Purpose: This paper explores early American Indian cultures and women's roles within intricate healing networks through orality as the vehicle for knowledge. The contribution of early American Indians to the history of nursing has largely not been recognized, yet they maintained traditions of caring and healing for thousands of years on these very lands.

Method: A focused ethnography on aging including members' roles and healing practices was performed on a Southwest Pueblo at the turn of the last century. A comparative literature and ethnographic review was conducted in preparation.

Findings: Health and balance is and was maintained within Indian tribes by a variety of groups, such as priest and medicine societies, lay midwives, bone pressers (twins), healers, and nurses. Through oral history, the story of American Indian women who nursed not only the individual, but also the community have been passed down. Ideas of public health, communicability of disease, surgery, and other health concepts and modalities were known and practiced by America's indigenous people. Nursing and healing networks were necessary, recognized, and imparted by the early American Indian providers. Payment was made in some form such as tobacco, food, or prayers.

Implications: This hidden ‘system' survives today in many tribes with many variances, coinciding with western nursing and medicine. As American Indians grow in number to over four million people, nursing needs to recognize this worldview as a possibility and the historic roots of this system formed long before the advent of modern nursing.