Lillie Rose Minoka-Hill (1876-1952)
Art by Meagan Young (tumblr, deviantart)
The daughter of a Mohawk mother and a white father, Lillie graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1899. While working at the Lincoln Institute (today Lincoln University), Lillie met an Oneida man named Charles Hill. The two married in 1905 and moved to his Wisconsin reservation. They had six children together before Charles died in 1916.
Lillie ran a clinic out of her home in Wisconsin. For much of that time, she was the only physician on the reservation. She was also technically unlicensed until 1934 when she finally took the Wisconsin medical board exam.
Lillie was officially adopted into the Oneida tribe on Thanksgiving Day 1947. She died in 1952. In front on the Oneida Health Center, there is a monument to Lillie. It reads: Physician, Good Samaritan, and friend to all religions in this community, erected to her memory by the Indians and white people. ‘I was sick and you visited me