Charles Eastman

Eastman was named Hakadah at his birth in Minnesota; his name meant "pitiful last" in Dakota. Eastman was so named because his mother died following his birth. He was the last of five children of Wakantakawin, a mixed-race woman also known as Winona (meaning "First-Born Daughter" in the Dakota language), or Mary Nancy Eastman.[3] She and Eastman's father, a Santee Dakota named Wak-anhdi Ota (Many Lightnings), lived on a Santee Dakota reservation near Redwood Falls, Minnesota.

Winona was the only child of Wakháŋ Inážiŋ Wiŋ (Stands Sacred) and Seth Eastman, a U.S. Army career officer and illustrator, who married at Fort Snelling in 1830, where he was stationed.[3] This post later developed as the city of Minneapolis. Stands Sacred was the fifteen-year-old daughter of Cloud Man, a Santee Dakota chief of French and Mdewakanton descent.[3] Seth Eastman was reassigned from Fort Snelling in 1832, soon after the birth of Winona. The girl was later called Wakantakawin. Eastman left the two there, in Dakota country.

In the Dakota tradition of naming to mark life passages, Hakadah was later named Ohíye S'a (Dakota: "always wins"). He had three older brothers (later known as John, David, and James after their conversion to Christianity) and an older sister Mary. During the Dakota War of 1862, Ohíye S'a was separated from his father Wak-anhdi Ota and siblings, and they were thought to have died. His maternal grandmother Stands Sacred (Wakháŋ Inážiŋ Wiŋ) and her family took the boy with them as they fled from the warfare into North Dakota and Manitoba, Canada.[5]

Fifteen years later Ohíyesa was reunited with his father and oldest brother John in South Dakota. The father had converted to Christianity, after which he took the name of Jacob Eastman. John also converted and took the surname Eastman. The Eastman family established a homestead in Dakota Territory. When Ohiyesa accepted Christianity, he took the name Charles Alexander Eastman.

His father strongly supported his sons getting an education in European-American style schools. Eastman and his older brother John attended a mission then a preparatory school, Kimball Union Academy from 1882-1883, and college. Eastman first attended Beloit College and Knox colleges; he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1887. He attended medical school at Boston University, where he graduated in 1890 and was among the first Native Americans to be certified as a European-style doctor.

His older brother John became a minister. Rev. John (Maȟpiyawaku Kida) Eastman served as a Presbyterian missionary at the Santee Dakota settlement of Flandreau, South Dakota.

Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)

Charles Eastman returned to the West, where he worked as an agency physician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Indian Health Service on the Pine Ridge Reservation and later at the Crow Creek Reservation, both in South Dakota. He cared for Indians after the Wounded Knee massacre. He later established a private medical practice after being forced out of his position, but was not able to make it succeed financially.

He married Elaine Goodale, a teacher from Massachusetts who headed the Indian school at Pine Ridge. While they were struggling, she encouraged him to write some of the stories of his childhood. At her suggestion (and with her editing help), he published the first two stories in 1893 and 1894 in St. Nicholas Magazine. It had earlier published poetry of hers.[6] These stories were collected in his first book.

Eastman became active with the new organization of the YMCA, working to support Native American youth. Between 1894 and 1898, he established 32 Indian groups of the YMCA, and also founded leadership programs and outdoor youth camps. In 1899, he helped recruit students for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which had been established as the first Indian boarding school run by the federal government. Given his own education and career, he favored children learning more about mainstream American culture.

In 1902, Eastman published a memoir, Indian Boyhood, recounting his first fifteen years of life among the Dakota Sioux during the later years of the nineteenth century. In the following two decades, he wrote ten more books, most concerned with his Native American culture. In the early 20th century, he was "one of the most prolific authors and speakers on Sioux ethnohistory and American Indian affairs."[3]

According to Ruth Ann Alexander, Elaine is not given enough credit for his success, although she worked intensively on Charles's stories as a way both to share his life and to use her own literary talent as his typist and editor.[6] Carol Lea Clark bellieves that the books under Eastman's name should be seen as a collaboration: "Together they produced works of a public popularity that neither could produce separately."[5] These views, however, are contested by other Eastman scholars, who suggest they reflect a bias toward a European-American influence in Eastman's published works. But, after the couple separated, Eastman stopped publishing his stories.

While Elaine may have helped Eastman edit his work, Ruth J. Heflin argues that Elaine's later claims that she wrote his works ring false. She did not make that claim until after Eastman's death.[7] It is likely, however, that Elaine was her husband's typist; Eastman apparently did not learn to type. He was reported to have lost his government position because he could not type his required reports.

Some of Eastman's books were translated into French, German, Czech and other European languages, as Europeans were very interested in Native American culture. They sold well enough to undergo regular reprints. In the early 21st century, a selection of his writings was published as The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) (2007).

