF TWELVE, SUSAN LA FLESCHE BEGAN TO IMAGINE HERSELF AS A DOCTOR, AND BY THE TIME SHE WAS TWENTY-FOUR SHE HAD BECOME THE FIRST FEMALE NATIVE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN.
 
Susan spent the remainder of the evening hopelessly trying to make the woman comfortable. The agony of the lady’s unknown affliction continued until the morning. By the time the sun had fully risen, the woman had passed away. Susan stood over the lifeless body, contemplating the tragedy and deciding her own course of action. If she were a doctor, she would respond quickly to Indians in need of medical attention. Their lives would matter to her.
Such were the circumstances surrounding Susan’s initial interest in medicine. After witnessing the old woman’s agony, she resolved to “serve others, visit the poor, and help the suffering humanity.”
Susan La Flesche was born in June of 1865, the youngest daughter of Omaha Indian Chief Joseph La Flesche and his wife, Mary. Susan, her three older sisters, and two brothers were raised to generously give of themselves to those in need.
At the insistence of her parents, and like her siblings before her, Susan took full advantage of the “white education” offered to children on the reservation. The focus of the white missionaries who ran the school was to transform the seemingly wild Indian into a respectable citizen of the United States. Susan would allow them to teach her new ways, but would never fully abandon the traditions in which she was raised. According to Susan’s journal, “the old ways are not devoid of values, culture, and emotional ties, and need always to be preserved.”
Chief La Flesche instilled many values in Susan and her brothers and sisters. He was a farmer, and his children worked alongside him as they grew up. Susan’s jobs varied throughout the seasons. In the spring she sowed corn, hoed potatoes, and weeded. In the fall she lent a hand with the harvest. Throughout the year she foraged wood, tended to the livestock, dressed animal skins, dried bison meat, and carried water to the camp from a nearby stream. With few exceptions Susan’s childhood was idyllic. The United States government’s attempt to rid the Omaha people of their “Indianness” was the only major difficulty she faced in her younger years.
Susan excelled in school and was often hailed by her teachers as an “exceptional student with massive potential.” At the age of fourteen, with her eyes fixed on a career in medicine, Susan persuaded her parents to allow her to further her learning at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. Susan’s sister had attended the school some years prior and was now a teacher on the reservation. Believing Susan would receive a better education at the institute, Joseph agreed to let her go.
Susan remained at the school for two and a half years. In addition to courses in English, Latin, literature, and music, she took on a number of college preparatory classes. The time she spent at the institute gave her a cross-cultural understanding that further enhanced her education. She returned to the reservation in 1882, a well-rounded seventeen-year-old with a greater knowledge of the government and the people seeking control of the Omaha Nation. Her goal now was to not only become a physician, but to be an advocate of Indian rights. Susan would learn from her father how best to politically serve the Omaha people.
Under Chief Joseph’s leadership, the tribe was negotiating with Congress to remain on their ancestral homeland. Joseph needed the support of his well-educated children to help him through the process. Eventually, a land allotment agreement between the United States government and Native Americans temporarily halted the Omaha Indians from being pushed out of the territory. It would prove to be a short-lived victory. Susan celebrated the triumph with her family, unaware of the extent to which politicians would attempt to Americanize the Indians.
When Susan wasn’t at home with her parents, she was working at the school on the reservation. The Presbyterian missionaries who ran the facility made a huge impression on her life. She wholeheartedly embraced their religion and accepted a position as a teaching assistant.
Susan enjoyed the experience, but her ambition did not lie in teaching. She left the school six months into the first semester and took a job as a nurse for an ill ethnologist. The woman was bedridden and suffering with inflammatory rheumatism. After five weeks Susan had helped restore the scientist’s health. The woman was so grateful for Susan’s efforts she provided partial funding for her to attend a school in Virginia and then to continue on to the Women’s Medical School in Philadelphia.
In the fall of 1883, Susan once again left her family and tribe. Before she left, she promised her people that she would return and work among them as their physician.
A note in her journal capsulated her thoughts on the journey she was about to make: “I will come from the tepee to civilization.”
Susan encountered people from all walks of life at the Hampton Institute in Virginia. She shared a variety of classes such as philosophy, piano, and art, with fellow Native Americans and black, ex-slave students from across the country. Her extracurricular activities included skating, playing tennis, and working with the Lend-A-Hand Club. The club collected gifts for the poor, visited the sick, and taught Sunday school.
Susan’s daily routine began at 5:30 A.M. After chores and calisthenics, she would dress in a dark calico and muslin uniform, have breakfast in the cafeteria, and report to class by 9:00 A.M. Her studies continued until the evening meal was served at 6:00 P.M. Prayers in the chapel followed the meal, after which Susan would study until bedtime at 9:30. During the summer months, Susan taught school to underclassmen. The Federal Government strongly encouraged Indian women who wanted a career to consider teaching. But Susan had other plans.
A few months before graduating from the Institute, she applied and received acceptance into the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania. Before making the trip to Philadelphia, she recalled the encouraging words of her father to her and her sisters when they were growing up:
My dear young daughters, do you always want to be simply called those Indians or do you want to go to school and be somebody in the world? From that moment I determined to make something useful of my life.
 
 
Susan’s decision to enter the field of medicine met with opposition from the public at large. They found it unseemly that women should be in the profession at all, and particularly objected to an Indian woman in medicine. Susan faced criticism from the Omaha people as well. Indian women could become healers, but only after menopause. Native Americans believed that women were a spiritual danger to the tribe if they practiced healing anytime prior to that.
Funding for Susan’s college education came from the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA). Many government agencies were against financially supporting Indian women seeking a higher education. They felt Native-American women should return to the reservation and assume their traditional roles.

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