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.She wrote about Harry Ed-wards, who, on a winter s night in 1894, fell from a buggy, was not missed byhis drunken companions, and in the morning was found frozen to death (Mathes,1985, 75).From a medical point of view, LaFlesche believed that alcoholism wasat the root of many of the physical, mental, and moral ills facing the Omahas andother American Indians.In 1894, her health improving, LaFlesche married Henri Picotte, who was partFrench and part Sioux; she also began a new medical practice for Indians andwhites at Bancroft, Nebraska.LaFlesche practiced medicine there for the rest ofher life, as her own health permitted.After LaFlesche s death on September 18,1915, the Walthill Times added an extra page (in its September 24 issue) and filledit with warm eulogies to her.Friends recalled that hundreds of people in the area,Indian and Euro-American, owed their lives to her care. LaFlesche, Susette (Inshta Theamba, Bright Eyes) | 155The hospital that Susan LaFlesche built at Walthill has since been declared anational historic landmark.Since 1988, her memory has been celebrated at an an-nual festival there.Further ReadingFerris, Jeri.Native American Doctor: The Story of Susan Laflesche Picotte.Minneapolis,MN: Carolrhoda Books, 1991.Mathes, Valerie Sherer. Dr.Susan LaFlesche Picotte: The Reformed and the Reformer. InIndian Lives: Essays on Nineteenth-and Twentieth-century Native American Leaders,edited by L.G.Moses and Raymond Wilson, 61 89.Norman: University of OklahomaPress, 1985.Tong, Benson.Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and Reformer.Nor-man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.Wilkerson, J.L.A Doctor to Her People: Dr.Susan LaFlesche Picotte.Kansas City, MO:Acorn Books, 1999.LAFLESCHE, SUSETTE (INSHTA THEAMBA, BRIGHT EYES)1854 1903 U MA HA (OMAHA)NATIVE-RIGHTS ADVOCATE AND JOURNALISTSusette LaFlesche became a major 19th-century Native-rights advocate throughthe case of the Ponca Standing Bear (Standing Bear v.Crook, 1879), the first legalproceeding (decided in Omaha Federal District Court) to establish Native Ameri-cans as human beings under the U.S.law of habeas corpus.Susette also accom-panied her brother Francis and Standing Bear on a lecture tour of Eastern cities in1879 and 1880 to support the Poncas case for a return of their homeland.Newspa-per articles about the Poncas forced exile by Omaha journalist Thomas H.Tibbleshelped ignite a furor in Congress and among the public.LaFlesche was born near Bellevue, Nebraska, the eldest daughter of Joseph Iron Eye LaFlesche and Mary Gale LaFlesche, daughter of an Army surgeon.Like her sister Susan, LaFlesche attended the Presbyterian mission school on theOmaha Reservation.Both sisters were among the most brilliant students ever toattend the school.Susette also studied art at the University of Nebraska.Defending Standing BearIn the late 1870s, LaFlesche traveled with her father to Indian Territory (later Okla-homa) to render rudimentary medical attention to the Poncas with Standing Bear,whose people had been forced to move there from their former homeland along theNiobrara River in northern Nebraska.When the Poncas attempted to escape theirforced exile and return to their homeland, they marched for several weeks in mid-winter, finally eating their moccasins to survive, arriving at the Omaha Reservation156 | LaFlesche, Susette (Inshta Theamba, Bright Eyes)with bleeding feet.The Omahas, particularly the LaFlesche family, granted themsanctuary and sustenance.Tibbles, an editor at the Omaha World-Herald, was the first journalist to inter-view Standing Bear while the LaFlesche family sheltered the Poncas.Tibbles saccounts were telegraphed to newspapers on the East Coast.In the meantime,LaFlesche and Tibbles fell in love and married in 1882.Both also toured the EastCoast with Standing Bear, armed with news clippings on the Ponca story andendorsements from General [George] Crook, the mayor of Omaha, and leadingNebraska clergymen, raising support for the restoration of Ponca lands (Tibbles,1880, 129).In Boston, where support for Standing Bear s Poncas was very strong, a citi-zens committee formed that included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.While Su-sette LaFlesche was visiting Boston with Standing Bear, Longfellow said of her, This is Minnehaha (Tibbles, 1880, 130).In Boston, Tibbles, LaFlesche, and Standing Bear first met Helen Hunt Jackson.The Poncas story inflamed Jackson s conscience and changed her life.Heretoforeknown as a poet (and a childhood friend of Emily Dickinson), Jackson set out towrite A Century of Dishonor, a best-selling book that described the angst of anAmerica debating the future of the Native American peoples who had survived thelast of the Indian wars.Jackson became a major figure in the Anglo-American de-bate over the future of Native Americans.Standing Bear and his people eventuallywere allowed to return home to the Niobrara River after Congress investigated theconditions under which they had been evicted.Reporting at Wounded KneeFollowing the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, LaFlesche became one of thefirst female war correspondents to be employed by any American newspaper, andAmerica s first female Native American war correspondent.While LaFlesche in-terviewed Native Americans, other reporters spun imaginative tales as they readconspiracies of intrigue and impending violence into expressions on the facesof Indians returning home after performing in Buffalo Bill Cody s Wild WestShow.The World-Herald often published LaFlesche s accounts of events at WoundedKnee under the headline What Bright Eyes Thinks. Unlike most other correspon-dents, LaFlesche stressed the common humanity of the Ghost Dancers: The causesthat brought about the Messiah scare may seem to be very simple if one stops tothink, first of all, that the Sioux are human beings with the same feelings, desires,resentments, and aspirations as all other human beings (Reilly, 1997, 198).The Omaha World-Herald treated the conflict as a massacre rather than a battle(as the U.S.Army calls it to this day) under headlines such as All Murdered in aMass. The newspaper s accounts emphasized the difference in the amount of fire-power available to each side and the large number of women and children in theNative camp.Editorially, the World-Herald called what had happened at WoundedKnee A Crime against Civilization. The paper asked: What sentiment dignifiesLittlefeather, Sacheen | 157and raises it from the low estate of murder to that of war.On a field on whichthere can be no honor (Reilly, 1997, 211 12).While other newspapers railed against murderous Redskins, LaFlesche, underthe headline Horrors of War, described the sufferings of Indian women and chil-dren who had been seriously wounded in the shooting.This account, as compiledby Hugh Reilly, makes for wrenching reading.LaFlesche was nearly alone in re-porting the suffering of the Native people at Wounded Knee.Reilly wrote, BrightEyes anger was palpable.The Sioux believe that they have been made to sufferbecause the whites want their land, she wrote. If the white people want their landand must have it, they can go about getting it some other way than by forcing itfrom them by starving them or provoking them to war and sacrificing the lives ofinnocent women and children. (Reilly, 1997, 215).LaFlesche also co-authored a memoir with Standing Bear, Ploughed Under: TheStory of an Indian Chief.In ensuing years, LaFlesche and Tibbles also toured the Brit-ish Isles.The couple lived in Washington, D.C., but eventually LaFlesche returned toLincoln, Nebraska, where she died in 1903
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