A Warrior of the People

“An important and riveting story of a 19th-century feminist and change agent . . . put[s] the reader inside the very thoughts and emotions of La Flesche.” —Chicago Tribune

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche Picotte received her medical degree—becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Native Americans could become citizens in their own country.

By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Omaha woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads. Her patients often were desperately poor and desperately sick—tuberculosis, small pox, measles, influenza—families scattered miles apart, whose last hope was a young woman who spoke their language and knew their customs.

This is the story of a Native American woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial and gender prejudice, then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people—physically, emotionally, politically, and spiritually.

Joe Starita’s A Warrior of the People is the moving biography of Susan La Flesche Picotte’s inspirational life and dedication to public health, and it will finally shine a light on her numerous accomplishments.

“A layered, nuanced portrait of this country’s first [Native American] doctor . . . La Flesche’s story is moving and illuminating, and Starita has done it justice.” -Minneapolis Star Tribune