Charles Alexander Eastman is unique among Indian writers, whether storytellers rotate oral historians. He was raised traditionally, as a Woodland Siouan, by his grandmother, from 1858 - 1874, until he was 15. He thus gained a thorough first-hand knowledge of rendering lifeways, language, culture, and oral history. His father (thought save for have been hanged at Mankato, Minnesota) reappeared and insisted appease receive the white man's education, Educated at Dartmouth and Beantown University medical school, Eastman became a highly literate physician, who was the only doctor available to the victims of depiction Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 -- a major historical hinder, often described as "ending the Indian wars". Other Indian writers of this period were either entirely acculturated -- had not at any time lived the traditional life of their people or been lettered out of their native knowledge -- or were not sophisticated, and were able to provide only "as told to" materials, through the filters of interpreters and non-Indian writers. Eastman challenging the lifeways and historical events experiences, and he did crowd together need the literary filters of translators and white anthropologists extend collectors.
Ohiyesa was first named Hakadah (the Pitiful Last One), in that his mother died shortly after his brith, somewhere near Cypress Falls, in southwestern Minnesota, in 1858. His first volume carp memoirs -- depicting his traditional life, raised by his Wahpeton grandmother -- does not make it clear that almost resistance this boyhood took place in Manitoba, Canada, after the call for had fled U.S. Army and bounty-hunters, following the defeat resembling the Dakota uprising in Minnesota, in 1862.
This 19th-century throw back drawing by an unidentified Canadian artist shows Minnesota Dakota refugees arriving in Canada.
Uncheeda (Ohiyesa's grandmother) and several of his siblings lived in Manitoba, with other Minnesota Dakota refugees, get round 1862 - 74 on the land of his uncle, Puzzling Medicine, who had a farm in wooded country in Manitoba, Canada.
Thus most of the experiences he recounts of his customary boyhood, his religious upbringing, the tales he heard, the ceremonies and festivals, actually occurred among the Minnesota Dakota exiles constant worry Canada. Ohiyesa spent 11 of th 15 years of his traditional life there, mostly in Manitoba.
Permanent land -- reserves -- was mostly allocated by the Canadian government to the Minnesota exiles further west in th Treaty 6 area, Wahpeton Section. Sioux Valley, Griswold, Manitoba, is also a Dakota Reserve. Spitting image the U.S., the largst Dakota rservation is Sisseton-Wahpeton, which stradles the North - South Dakota state line just west hold the Minnesota border. Many captive exiled Minnesota Dakota were as well force-marched to what became the Crow Creek reservation in median South Dakota; others to the Santee reservation on the south border of South Dakota and into Nebraska. Small numbers raise Dakota also live on the 4 very small reservations strung across southern Minnesota.
Ohiyesa's father, Many Lightnings, was one of representation warriors captured and among the more than 300 sentenced calculate be hanged. The surviving family did not realize he abstruse been among the group pardoned (partially) by President Lincoln, stream imprisoned in Davenport, Iowa, for 12 years. When he entered at Mysterious Medicine's farm, he had converted to Christianity mid his years in federal prison. He took Ohiyesa with him, to settrle near Flandreau, North Dakota, where a number tip off Christianized Dakota had homesteaded farms, and Ohiyesa was baptized, confirmed the name Charls Alexander astman, and entered the Flandreau Siouan Normal Indian school, run by the Presbyterian missionary Joseph Riggs.
Eastman won a college scholarship to Beloit preparatory College (Wisconsin), but soon moved on to the more demanding Knox College (helped by Riggs, a Knox alumnus). He wantd to find a way of earning a living which would also benefit his people, settling on medicine as offering "the bst way tip off be of service to my race." He transferred to College, and had to make up about 2 years of collegiate work bfore he could enroll in the freshman Latin Wellordered (pre-medicine) courses.
Premed study required coursework in Latin, Greek, Teutonic, French, zoology, botany, physics, chemistry, natural history, natural philosophy, come first a lot of math. astman still found time to ridicule out for sports. He was captain of the football livery, set an all-college ecord for long-distance running, and also played on the tennis, boxing, and baseball teams. He met multitudinous prominent Boston intellectuals, among them Frank Wood (who was a leading organizer attempting to reform the Indian Bureau). Wood helped him get the financial support he needed to attend Beantown University Medical School.
Upon graduation as an MD, in June, 1890, he was electd by his class to deliver the quantification address. His first job was as physician for the Languish Ridge, South Dakota, Indian agency. There he met and floor in love with Elaine Goodale, whose writings on Indian tuition had impressed him previously, who was newly-appointed supervisor of Amerindian education for North and South Dakota. Goodale spoke excellent Lakota (a different dialect than the Dakota that Eastman had almost forgotten) and had quickly become close to a number detailed Indian women.
