From the deep woods to civilization

This book was published in 1916. The author was born in 1858 a native North American of the Sioux Nation of the clan of the Wah'petons or "Dwellers among the Leaves." Then living in the southern region of what is now known as Manitoba, the book opens with the 15 year-old author reflecting: "From childhood I was consciously trained to be a man; that was, after all, the basic thing; but after this I was trained to be a warrior and a hunter, and not to care for money or possessions, but TO BE IN THE BROADEST SENSE A PUBLIC SERVANT." (emphasis added by reviewer) The author's father---who had been thought by his tribe to have been killed by European colonists in The Sioux Wars fought between 1854 and 1890---had actually been a prisoner of war for years. As such, he had been converted by missionaries from his native religion (that honored the "Great Mystery"; author's quotes) to Christianity. In the autumn of his fifteenth year of life, the author's father returned to the tribe to ask his son to come to live in the European colonists' "civilization" in Flandreau, South Dakota with him. After deep introspection, the author complied with his father's wishes and ultimately completed a European-American style of formal education and became a New England physician. "Eastman first attended Beloit College and Knox colleges; he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1887. He went on to medical school at Boston University, where he graduated in 1889 and was among the first Native Americans to be certified as a European-style doctor.
Excerpts from he books:
"INDIAN BOYHOOD," published first in 1902 and in many subsequent editions, pictures the first of three distinct periods in the life of the writer of this book. His childhood and youth were a part of the free wilderness life of the first American a life that is gone forever! By dint of many persuasions, the story has now been carried on from the point of that plunge into the unknown with which the first book ends, a change so abrupt and so overwhelming that the boy of fifteen "felt as if he were dead and traveling to the spirit land." We are now to hear of a single-hearted quest throughout eighteen years of adolescence and early maturity, for the attainment of the modern ideal of Christian culture : and again of a quarter of a century devoted to testing that hard-won standard in various fields of endeavor, partly by holding it up before his own race, and partly by interpreting their racial ideals to the white man, leading in the end to a partial reaction in favor of the earlier, the simpler, perhaps the more spiritual philosophy. It is clearly impossible to tell the whole story, but much that cannot be told may be read "between the lines." The broad outlines, the salient features of an uncommon experience are here set forth in the hope that they may strengthen for some readers the conception of our common humanity.