The Soul of the Indian

By Charles A. Eastman

Eastman was a Native American physician, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Active in politics and issues on American Indian rights, he worked to improve the lives of youths and founded 32 Native American chapters of the Young Men's Christian Association (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 point of view.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Feb 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625581808

Charles A. Eastman

Charles Eastman (1858-1939) was a Santee Dakota physician, lecturer, activist, and writer. Born Hakadah in Minnesota, he was the last of five children of Mary Nancy Eastman, a woman of mixed racial heritage who died shortly after giving birth. Separated from his father and siblings during the Dakota War of 1862, Eastman—who later earned the name Ohíye S'a—was raised by his maternal grandmother in North Dakota and Manitoba. Fifteen years later, he was reunited with his father and oldest brother—who were presumed dead—in South Dakota. At his father’s encouragement, Ohíye S'a converted to Christianity and took the name Charles Alexander Eastman, which he would use for the rest of his life. Educated at Dartmouth College, Eastman enrolled in Boston University’s medical program after graduating in 1897. He completed his medical degree in 1890, making him one of the first Native Americans to do so. Eastman then moved back to South Dakota, where he worked as a physician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Pine Ridge and Crow Creek Reservations. During a period of economic hardship, he used his wife Elaine Goodale’s encouragement to write stories about his childhood, a few of which found publication in St. Nicholas Magazine. In 1902, he published Memories of an Indian Boyhood, a memoir about his life among the Dakota Sioux. In addition to his writing, Eastman maintained a private medical practice, helped establish the Boy Scouts of America, worked as a spokesman for the YMCA and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and acted as an advisor to several Presidential administrations.

Reviews for The Soul of the Indian

[histreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is definitely an interesting book and an important accounting for traditions of the Sioux. Yet it is done from a perspective "after the white man's arrival." And this leads to my conclusion that Mr. Eastman's histrionics are putting an acceptable slant on this Native American's culture.Essentially The Soul of the Indian is a comparison of Sioux religiosity to Christianity. Self-admittedly, the author explains the basis of Indian culture and religion is the antithesis of Biblical religion. Yet he then proceeds to find similarities of varying proportion. He extolls the virtue of Indian religion and expresses disdain for the materialism or monetarism of Christianity.Mr. Eastman takes time to include a section on familiar hierarchy and societal culture. One aspect I found suspect was his play down of the warrior culture. Understanding this book was written after the segregation of Indians to reservations Mr. Eastman likely tempered this profile of his people, in an effort to "humanize" the Native Americans.Hence, I sensed that while the author was conveying his culture to white man, he was simultaneously trying to raise the Sioux religion to the level he perceives Christianity. Struggling to veil his contempt for Christianity but fully cognizant that his target audience was Americans, he paints the Sioux as simply a different strain of Christianity. Blaming some of the misconceptions and alterations of long-standing cultural modalities on arrival of the White, this book needs to be read with a grain of salt. Granted his interpretations may be truly a perspective free of my suspected distortion towards his audience, the same caution afforded to autobiographies applies to this first-person defense of culture and religion.

[James Colli · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good reading

[benedict8-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charles Eastman was a native American who was taught in white schools in the early part of the last century.

His purpose in life was to communicate just what the American Indian believed. In this book he showed the values of the Indian *before* he was essentially spiritually polluted by the white invasion of his world.

[cwflatt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very quick read and an extremely simplified account of Sioux religious practices that the author a Sioux himself applied to all Native American cultures. All cultures are not a like and this painting with such a broad brush does not do justice to the other cultures who practiced religion different than the Sioux. It is still an enlightening book on the practice of having a very personal type of religion that does not rely on someone between you and your Lord

[revslick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

simply marvelous! Short book outlining not just one man's integration between his experience with Sioux spirituality and his Christian faith. The way Baptism and the Eucharist were reimaged into the Native American culture was truly refreshing. It reminded me of the Christianity's current struggle to integrate and imagine within our current culture.

[lisalouhoo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wanted a book which did not have a Christian theme, and found this little book in the Religious section at Project Gutenburg: The Soul of the Indian by Charles Alexander Eastman. It was published in 1911, and is an overview of some of the religious customs of the 'Indians' written by a Sioux who was raised in his native traditions, but later educated at Dartmouth and Boston University. This was an interesting book, as the author tried to separate the later traditions of his people from those they held before the white man came and corrupted them. The author is able, in the beginning of the book, to portray the beauty and peace of his people's silent and solitary communion with "the great mystery".