Lula Owl Gloyne
First Eastern Band Cherokee Indian Registered Nurse
Thank you to Phoebe Ann Pollitt, PhD, RN’s helpful research for this story.
Lula Owl Gloyne was born in 1891 on the Qualla Boundary, the land of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians that comprises 57,000 acres of property purchased by tribal members in the 1800s. Her father was a blacksmith of the Cherokee tribe and her mother was a traditional basket maker and potter of the Catawba tribe. In speaking tribal different languages, they used English at home to communicate. Gloyne was the first of ten children, attended a mission school, and continued her education at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), one of the first post-bellum colleges established for Black Americans in 1868.* She taught for a year after graduating and then entered the Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia in 1914 where she was awarded the gold medal in obstetrical nursing. Gloyne became the first Eastern Band Cherokee Indian registered nurse in 1916.
“All but unknown outside of North Carolina,” she became possibly the first Native American registered nurse in the country. Her first job was at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal School as a missionary school nurse on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Wakapala, South Dakota. According to her granddaughter, her duties extended beyond the school infirmary and also involved immunization campaigns, delivering babies, and providing home care to the aging and infirm. In 1917, she became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, becoming the only member of the Eastern band of Cherokee Indians to serve as an officer in World War I. Returning to the Qualla Boundary after the war in 1921, she found no physician and a lack of healthcare access.
She was known to traverse difficult terrain to deliver babies, care for sick families or sew up wounds in the field. There was no full-time physician and no hospital at the Qualla Boundary. Lula was the first full-time, Western-trained health care provider available in the rural area — Red Cross
By traveling to petition the U.S. Congress and the Commissioner on Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. in 1934, her advocacy was instrumental in the building of the first hospital. The Bureau of Indian Affairs built a small hospital in the Qualla Boundary for the Cherokee People in 1937, where she became the Head Nurse. It was staffed by one physician, two Registered Nurses, and one Public Health Nurse.
She also continued as a reservation Field Nurse in which she conducted important public health surveys, administered free immunizations, and provided home health, hospice and midwifery services. Though she started out by traveling the reservation on horseback, the government eventually bought her a car as paved roads came to the reservation. She held various nursing positions until her retirement in 1969 at the age of 77.
Even after her retirement she continued to be involved in her community’s health needs. She was honored by District 23 of the North Carolina Nurses Association in 1978, inducted into the North Carolina Nurse’s Hall of Fame in 2015, and was bestowed as a “Beloved Woman of the Tribe,” one of just a few women given the title. She died in 1985.
Further Resources
Hear oral history recordings with Lula Owl Gloyne or read the transcription.
Learn about the role of Mission Schools and Field Nurses in Native American history and the nursing profession.
Support the National Alaska Native American Indian Nurses Association.
*Footnote: From 1878 until 1923, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute admitted and educated American Indian students alongside African American students and graduated 1,000 Indian students from over 20 tribes during this period.
Sources
The information for the above biography was sourced from Minority Nurse, North Carolina Nursing History, NCPedia, Red Cross Chat, and Cherokee One Feather.
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- Revolutionary Love Learning Hub provides free tools for learners and educators to use love as fuel towards ourselves, our opponents, and to others so that we can embody a world where we see no strangers.
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