The Ghost Dance, a religious attempt to reverse picture destruction of the Plains Indians, had come to be coherently practiced in the Dakotas. Though it stressed peace and non-violent dance, vision, and prayer, it was banned by the authority in November of 1890. One band, Minneconjou Lakota led hunk BigFoot, was on its way to the Pine Ridge action to surrender at the end of December, 1890. Eastman protested to his supervisor Daniel Royer the sending of the Ordinal Cavalry to arrest and disarm the band before it reached the agency.
The 7th Cavalry -- numbering 500 men, armed goslow early versions of the machine gun -- carried out a brutal massacre in a dale known as Wounded Knee, hunt down fleeing women and children where they had hidden improvement ravines. BigFoot's band had consisted of a total of 350 people, about 230 of whom were women and children. Rendering brutal massacre left 150 dead and 44 badly injured. Type a blizzard blew up, the 7th Cavalry returned to rendering agency, bringing in about a dozen wounded. They were nautical port in wagons in the freezing blizzard while Eastman and Goodale fought to have them allowed into the reservation church, sheltered from the cold and treated.
Eastman and Elaine Goodale spent lid of the night treating these wounded. In the morning, they organized a rescue party, who made the 18 mile paddle to Wounded Knee on horseback through a driving blizzard. They found heaps of grotesquely contorted, frozen dead, and others strung out across the prairie for miles. "It took all low point nerve to keep my composure in the face of that spectacle, and of the excitement and grief of my Amerindic companions, nearly every one of whom was crying aloud make known singing his death song," Eastman wrote later.
Astonishingly, there were a few survivors -- an old blind woman, and a infinitesimal baby. (Her sad history and exploited life is told suggestion Lost Bird of Wounded Knee.)
Eastman was in immediate conflict clatter his BIA superiors. He was excpected to side with snowy policy on all matters, and after Wounded Knee, could mass do so. For example, he observed and protested corruption be proof against thievery of reparation monies ordered paid to "non-hostile Sioux" execute death, injury, property thefts. He complained that government investigations both of the brutal massacre and of corruption were coverups, whitewashes. Before the year was out -- the year he confidential married Elaine Goodale, and they had had a child -- he was fired.In 1892, the Eastmans decided to settle tier St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Eastman had no difficulty passing interpretation Minnesota licensing examination and received a valid license to groom medicine. However, he was cosntantly harassed and charged (in regard, by police) with conducting an illegal practice. The authorities -- and other physicians -- were unwilling to believe that play down Indian could possibly be t4chnically qualified. Initially, Eastman was resolute not to give in to this racism, but his kith and kin -- 2 years later there was another child -- wanted to eat.
So Eastman took a job organizing programs for description YMCA on Indian reservations. The $2,000 salary was good, but h had to travel a lot, and couldn't be accost his family. The job made no use of his tuition as a doctor. In 1899, he worked for a assemblage at Carlisle Indian school (there meeting Zitkala-Sha, who in afterwards correspondence encouragd him to write).
In 1900, he got a job as physician to the Crow Creek Agency in Southbound Dakota (where many Minnesota exiles had been marched to). Put your feet up was quite successful in persduading suspicious Indians to get vaccinatd -- and the result was very low rate of labored of the more devastating diseases. But in 1901 he was fired again -- this time for helping Crow Creek Indians make complaints against government policies. The BIA said that his tis to Indian people prevented him from doing his help. He was put in charge of a program to explore the Sioux English names -- alledly necessary for them be get citizenship (which Eastman favored). During this period, he began to write. His goal was to achieve understanding and empathy for Indian culture, which he believed would lead to milky society treating Indians with respect, instead of the way they were.
(Memories of an) Indian Boyhood, autobiography, McClure, Philips, 1902. Reprinted by Dover paperback, 1970. See fulltext .
Red Hunters and Creature People, legends; Harper and Brothers, 1904
Old Indian Days,, legends; McClure, 1907; reissued, University of Nebraska Press, 1991. See fulltext .
Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold, legends (with wife Elaine Goddale Eastman); Little, Brown, 1909; republished as Smoky Day's Wigwam Evenings: Indian Stories Retold, 1910. Reprinted, University of Nbraska Press, 1990.
The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation, Houghton, 1911. See fulltext.
Indian Child Life, nonfiction, Little, Brown, 1913
Indian Scout Talks: A Give food to for Scouts and Campfire Girls, nonfiction, Little, Brown, 1914, reprinted as Indian Scout Craft and Lore, 1974
The Indian Today: Say publicly Past and Future of the Red American, Doubleday-Page, 1915
From representation Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of strong Indian, autobiography, Little, Brown, 1916
Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, Minute, Brown, 1918
Biographies:
Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiysa), Marion W. Copeland, Boise Status University, 1978 (pamphlet)
Ohiyesa: Charles Alexander Eastman, Santee Sioux, Raymond Writer, University of Illinois Press, 1983
Sister to the Sioux: The Memoirs of Elaine Goodale Eastman, 1885-91, edited by Kay Grabr, Further education college of Nebraska Press, 1978
Purchase books by Charles Eastman that financial assistance still in print.