Introduction
In the late 19th century, American medicine was focused on training physicians to treat the burgeoning population, especially in Chicago and the Midwest, which was still a developing, frontier area. Despite this need for doctors, many medical schools were reluctant to or fully prohibited the enrollment of non-white, non-male students.
Before the Civil War, only a dozen or so American medical schools had admitted students who identified as women, African American, Black, Indigenous, or other identities that have been historically marginalized in the US. In the post-war period, students from underrepresented minorities remained a tiny fraction of the total enrollment numbers. Progress was too slow, and so these communities, especially white women and African Americans, began to establish medical schools catering to their needs. Howard University opened its medical school in 1868; it was the first school founded especially for the education African American doctors, though it was open to people of any race or gender. By 1870, five women’s medical schools had been founded, the westernmost being the Woman’s Hospital Medical College of Chicago. Many more medical schools for Black and women students opened in the subsequent decades to accommodate the growing numbers of students.¹
This exhibit was put together to celebrate four physicians who charted their own paths in the pursuit of an MD. It showcases Mary Harris Thompson (MD 1870), Yasu Hishikawa (MD 1889), Carlos Montezuma (MD 1889), and Austin Curtis (MD 1891), who all received medical degrees from a Northwestern University affiliated medical school. In addition to their unique pathways in medicine, these graduates were chosen because of their impactful careers, their work attending to communities underserved by the medical establishment, and, in the case of Hishikawa and Curtis, because they are not featured elsewhere on campus.
This digital version of the exhibit adds staff-written biographical articles about each person, in addition to the poster, to offer more information and context about their lives. We hope to add to this series in the future.
Footnote
1. Nearly all women’s medical schools and black medical school in the United States closed in the early 20th century because of inadequate financial support, a condemnatory/condemning review in the Flexner Report, or because more mainstream medical schools began to accept non-traditional students. While enrollment numbers of underrepresented minorities/students remained low at most mainstream schools, the collective effect proved damaging for nearly all of the medical schools for African Americans and women.
Credits
Curated and designed by Katie Lattal, MA, Special Collections Librarian.
Wassaja, also known as Carlos Montezuma, MD (1869-1923)
MD Class of 1889, Chicago Medical College*
- Native American civil rights leader
- First Native American graduate of Chicago Medical College
- First Native American man to earn MD in the United States
*Predecessor of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
The biography below first appeared as a News Item on the Galter Library website on November 22, 2021 in celebration of Native American Heritage Month. We have added it here to expand on the exhibit poster content. You can read more about his medical practice on our main website.
Carlos Montezuma was the first Native American student to earn a degree from Northwestern University when he graduated in 1889 with an MD from Chicago Medical College, the medical department of Northwestern (now known as Feinberg School of Medicine). Montezuma lived a truly remarkable life, though he suffered immeasurable childhood trauma. He was originally named Wassaja (Was-SAH-jah), meaning signaling or beckoning, and his family were part of the Yavapai people who lived near Fort McDowell, in what the United States government then called the Arizona Territory. The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation now occupies a small part of this ancestral territory in the mountainous area northeast of Phoenix.
In 1871, when he was five or six years old, Wassaja was captured by Tohono O'odham (Pima) raiders, separated from his family, and sold to Carlo Gentile. It was Gentile who renamed Wassaja "Carlos Montezuma," after himself. Early accounts of Montezuma's life depict the relationship between him and Gentile as paternal and warm—and it may have become like that over time—but Montezuma later recounted: "[I] had no idea what would become of me. I was sure of a cruel death or be made to work as a slave forever and ever."¹
Gentile—an Italian immigrant of some means who dabbled in mining gold and other pursuits in the American West before concentrating on photography—now brought Montezuma on his nonstop travels. In 1872 they stopped in Chicago, where Gentile worked in a gallery. Montezuma attended school, but also performed in one of Buffalo Bill Cody's first stage shows as "Azteka," a stereotypical Indian character (Gentile capitalized on the show; he was the ticket-taker, advertising agent, and sold souvenir photographs to show-goers). They toured with the show until March 1873, and returned to Chicago (and school) for a time. Then after several more years of travel, Gentile sent Montezuma to live with Rev. William H. Stedman in Urbana, IL, where he could have a more stable life.
