Remembering the First Native American Woman Doctor

Photo courtesy of Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives.

November 17, 2016.

"In an era when women couldn’t vote and Native Americans were denied citizenship, Susan La Flesche shattered not just one barrier, but two, to become the first Native American woman doctor in the United States."

Susan La Flesche's dedication to becoming a doctor sparked from when she was eight years old sitting at the bedside of a dying elderly woman. The doctor was summoned four times to the aid of the elderly woman, who never showed up resulting in a painful death for the lady. The message that was sent from the Doctor explained the reason for not showing, one of the lines from the message included "It was only an Indian". 

Susan went on to attend the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, "a time when even the most privileged of white women faced severe discrimination." Upon graduating, she went on to help and serve 1,244 patients spread over a territory of 1,350 square miles on her reservation. 

To read more from Christopher Klein's article at the History Channel, 
please click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Omaha Tribe of Nebraska
• Susan LaFlesche Picotte House
• Susan La Flesche
•  Biography.com
• The Medicine Woman
•  PBS
• Study shows high Indian infant death rate
•  Indianz.com, 2012.
• Living on a Reservation
•  Partnership with Native Americans
• Changing the face of Medicine | Celebrating America's Women Physicians Online Exhibition
• Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte
• U.S. National Library of Medicine.
• The Fight for Women's Suffrage
•  History Channel
• Gender roles in the 19th century
• British Library, Discovering Literatire: Romantics and Victorians, Professor Kathryn Hughes.
• Gender Ideology & Separate Spheres in the 19th Century
• Victoria and Albert Museum, Professor Jan Marsh.
• Roles of Women In The Victorian Era
•  Victorian Era.org | Victorian Era Information for Kids.

Archaeologists Have a Huge New Stonehenge to Figure Out

Photo courtesy by Evgenii Bogdanov.

 November 17, 2016.

In Kazakhstan, Archaeologists have found a complex of stone structures similar to the Stonehenge but bigger. " The site is the size of 200 American football fields, about 300 acres." Its existence was found by an explorer, F. Akhmadulin, who was searching the surrounding area with a metal detector when he discovered a metal saddle fragment.

Upon discovery of the saddle, Akhmadulin showed Evgenii Bogdanov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Department's Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, his find and the within the context of the site where it was found. The Russian Academy's interest was raised when they saw the stone pillars. 

To read more, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
• Built by the Huns? Ancient Stone Monuments Discovered Along Caspian
• Live Science, November 14, 2016.
• Mysterious stone monument found in Kazakhstan is way bigger than Stonehenge
• Mother Nature Network, November 15, 2016.
• The Xiongnu Empire 匈奴
•  ChinaKnowledge.de, Dr. Ulrich Theobald.
• Silk Road Foundation
• The Xiongnu Culture- Third Century BCE
• Art of the Silk Road Online Exhibit (Available in Español & English)
• Washington University, Silk Road Seattle.
• The Huns
• Ancient History Encyclopedia.
• Kazakhstan
• The Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook.
• Stone Henge
• English Heritage.
• Significance of Megalithic Structures in Atlantic Europe?
• Heritage Daily.

First humans arrived in North America a lot earlier than believed

Horse mandible from Cave 2 which shows stone tool cutmarks.

Photo courtesy of Université de Montréal.

January 16, 2017.

A new study by Ariane Burke, a professor from the Université de Montréal's and her student assistant, Lauriane Bourgeon, have discovered ancient man made tool marks on a horse mandible and published their results with Science Daily and Plos | One. With the help of carbon dating from "Dr. Thomas Higham, Deputy Director of Oxford University's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit", it has been shown that the horse mandible is ~10,000 years older than the previous oldest fossil.

"The timing of the first entry of humans into North America across the Bering Strait has now been set back 10,000 years"!

To read more, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, Canada (PDF available)
• Lauriane Bourgeon, Ariane Burke, Thomas Higham, Plos | One, January 2017.
• Bones from Bluefish Cave
• Last Glacial Maximum
• Beringia Land Bridge
• Canadian Museum of History
• Carbon Dating

Little Bighorn Battlefield Among National Parks Offering Fee-Free Days

Photo courtesy of National Park Services/S. Smith

January 11, 2016.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is among National Park Service sites offering a number of fee-free days in 2017, the second of which will be February 20th, Presidents' Day.

For many years, the Native Americans were not recognized in their part of the Battle of Little Bighorn; particularly how "12 companies of the Seventh Cavalry were defeated by Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors". In 1991, President George H.W Bush signed legislation to rename the General Custer Memorial to recognize the Native Americans who fought valiantly at Little Bighorn to protect their homeland and their traditional ways of life. 

To read more, click here.

For more information,

Visit:

• Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes
• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Facebook
• Crow Creek Sioux Tribe
• Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe
• Fort Peck Tribes
• Lake Traverse Indian Reservation
• Lower Brule Sioux Tribe
• Northern Cheyenne Tribe
• Oglala Lakota Nation
• Prairie Island Indian Community
• Rosebud Sioux Tribe
• Santee Sioux Nation
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community of Minnesota
• Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation
• Spirit Lake Tribe
• Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
• Upper Sioux Community | Pezihutazizi Oyate
• Wood Mountain Dakota First Nation, Saskatchewan Canada
• Yankton Sioux Tribe
• The Battle of the Greasy Grass 140 Years Later: The Complete Story in 18 Drawings
• Indian Country Today, 2016.
• Native History: Descendants Remember Battle of Little Bighorn
• Indian Country Today, 2014.
• National Park Service
• The Battle of Little Bighorn
• Lt. Colonel George Custer
• Free Entrance Days in the National Parks
• Sitting Bull
• History Channel.