Books with author Charles A. Eastman

The story of Charles A. Eastman (1858-1939), whose Sioux name was Ohiyesa (Winner), is itself as wonderful as a fairy tale. Born in a wigwam, and early left motherless, he was brought up, like the little Hiawatha, by a good grandmother. When he was four years old, war broke out between his people and the United States government. The Indians were defeated and many of them were killed. Some fled northward into Canada and took refuge under the British flag, among them the writer of this book, with his grandmother and an uncle. His father was captured by the whites. After ten years of that life, his father, whom was pardoned by President Lincoln and released from the military prison, made the long and dangerous journey to Canada to find and bring back his youngest son. Then educated at Dartmouth and at Boston University Medical School, Eastman became a highly literate physician, who was the only doctor available to the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. This book was originally published in 1913.

“The most prominent literary spokesman of the Indian … his achievement will remain unique.” –New York Medical Journal “Many a thrilling episode … a gripping lesson in each chapter … interesting.” –American Indian Magazine“Breaking down prejudices and destroying old enmities … a good story delightfully told.” –The Independent“Indian Boyhood,” published first in 1902 and in many subsequent editions, pictured the first of three distinct periods in the life of the writer of this book, Charles Alexander Eastman. His childhood and youth were a part of the free wilderness life of the first American — a life that is gone forever!Eastman’s 1916 book “From the Deep Woods to Civilization Begins” where the writer's earlier book “Indian Boyhood” left off, when he left his wild life to enter mission school, and continues thru his years at Beloit and Dartmouth, his medical studies at Boston university and his subsequent work for his people as government physician and Y. M. C. A. Indian secretary. This simple sincere account not only covers the facts in the life of this nearly full-blooded Sioux Indian, but gives glimpses of his feelings, his impressions gathered in college and later life, and his aspirations for himself and his people. In this unique story of his school days Dr. Eastman tells of his upward climb to civilization. It was not until he had entered college that the full meaning of civilization flashed upon the mental vision of this Indian youth. "I saw it as the development of every natural resource;" he tells us, "the broad brotherhood of mankind; the blending of all languages and the gathering of all races' under one religious faith." When this realization came he says a little later, "I took off my soft moccasins and put on the heavy and clumsy but durable shoes." There is a wealth of meaning for the Indian in that last sentence. Eastman writes of his Indian tribal life:"During the summer and winter of 1871, the band of Sioux to which I belonged — a clan of the Wah'petons, or "Dwellers among the Leaves" — roamed in the upper Missouri region and along the Yellowstone River. In that year I tasted to the full the joy and plenty of wild existence. I saw buffalo, elk, and antelope in herds numbering thousands. The forests teemed with deer, and in the "Bad Lands" dwelt the Big Horns or Rocky Mountain sheep. At this period, grizzly bears were numerous and were brought into camp quite commonly, like any other game. "IN the summer of 1910, I accepted a commission to search out and purchase rare curios and ethnological specimens for one of the most important collections in the country. Very few genuine antiques are now to be found among Indians living on reservations, and the wilder and more scattered bands who still treasure them cannot easily be induced to give them up.""My chief object has been, not to entertain, but to present the American Indian in his true character before Americans. The barbarous and atrocious character commonly attributed to him has dated from the transition period, when the strong drink, powerful temptations, and commercialism of the white man led to deep demoralization. Really it was a campaign of education on the Indian and his true place in American history."Charles Alexander Eastman (1858 – 1939) was a Santee Dakota physician educated at Boston University, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. In the early 20th century, he was "one of the most prolific authors and speakers on Sioux ethnohistory and American Indian affairs. He is considered the first Native American author to write American history from the Native American point of view.

The stories in Old Indian Days focus mainly on Sioux bands of the Upper Midwest in prereservation times, when contact with whites was minimal. Charles A. Eastman, a mixed-blood Sioux who earned renown as the author of nearly a dozen books, was on home ground in writing about the traditional life of his people, their customs, warm family relations, reverence for animals, and struggle for survival. Originally published in 1907, Old Indian Days alludes to historical figures like Little Crow and Tamahay and to an event that Eastman experienced as a small boy, the 1862 Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. The excitement of intertribal warfare and the warrior's lone exploits, as well as his more tender side in trying to fathom the mysteries of womanhood and the eternal are seen in "The Love of Antelope," "The Madness of Bald Eagle." "The Singing Spirit," and other stories. Women enter into these evocations of Indian life most memorably. In "The Peace-Maker" a Sioux woman takes a valiant stand against the consumption of whiskey. Other heroines, including Blue Sky and She-Who-Has-a-Soul, are instrumental in bringing peace between tribes and between races. "Winona, the Woman-Child" and "Winona, the Child-Woman" are among those stories revealing the everyday life of the Indian woman, her rearing and education and influence. In her introduction to this Bison Book edition, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines the extent to which the stories are original creations and reinterpretations of existing oral accounts.

Indian Boyhood By Charles A. Eastman In 1902, Eastman published a memoir, Indian Boyhood, recounting his first fifteen years of life among the Dakota Sioux during the nineteenth century. In the following two decades, he wrote 10 more books, most concerned with his Native American culture. The most popular of those is also contained in this book: "The Soul of the Indian, An Interpretation 1911."

The Memoirs of an Indian boyhood, is and autobiography by Charles Eastman. Eastman was a Native American physician, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Active in politics and issues on American Indian rights, he worked to improve the lives of youths, and founded 32 Native American chapters of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). He also helped found the Boy Scouts of America. He is considered the first Native American author to write American history from the native point of view.

That these stories about animals were written by an Indian accounts largely, perhaps, for a certain quality differentiating them from others of their class. Many current stories of bird and beast show a wider knowledge of animals than do these under consideration. In this collection, however, there is expressed a feeling of camaraderie between the author and the subjects of the tales, a kinship between man and the animal world, which is not expressed elsewhere.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

This Native American history states: "You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly. He is not willing that all your knowledge of the race that formerly possessed this continent should come from the lips of strangers and enemies, or that you should think of them as blood-thirsty and treacherous, as savage and unclean."

The classic historical description of the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the views of the settlers.<p> Charles Alexander Eastman was a Native American writer, physician, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Active in politics and issues on American Indian rights, he also helped found the Boy Scouts of America.

"Has a many-sided appeal …. This stimulating book is one of the few that really deserve the over-worked term, a human document." — Publishers Weekly. In the first of his memoirs, the popular Indian Boyhood, Charles Alexander Eastman recounted his traditional upbringing among the Santee Sioux. From the Deep Woods to Civilization resumes his story, recounting his abrupt departure from tribal life at age 15 to pursue his education among whites — a path that led him to certification as a medical doctor, the publication of many successful books, and a lifetime of tireless efforts to benefit his native culture. Through his social work and his writings, Eastman became one of the best-known Indians of the early twentieth century and an important force in interpreting and relating the spiritual depth and greatness of the Native American traditions.Eastman became a physician in hopes of serving the Native American community; he received a Bachelor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University in 1890. He began college just a few months after the Battle of Little Bighorn, and his first job as a physician at Pine Ridge Reservation coincided with the Ghost Dance uprisings that culminated in the U. S. Army's attack at Wounded Knee. The only doctor available to assist the massacre's victims, Eastman writes movingly of the event's appalling inhumanity and injustice. Afterward, he lobbied Capitol Hill on behalf of the Sioux and devoted the rest of his life, both in and out of government service, to helping Indians adapt to the white world while retaining the best of their own culture. His autobiography resonates with the impassioned thoughts and experiences of a profound contributor to the richness of American culture.