Susan Law McBeth

Susan Law McBeth (1830 – May 26, 1893) was the Presbyterian missionary to American Indians and author. She worked among the Choctaw in Indian Territory and, for two decades, among the Nez Perce in Idaho. She was fondly called as "little mother” by the Nez Perce.

Biography Born in 1830, at Doune, in south central Scotland, Susan Law McBeth was the daughter of stonemason Alexander McBeath of Perth and his wife Mary Henderson of Sterling. In 1832, her family emigrated to America and settled in Wellsville, Ohio. She studied at the Steubenville Female Seminary.

In 1858 the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church asked her to work with the Choctaw. When the outbreak of Civil War interrupted her mission, she returned to Fairfield University where she became its temporary assistant director.

In 1863 she became one of the first female agents of the United States Christian Commission, a Protestant-affiliated medical relief organization, which provided medical assistance to the Civil War soldiers stationed at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, Missouri. The cabin that she lived in, Sue McBeth Cabin, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

She assisted Alice C. Fletcher, American ethnologist, who was appointed by the federal government to individually distribute the tribally held Nez Perce land under the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. She compiled but did not complete a dictionary of Nez Perce language, which was sent to the Smithsonian Institution after her death. During the war years she also wrote tracts for soldiers, which was published as Seeds Scattered Broadcast in 1869.

She died on May 26, 1893, in Mount Idaho, and was buried near the Kamiah Mission Church. After Susan died, Kate continued the missionary work until her own death in 1915.