Susette LaFlesche Tibbles

From NativeWiki

Susette LaFlesche Tibbles (1854-1903) was a well-known Native American lecturer, writer, and artist from the Omaha tribe in Nebraska. She was of Ponca and Iowa ancestry; her father, Joseph LaFlesche, called Iron Eye, was the last recognized chief of the Omaha. Also known by her Indian name Inshata-Theumba, or Bright Eyes, she was the interpreter for Standing Bear during his trial at Fort Omaha, Nebraska in 1879. It was there that Standing Bear successfully argued before the United States District Court that Indians were persons under the law, and had all the rights of U.S. citizens. She was later married to Thomas Tibbles, the journalist who had been instrumental in bringing that case before the court. Following the trial, Bright Eyes accompanied Standing Bear, Thomas Tibbles, and others on a speaking tour of the eastern United States. When poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entertained them at his home at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he said of Bright Eyes, "This could be Minnehaha," referring to the legendary Indian heroine in his poem "The Song of Hiawatha." She also appeared before a Congressional committee, where she spoke for the rights of Native Americans. At the time of her death at age 49, she was eulogized in the U.S. Senate.

Bright Eyes was the sister of the physician Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte and of Smithsonian ethnologist Francis LaFlesche.