Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs / From Cofachiqui, the Indian Princess, and Powhatan; down to and including Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Also an answer, from the latest research, of the query, Whence came the Indian? Together with a number of thrillingly interesting Indian stories and anecdotes from history

by Norman B. Wood

XV. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DOCTOR EASTMAN.

Charles Alexander Eastman, whose Indian name is Ohiyesa, "The Winner," was born in Minnesota about 1858. His father was a full-blood Sioux of a leading family, by the name of Many Lightnings, and his mother a half-blood, called in Indian The Goddess, or in English Nancy Eastman. She died soon after the birth of Ohiyesa, who was carefully reared by his paternal grandmother.

When he was four years old the so-called "Minnesota massacre" broke up his family and drove the uncle and grandmother, with the boy, into exile in Manitoba, where they roamed about for ten years, living by the chase. In the meantime Ohiyesa was educated by his uncle, a notable hunter and warrior, in woodcraft and all the lore of the red man.

At the age of fifteen the boy was sought and found by his father, who had in the meantime embraced Christianity and civilization. He brought him to his home at Flandreau, South Dakota, a little community of citizen Indians, and sent him to school. After a year at a mission day-school and two years at Dr. Riggs's Indian boarding-school at Santee, Nebraska, he went east to Beloit, Wisconsin, then to Knox College, Illinois, taking his final year of preparatory work at Kimball Union Academy, New Hampshire. He entered Dartmouth College in 1883, where he was successful both in scholarship and athletics, his specialty in the latter being long-distance running, and graduated in 1887. He graduated in medicine in 1890 at the Boston University.

Immediately after graduation, Dr. Eastman was appointed Government Physician to the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota, and served through the "Ghost Dance War" and for two years afterward. He married, in 1891, Miss Elaine Goodale, of Massachusetts. In 1893 he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and for several years engaged in medical practice, and also represented the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations among the Indians. He afterward went to Washington as attorney for the Santee Sioux, and for several years furthered their interests at the National Capital.

His first literary work was a series of sketches of his early life for St. Nicholas, published in 1893-4. These were begun without much deliberation and originally intended to preserve some of his recollections for his own children. Several sketches and stories were published by other magazines, and in 1902 his first book, "Indian Boyhood," embodying the story of his own youth, was published by M^cClure, Phillips & Co. Two years later a book of wild animal and Indian hunting tales, "Red Hunters and the Animal People," appeared with the imprint of Harper and Brothers.

Dr. Eastman has recently been appointed by the Government to revise the allotment rolls of the Sioux, grouping them under appropriate family names. He is well known as a lecturer and is everywhere welcomed for his sympathetic interpretations of Indian life and character.

Beyond a doubt he is, as Hamlin Garland says, "far and away the ablest living expositor of Sioux life and character."

The Boston Transcript says of him: "Dr. Charles A. Eastman is a Sioux Indian, and in his life, which began in 1858, has traversed almost the whole course of human civilization, from the life of a very child of the woods to that of the honored graduate of the white man's college and professional school of highest rank. . . . Dr. Eastman came back to his Alma Mater last month, when the corner-stone of the new Dartmouth Hall was laid, and at the banquet in the evening he made so good a speech that President Tucker had the warm applause of the great company when he exclaimed, 'Almost thou persuadest me to be an Indian!'"

Dr. Eastman's present home is Amherst, Massachusetts.