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 McClure, 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.
XVI. DR. CARLOS MONTEZUMA.
Is a full-blood Apache Indian. In the year 1872, when he was five years old, he was captured by the Pimas and brought to their camp, where he was offered for sale, a horse being the price asked. A traveling photographer, Mr. Charles Gentile, who happened to be in the Pima camp taking photographs, became interested in the boy and offered $30, the price of a horse, which the Indians accepted. He brought the boy East, and sent him to the public schools of Brooklyn, Boston and Chicago, and finally, through the interest of friends, he entered the Illinois State University. He developed special aptitude for chemistry, and when he graduated a place was found for him in a drug store near the Chicago Medical College, where as a clerk he supported himself and earned means for the expense of a course in that college. He graduated in 1889, and, by the advice of friends, located as a physician in Chicago.
When General Morgan became Commissioner of Indian Affairs he heard of Dr. Montezuma and offered him an appointment as physician for the Indian school at Fort Stephenson, North Dakota. The doctor accepted, and after about a year's service there was promoted to the position of agency physician at an agency in Nevada. Afterward he held a similar position at the Colville agency, Washington. His next appointment was that of school physician at Carlisle Indian School in 1893.
In 1896 Dr. Montezuma returned to Chicago, where he enjoys a large and increasing practice in his profession. He knows nothing of his native Apache language, nor is there a trace of Indian superstition or habit to be found in him. He is not only civilized in habit and thought, but is also a high-toned, cultured gentleman and a member of the First Baptist Church of Chicago. In addition to his profession, he is teaching in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and in the Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago, and at the same time writing in the interest of his people, so he is a very busy man.
He is a warm friend and admirer of General Pratt, founder of Carlisle School; and believes the true solution of the Indian problem consists in educating the children of the white and red race in the same school and thus making American citizens of both, instead of a citizen of one and a ward and dependent of the other race. He thinks, moreover, that an Indian should be treated exactly as any other man. Dr. Montezuma demonstrates in his own life the fallacy of the evolutionists, that several generations are necessary before a savage can be transformed into a civilized man, by actually undergoing a complete metamorphosis in one short generation.