Who Really Was the First American Indian RN?
On July 1, 2002, Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, RN (1903-1981) became the first American Indian nurse to be inducted into the American Nursing Association’s prestigious Hall of Fame. In reporting this history-making event in our Fall 2002 issue, Minority Nurse noted that Yellowtail, a pioneering activist who fought tirelessly to improve the quality of health care available to Indian people, was the first American Indian registered nurse in the United States. Or was she? We recently received an intriguing email from a reader named Joyce Heywood, who discovered our article about Yellowtail in the online Vital Signs news archives on MinorityNurse.com. “Susie Yellowtail was NOT the first Native American registered nurse,” she writes. “My grandmother, Elizabeth Sadoques Mason (1897-1985), and her sister, Maude Sadoques (who became an Episcopalian nun and took the name Sister Benedicta) were both full-blooded Abenaki Indians and both became registered nurses. Elizabeth studied in New York an
