Search results for ""Author Charles A. Eastman""

In an earlier book, Indian Boyhood, Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa) recounted the story of his traditional Sioux Childhood and youth. From the Deep Woods to Civilization, first published in 1916, continues the narrative, beginning with his abrupt entry into the mainstream of Anglo-American life in 1873 at the age of fifteen. Eastman went on to become one of the best known educated Indians of his time, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University in 1890. From his first job as physician at Pine Ridge Agency, where he witnessed the events that culminated in the Wounded Knee massacre, he devoted his life, both in and out of government service, to helping his fellow Indians adapt to the white world while retaining the best of their own culture.

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Indian Boyhood (1902) was the literary debut of Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), a Santee Sioux whose eleven books aimed at bringing whites and Indians closer together. The favorable reception of the autobiographical Indian Boyhood would lead him to write such classic works as Old Indian Days (1907), Wig warn Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold (with Elaine Goodale Eastman, 1909), The Soul of the Indian (1911), From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), and Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1918), all reprinted as Bison Books. At the beginning of Indian Boyhood Eastman recalls the 1862 Sioux Uprising in Minnesota that sent his family into exile in Canada. He describes his childhood there, which ended when his father, who had been presumed dead, appeared to take him back to the United States. An Indian boy's training, child-hood games, harvesting and feasts, legends told around a campfire—Eastman relates all aspects of the rich traditional life of the Santee Sioux, which had already passed away by the time this book was published.

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The Soul of the Indian is Charles A. Eastman’s exploration and documentation of religion as he experienced it during the late nineteenth century. A Dakota physician and writer who sought to bring understanding between Native and non-Native Americans, Eastman (1858–1939) became one of the best-known Native Americans of his time and a significant intellectual figure whose clarity of vision endures today. In a straightforward manner Eastman emphasizes the universal quality and personal appeal of his Dakota religious heritage. First published in 1911, The Soul of the Indian draws on his childhood teaching and ancestral ideals to counter the research written by outsiders who treated the Dakotas’ ancient worldviews chiefly as a matter of curiosity. Eastman writes with deep respect for his ancestors and their culture and history, including a profound reverence for the environment, animals, and plants. Though written more than a century ago, Eastman could be speaking to our own time with its spiritual confusion and environmental degradation. The new introduction by Brenda J. Child grounds this important book in contemporary studies.

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