Here is a captivating study of the spiritual life of American Indian people, as the author knew them more than a century ago.
Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. His maternal grandmother, daughter of Chief Cloudman of the Mdewankton Sioux, was married to a well-known Western artist, Captain Seth Eastman. In 1847 their daughter, Mary Nancy Eastman, became the wife of Chief Many Lightnings, a Wahpeton Sioux. Their fifth child, Charles Alexander Eastman, as a four-year-old, was given the name Ohiyesa (the Winner).
During the Sioux uprising of 1865, Ohiyesa became separated from his father - his mother had died soon after his birth - and fled from the reservation to Canada under the protection of his grandmother and uncle.
There, he was schooled in the Indian ways until the age of 15, when he was reunited with his father, who took him back to his homestead in present-day South Dakota.
Eastman went on the become one of the best known Indians of his time, receiving a bachelor of science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later.
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