Charles Eastman

Charles Alexander Eastman (born Hakadah, later named Ohíyesa, February 19, 1858 – January 8, 1939) was an American physician, writer, and social reformer. He was "one of the most prolific authors and speakers on Sioux ethnohistory and American Indian affairs" in the early 20th century.

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: he founded thirty-two Native American chapters of the YMCA and helped to found the Boy Scouts of America. He was an early Native American historian.

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. 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. 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, Ohíyesa 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.

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.

Career

350px|thumbnail|left|Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa)

Medical practice

Shortly after graduating from medical school, 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 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. Of the 38 or more victims he treated, only seven died. 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, after serving as a teacher elsewhere in South Dakota, had been appointed as the first Supervisor of Education for the newly divided states of North and South Dakota. 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.

Historians debate how Eastman and his wife worked together through the decades of his publishing career. Theodore Sargent, a biographer of Elaine, noted that Eastman gained acclaim for the nine books he published on Sioux life, whereas Elaine's seven books received little notice. 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. After the couple separated in 1921, Eastman never published another book. 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. Some Native scholars suggest that in fact, there is both content and style in Eastman's writing that reflects Indigenous techniques.

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. 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. 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).

Youth organizations

Inspired by his writings, Ernest Thompson Seton sought Eastman's counsel in forming the Woodcraft Indians, which became a popular group for boys. The 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). 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, Camp Oáhe, at Granite Lake, New Hampshire, where the whole family worked for years.

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. 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. In 1903, at Elaine's request, they returned to Massachusetts, where the family was based in Amherst. Alexander said the catalyst was a rumor that Eastman had an affair with Henrietta Martindale, a visitor at their camp in 1921. He allegedly got her pregnant, after which he and Goodale separated. Although the paternity of this child, named Bonno by her mother, was never proven, letters from Henrietta and from Elaine strongly point to Charles Eastman as the father. The controversies over this child added to the Eastmans' decision to separate.

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 heart failure in Detroit at age eighty. His interment was at Evergreen Cemetery in Detroit. In 1984, the Dartmouth Alumni Club and Eastman biographer Raymond Wilson donated a grave marker.

Elaine Goodale Eastman spent the remainder of her life living with two of her daughters and their families in Northampton, Massachusetts. Goodale Eastman died in 1953 and her ashes were scattered in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Northampton. His education in Western-style medicine from medical school might have enabled him to draw from both sides of his heritage in practicing as a doctor, but he consistently refused to offer up fake "Indian potions" or other so-called cures as were often advertised in the newspapers of the day.

He was the only Native American person invited to speak at the First Universal Races Congress in London in 1911.
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.
A crater on Mercury was named for him.

Film portrayal

In the HBO film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007), Eastman was portrayed at different ages by the actors Adam Beach and Chevez Ezaneh.
The Vision Maker Media documentary OHIYESA The Soul of an Indian (2018), follows Kate Beane, a young Dakota woman, as she traces the life of her celebrated relative, Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa).

Works

Autobiography

Legends

Non-fiction

(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".
Also Online at Webroots.

References

External links

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.
Charles Eastman papers, MS-829, Dartmouth College Archives and Manuscripts
Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) at Minnesota Historical Society.