The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation

by Charles A. Eastman

Overview

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. His maternal grandmother, daughter of Chief Cloudman of the Mdewankton Sioux, was married to a well-known western artist, Captain Seth Eastman, and in 1847 their daughter Mary Nancy Eastman became the wife of Chief Many Lightnings, a Wahpeton Sioux. Their fifth child, Charles Alexander Eastman, as a four-year old was given the name Ohiyesa (the Winner). During the Sioux Uprising of 1862 Ohiyesa became separated from his father-his mother had died soon after his birth-and fled from the reservation in Minnesota to Canada under the protection of his grandmother and uncle. There he was schooled in the Indian ways until the age of fifteen, when he was reunited with his father, who took him back to his homestead in present South Dakota.

Eastman went on to become one of the best-known Indians of his time, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later. From his first appointment as a physician at Pine Ridge Agency, where he witnessed the events that culminated in the Wounded Knee massacre, he sought to bring understanding between Native and non-Native Americans. In addition to two autobiographical works, Indian Boyhood (1902) and From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), Charles Eastman wrote nine other books, some in collaboration with his wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman (who has told her story in Sister to the Sioux, also a Bison Book).

In The Soul of the Indian, first published in 1911, the author's aim has been "to paint the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803267015
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	04/01/1980
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.48(d)
Lexile:	1360L (what's this?)

About the Author

Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) (1858–1939) was a Dakota physician and writer. When as a young child his life was upended by the Dakota War of 1862, Eastman fled from the Dakota homelands in Minnesota to Canada under the protection of his grandmother and uncle. There he was schooled in indigenous lifeways until the age of fifteen, when his father took him back to his homestead in present-day South Dakota. Eastman received a bachelor of science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later. His first appointment as a physician was at the Pine Ridge Agency, where he cared for the Lakota victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre. In addition to two autobiographical works, Indian Boyhood (Nebraska, 1991) and From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Nebraska, 1977), Eastman wrote nine other books, some in collaboration with his wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman. Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe) is Northrop Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of several books on Native American history, including Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900–1940 (Nebraska, 2000).
 

Table of Contents

Introduction by Brenda J. Child
Foreword
1. The Great Mystery
2. The Family Altar
3. Ceremonial and Symbolic Worship
4. Barbarism and the Moral Code
5. The Unwritten Scriptures
6. On the Border-Land of Spirits

Editorial Reviews

“Like his Dakota ancestors, Eastman was a thinker and a diplomat. He offered up this book and others as a warriors’ feast, even as he could have dissolved into rage and silence. Instead, he chose paper and pen. The Soul of the Indian concludes with a complex interpretation of Dakota and Ojibwe people, possibly more than Americans were prepared to understand at the time of its publication. Eastman wrote in a deceptively simple hand, with a subtle plea for justice for American Indians. He concludes with a beautiful story of goodwill and peace, the moral subtext of The Soul of the Indian. As Eastman exhorted his readers, American Indians held ‘a unique character among the peoples of the earth’ so that when Americans reflect on Indians, ‘let that remembrance be just.’ This was his warriors’ feast.”—from Brenda Child’s introduction

Brenda Child