Charles Eastman

Charles Alexander Eastman[1] (born Hakadah and later named Ohíye S'a; February 19, 1858 – January 8, 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 [2] and American Indian affairs."[3]

For other people named Charles Eastman, see Charles Eastman (disambiguation).
Charles Eastman
Ohíye S'a
Charles Eastman
BornFebruary 19, 1858
Near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, United States
DiedJanuary 8, 1939(1939-01-08) (aged 80)
Detroit, Michigan, United States
Education
Spouse(s)Elaine Goodale Eastman

Eastman was of Santee Dakota, English and French ancestry. After working as a physician on reservations in South Dakota, he became increasingly active in politics and issues on Native American rights, he worked to improve the lives of youths, and founded thirty-two Native American chapters[4] of 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 American point of view.

Early life and education

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 Seth Eastman, a U.S. Army officer and illustrator, and Wakháŋ Inážiŋ Wiŋ (Stands Sacred), who married at Fort Snelling in 1830.[3] This post later developed as 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. Winona was later called Wakantakawin.

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 (John, David, and James) 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 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 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.

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

Career
Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)

Charles Eastman 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.

As they were struggling financially, his European-American wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman, encouraged him to write some of the stories of his childhood. At her suggestion (and with her editing help), he published the first two in 1893 and 1894 in St. Nicholas Magazine. It had earlier published poetry of hers.[6] These stories were collected in his first book.

Between 1894 and 1898, Eastman established 32 Indian groups of YMCA, and established 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.

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 Ruth Ann Alexander, Elaine is not given enough credit although she worked intensively on Charles's stories as way to share his life and use her literary talent as both his typist and editor.[6] Carol Lea Clark claims that the books 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 because of their bias toward a European American influence in his publications. Some of these assumptions are based the fact that Eastman stopped publishing in the years following the couple’s separation.

While it is plausible that Elaine may have helped Eastman edit his work, Ruth J. Heflin argues that Elaine's later claims that she actually wrote his works ring false, as she did not come forward with until after Eastman's death.[7] However, it can be more safely assumed that Elaine was her husband's typist; Eastman apparently did not learn to type, and was reported to have lost his government position because he could not type his reports.

Some of Eastman's books were translated into French, German, Czech and other European languages, and sold well enough to undergo regular reprints. More recently, 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. 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] Charles served as a BSA national councilman for many years.[8]

National spokesman

In 1911, Eastman was chosen to represent the American Indian at the Universal Races Congress in London.[8] Throughout his speeches and teachings, he emphasized the importance of seeking peace and living in harmony with nature.

He was active in national politics, particularly in matters dealing with Indian rights. He served as a lobbyist for the Dakota between 1894 and 1897.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt assigned Eastman the job of help Sioux (Dakota, Nakota, Lakota) tribal members to choose English legal names to prevent individuals and families from losing allotted lands due to confusion over cultural naming conventions and spellings. Eastman was one of the co-founders of the Society of American Indians (SAI), which pushed for freedom and self-determination for the American Indian. From 1923 to 1925, Eastman served as an appointed US Indian inspector under President Calvin Coolidge.

The Calvin Coolidge administration (1923-1929) invited Eastman to the Committee of 100, a reform panel examining federal institutions and activities dealing with Indian nations. The committee recommended that the government conduct an in-depth investigation into reservation life (health, education, economics, justice, civil rights, etc.). This was commissioned through the Department of Interior and conducted by the Brookings Institution, resulting in the groundbreaking 1928 Meriam Report. The findings and recommendations served as the basis of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration's New Deal for the Indian, including the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which encouraged tribes to establish self-government according to constitutional models.

In 1925, the Bureau of Indian Affairs asked Eastman to investigate the death and burial location of Sacagawea, the young woman who guided and interpreted for the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. He determined that she died of old age at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming on April 9, 1884. More recently discovered contemporary records, however, have led modern historians to believe that Sacagewea actually died in 1812 as a result of an illness following childbirth at Fort Lisa (North Dakota).[9]

Personal life

In 1891, Eastman married the poet and Indian welfare activist Elaine Goodale, who was serving as Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. 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]

Charles 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 and got her pregnant, after which he and Goodale separated. Although the rumor was said to have been untrue, the couple did not reconcile.[6]

Later life

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 Evergreen Cemetery.[13]


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

Legacy and honors
  • As a child, Ohiyesa had learned about herbal medicine from his grandmother. Going to medical school enabled him to draw from both sides of his heritage in becoming a doctor.
  • 1933, Eastman was the first to receive the Indian Achievement Award.[14]
  • His several books document Sioux Dakota culture at the end of the nineteenth century.
  • A crater on Mercury was named for him.[15]

Film portrayal

Works
  • 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".[16]
  • 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.
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See also

Additional information

References
  1. "Biography".
  2. J. DeMalli, Raymond (Autumn 1993). "These Have No Ears". Ethnohistory. 40 (4): 515–538. doi:10.2307/482586. JSTOR 482586.
  3. A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, "Eastman's Maternal Ancestry", Studies in American Indian Literature, Series 2, Vol. 17, No.2, Summer 2005, accessed 4 April 2011.
  4. The Indian History of American Institution. https://books.google.com/books?id=CNLMam3j_48C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=thirty-two+Native+American+chapters+of+YMCA&source=bl&ots=GausWsMNA7&sig=ACfU3U13G1lTb_rUTh_G7sfP3JMIsDBV0A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx6I2f4tblAhWwGTQIHQNQAcoQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=thirty-two%20Native%20American%20chapters%20of%20YMCA&f=false.CS1 maint: location (link)
  5. Carol Lea Clark, "Charles A. Eastman (Ohiseya) and Elaine Goodale Eastman: A Cross-Cultural Collaboration", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 1994, JSTOR 464110, accessed 3 February 2011
  6. Ruth Ann Alexander, "Elaine Goodale Eastman and the Failure of the Feminist Protestant Ethic", Great Plains Quarterly, Spring 1988, accessed 3 February 2011
  7. Heflin, pp. 53–58
  8. Eastman, Charles; Michael Oren Fitzgerald (2007). The essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): light on the Indian world. World Wisdom. ISBN 978-1-933316-33-8.
  9. Drumm, Stella M., ed. (1920). Journal of a Fur-trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri: John Luttig, 1812–1813, St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society.
  10. Ruth Ann Alexander, "Review: Theodore D. Sargent, Theodore D., The Life of Elaine Goodale Eastman", in Great Plains Quarterly, 26:3 (Summer 2006), accessed 3 February 2011
  11. "Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) Resource Page - Biography, Photos, Slideshows, Links".
  12. Sargent, Theodore; Raymond Wilson (Fall 2010). "The Estrangement of Charles Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman". South Dakota History. 40 (3): 213.
  13. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9798329/charles_alexander_hakada-_pitiful_last_ohiyesa-eastman
  14. "Charles A. Eastman (Ohiseya)" Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine, Special Collections: Native American Authors, ipl2, accessed 8 Dec 2008
  15. Johns Hopkins University Carnegie Institution for Science, Announcement and Photograph of Crater Named for Dr. Eastman Archived 2014-12-18 at the Wayback Machine (last visited March 15, 2015).
  16. "Indian Scout Talks". The Independent. Dec 14, 1914. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
  • Heflin, Ruth J. I Remain Alive: the Sioux Literary Renaissance. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2000. Print.
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