Inspired by his writings, Ernest Thompson Seton sought Eastman's counsel in forming the Woodcraft Indians, which became a popular group for boys. They New York YMCA asked both Seton and Eastman to help them design YMCA Indian Scouts for urban boys, using rooftop gardens and city parks for their activities. In 1910, Seton invited Eastman to work with him and Daniel Carter Beard, of the Sons of Daniel Boone, to found the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).[8] Luther Gulick also consulted with Eastman to assist him and his wife Charlotte to develop the Camp Fire Girls.

With his fame as an author and lecturer, Eastman promoted the fledgling Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. He advised them on how to organize their summer camps, and directly managed one of the first Boy Scout camps along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. His daughter, Irene, worked as a counselor at a Camp Fire Girl camp in Pittsburgh. In 1915, the Eastman family organized their own summer camp at Granite Lake, New Hampshire, where the whole family worked for years.[6] Eastman served as a BSA national councilman for many years.[8]

In 1891, Eastman married the poet and Indian welfare activist Elaine Goodale, who was serving as Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. From New England, she had first taught at Hampton Institute, which then had about 100 Native American students, in addition to African Americans, and at an Indian day school in South Dakota. She supported expanding day schools on reservations for education, rather than sending Native American children away from their families to boarding schools.

The Eastmans had six children together: five daughters and a son. The marriage prospered at first, and Elaine was always interested in Indian issues. Eastman's many jobs, failure to provide financially for the family, and absences on the lecture circuit, put increasing strain on the couple.[6] In 1903, at Elaine's request, they returned to Massachusetts, where the family was based in Amherst.[6]

Eastman was traveling extensively, and Elaine took over managing his public appearances. He lectured about twenty-five times a year across the country. These were productive years for their literary collaboration; he published eight books and she published three. She and Charles separated around 1921, following the death of their daughter Irene in 1918 from influenza during the 1918 flu pandemic. They never divorced or publicly acknowledged the separation.[6]

Theodore Sargent, a recent biographer of Goodale, noted that Eastman gained acclaim for the nine books he published on Sioux life, whereas Elaine Goodale Eastman's seven books received little notice.[10]

Others have suggested their differing views on assimilation led to strain.[11] Alexander said the catalyst was a rumor that Eastman had an affair with Henrietta Martindale, a visitor[12] at their camp in 1921. He allegedly got her pregnant, after which he and Goodale separated. Although the rumor was said to have been untrue, the couple did not reconcile.[6]

Charles Eastman built a cabin on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, where he spent his later-year summers. He wintered in Detroit, Michigan with his only son Charles, Jr., also called Ohiyesa. On January 8, 1939 the senior Eastman died from a heart attack in Detroit at age eighty. His interment was at Grand Lawn Cemetery in Detroit.[13][14]

Elaine Goodale Eastman was close to two daughters and their families who lived in Massachusetts. Another lived in New Hampshire. Goodale Eastman died in 1953 and was buried in Northampton.[6]

• As a child, Ohiyesa had learned about herbal medicine from his grandmother. His education in western-style medicine from medical school enabled him to draw from both sides of his heritage in practicing as a doctor.
• His several books document Sioux Dakota culture at the end of the nineteenth century.
• In 1933, Eastman was the first person to receive the Indian Achievement Award.[15]
• A crater on Mercury was named for him.[16]

• Memories of an Indian Boyhood, autobiography; McClure, Philips, 1902.
• Indian Boyhood, New York; McClure, Phillips & Co., 1902. Online at Webroots.
• Red Hunters and Animal People, legends; Harper and Brothers, 1904.
• The Madness of Bald Eagle, legend; 1905.
• Old Indian Days, legends; McClure, 1907.
• Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold (co-author with his wife Ellen Goodale Eastman), legends; Little, Brown, 1909.
• Smoky Day's Wigwam Evenings (co-written with Ellen Goodale Eastman), 1910
• The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation, Houghton, 1911.
• Indian Child Life, nonfiction, Little, Brown, 1913.
• Indian Scout Talks: A Guide for Scouts and Campfire Girls, nonfiction, Little, Brown, 1914. (retitled Indian Scout Craft and Lore, Dover Publications). A 1914 reviewer writes, "If one should follow this guide, one would soon begin to doubt he is a white man".[17]
• The Indian Today: The Past and Future of the Red American, Doubleday-Page, 1915.
• From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian, autobiography; Little, Brown, 1916.
• Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, Little, Brown, 1918. Also Online at Webroots.

• Black Elk
• Bone Wars
• Chief Joseph
• Crazy Horse
• Geronimo
• Red Cloud
• Sitting Bull

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Studies
• I Remain Alive: the Sioux Literary Renaissance

• Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections.

• Heflin, Ruth J. I Remain Alive: the Sioux Literary Renaissance. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2000. Print.

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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles Eastman

• Charles Eastman at Find a Grave
• Works by Charles Eastman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Eastman at Internet Archive
• Works by Charles Eastman at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): links, bibliography
• Charles Eastman Resource page (bio, photos, bibliography, slideshows, excerpts, links, etc)
• Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections.