Wassaja
Who is Wassaja?
How did Wassaja become the second Native person to receive a medical degree in the United States?
What changes did Wassaja seek for Native people?
Wassaja (born 1866?, Four Peaks, Arizona, U.S.—died January 31,1923, Fort McDowell, Arizona) was a member of the Yavapai tribe and the second Native person to receive a medical degree in the United States. He was also a passionate advocate for Native rights. The name Wassaja translates to “signaling” or “beckoning.”
Early life and education
In 1871, when Wassaja was about four or five years old, he was captured during a raid by a group of Akimel O’odham (historically known as Pima). He was then sold to Carlo Gentile, an Italian photographer, who renamed him Carlos Montezuma. Gentile traveled widely and brought Wassaja with him. By 1872 they were in Chicago, where Wassaja performed in one of Buffalo Bill’s early stage shows. After a few more years of traveling, Gentile placed him in the care of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Wassaja was taken in by a minister in Urbana, Illinois.
In 1880, at about age 14, Wassaja enrolled in Illinois Industrial University (later the University of Illinois). After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1884, he returned to Chicago and attended the Chicago Medical College (later the medical school of Northwestern University). In 1889 he became only the second Native person to receive a medical degree in the United States (the first being Susan La Flesche Picotte).
Doctor and activist
Wassaja first worked as a doctor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the U.S. agency that oversees the government’s relations with Native tribes. He initially practiced medicine on several reservations in the West, where he was alarmed by the poor conditions of health facilities and schools. This experience made Wassaja deeply critical of the BIA and the reservation system. He believed that reservations isolated Native people and offered them little chance to improve their lives. He wanted Native people to have the same opportunities as white people, and he thought that could be achieved if Native people assimilated, or integrated, into the mainstream culture—a philosophy shared with Richard Henry Pratt, his friend and the founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a Native boarding school in Pennsylvania. Wassaja served as a doctor at Carlisle for three years.
In 1895 Wassaja returned to Chicago, where he opened a private medical practice. He also became a nationally known advocate for Native rights. He wrote articles and gave speeches, in which he called for the abolition of both the reservation system and the BIA. In 1911, in Columbus, Ohio, Wassaja helped found the Society of American Indians (SAI), the first Native rights organization run entirely by Native people. From 1916 to 1922 he published a newsletter called Wassaja: Freedom’s Signal for the Indian, in which he discussed issues of importance for Native peoples, such as citizenship and education.
A special focus of Wassaja’s activism was protecting the land and water rights of his people, the Yavapai. His efforts were crucial in the creation of the Fort McDowell reservation in the ancestral homeland of the Yavapai in 1903. In the following years Wassaja and other activists successfully resisted BIA attempts to relocate the Yavapai. Wassaja contracted tuberculosis in 1922 and moved to Fort McDowell to spend his last months with his extended family.