Montezuma was just 14 years old when he matriculated at the University of Illinois in 1880. He wrote articles for the student newspaper and was the president of his class, as well as the president of the Adelphic Debate Society. In 1884 he graduated with a BS in Chemistry, the first Native American student to earn a degree from the University of Illinois. Immediately, Montezuma moved back to Chicago to pursue medicine. He was introduced to John H. Hollister, MD, a founder of Chicago Medical College and the professor of clinical medicine at that time, who promised to remit his tuition. In order to support himself through school, Montezuma worked at a pharmacy and received some financial help from friends. He was originally part of the Class of 1888, but it took him 5 years to finish school because he had to work so much. He officially graduated in 1889, though he built lifelong friendships with those in his original class, such as Charles Mayo. Montezuma became the second American Indian to earn an MD in the United States, the first being Susan La Flesche Picotte, MD (Omaha).
Montezuma first worked as a physician for the Indian Bureau. Within four years he had served at three different Indian Schools and reservations; he decried the squalid conditions of the schools and lack of medical supplies, and experienced a bit of culture shock since he had spent the last 20 years brought up by white people mostly in white urban settings. He finally ended up as the physician at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania where he stayed for several years. Working at Carlisle brought him closer to Richard Pratt (who had founded the institution in 1879), with whom he had been corresponding since medical school. Montezuma already believed that Indian assimilation into white American culture was the best path to progress for American Indians, and closer proximity to Pratt further fed this belief. Montezuma stayed at Carlisle for three years, and he even served as physician to the famous Carlisle football team.²
Montezuma returned to Chicago late in 1895, where he reconnected with a medical school classmate, Fenton Turck. Turck brought Montezuma in to his private practice and he became a specialist in gastrointestinal disease. Montezuma made Chicago his home for the rest of his life, and more and more he began to reconnect with his Yavapai roots and his identity as Wassaja. This set in motion a major shift in his beliefs, namely, that the Indian Bureau and reservation system needed to be abolished due to the paternalism of the former and the segregation enacted by the latter.
Instead of total assimilation, Montezuma turned his activism toward Native American civil rights. He had years of experience writing and speaking about his life and beliefs—lectures on American Indian life was one of his paid gigs in medical school, and remember that he was the president of a debate club in college—and he now employed these skills to advocate for the land and water rights of the Yavapais and other Arizona tribes. Montezuma was a founding member of the Society of American Indians (SAI), a diverse group of leading Native progressives and non-native allies who formed the coalition to fight for American Indian interests. The society often clashed on policy and methodology since their specific goals so often differed, but as scholar Tsianina Lomawaima wrote, they firmly supported an "individual Indian’s right to full, valued contribution to the nation's social, economic, and political life."³ From 1915 to 1922, Montezuma published his own newsletter called, Wassaja: Freedom's Signal for the Indians, which served as his mouthpiece for his views on social justice for Native Americans and his criticism of the Indian Bureau and the SAI.
Montezuma married Marie Keller in 1913, and continued practicing medicine and advocacy work throughout the rest of his life. He opposed the government sending Native soldiers to fight in World War I when they were denied US citizenship, and continued to fight the Indian Bureau over Yavapai land and water rights. He was ultimately successful in ensuring the Yavapai had their own reservation on a portion of their ancestral lands and were not forced onto the nearby Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservation. In late 1922, Montezuma contracted tuberculosis and realized he was dying. He decided to spend his remaining months in Fort McDowell with his extended family. He died on January 31, 1923.
By: Katie Lattal, Special Collections Librarian
Endnotes
- Montezuma and Larner, The Papers of Carlos Montezuma, Reel 2, October 7, 1905.
- Carlisle famously beat an undefeated Northwestern in 1903 and their quarterback, Jimmy Johnson, was named to the All-American team that year. Following graduation from Carlisle, Johnson enrolled at Northwestern University Dental School and also played for the Northwestern squad. He earned his DDS in 1907 and returned to Carlisle as assistant coach, where he helped train Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. He practiced dentistry thereafter.
- Lomawaima, “The Mutuality of Citizenship and Sovereignty,” 335.