Dr. Charles A. Eastman

              Dr. Charles A. Eastman
 (
Ohiyesa
) Author of 
Indian Boyhood,
 etc.






DR. CHARLES A. EASTMAN

The Man



THE story of his life reads like a chapter of romance,
 says the Columbus, Ohio, Press-Post.  
It is a far cry from a wigwam in the depths of the forest to a modern home in a New England college town!




If it were not for his bronzed features, one would take Dr. Eastman for the typical, hospitable New Englander,
 says the Boston Post.  
He is a particularly interesting man to meet.




He has been in the employ of the United States Government most of the time during the past eighteen years, at first as Government physician to the Indians, and more recently holding a special appointment to select permanent family names for the Sioux.  
A unique task,
 says the Boston Transcript, 
and one demanding no little study, ingenuity and patience.




In response to many requests, and in the endeavor to realize more vividly the life that is past, Dr. Eastman will appear upon the platform, when especially invited to do so, in the full-dress costume of a Sioux chief, beautifully made in the old style of beaded, Indian-tanned deerskin, with war-bonnet of eagle feathers.






The Chronicle, Cambridge, Mass.


It would be unjust to pass without comment the remarkable lecture which was listened to by an appreciative audience at the First Congregational Church, last Wednesday night.  Dr. Charles Eastman, whose name is not by any means unfamiliar to those who, even in an humble way, keep abreast of the times, is great in that he is the foremost exponent of two civilizations which, fundamentally, are opposed to each other.…  Dr. Eastman was born in Minnesota, the hunting-ground of the Sioux from time immemorial, and lived the life of his forebears until he was fifteen years old, becoming skilled in the wood-craft and the folk-lore of his people.  After this, he entered a mission school, and attended various institutions of learning, graduating finally both from Dartmouth College and Boston University.  He is a man of great knowledge and wide experience, both according to our system of education and that of his ancestors.  He has made an exhaustive study of Indian folk-lore and traditions, and is probably 
the greatest living authority
 on the subject.




The Globe, Fall River, Mass.


The real Indian, as pictured by Dr. Eastman, is 
a noble character
 of silence and of nature, his religion the 
Great Mystery
 of which death is a part.…  The Indian of the present day, made over, whipped and warped by the pale-face, is an alien race compared to the athletic, silent, proud, generous, high-minded enduring man so artistically, so exquisitely drawn last evening!





Historical Course



He offers a Historical Course for Colleges, Universities and Study Clubs, as follows:


1.


King Philip's War.


2.


The Conspiracy of Pontiac.


3.


The Six Nations:  Red Jacket.


4.


The Indian in the South:  Osceola.


5.


Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces.


6.


Sitting Bull and the Last Stand of the Sioux.





Dr. Eastman also offers the following series of lectures on the American Indian to Universities and University Extension courses:


1.


Religion and Philosophy.


2.


Ethics and Social Life.


3.


Government and War.


4.


Transition Period:  Physical Effects of Civilization.


5.


Mental and Moral Effects of Civilization.


6.


The New Indian.





Dr. Eastman has spoken at or under the auspices of Yale and Harvard Universities, Ohio State University, Dartmouth, Amherst, Lehigh, Gettysburg, Grinnell, Iowa, Oberlin and Antioch, Ohio, Pomona, Cal., and other colleges, and at many prominent schools throughout the country.






His Message

DR. CHARLES A. EASTMAN



FOR the first time in history, the aboriginal American, the 
Silent Man,
 has found an interpreter to the rest of mankind.




The message of this witty, cultured Sioux Indian, the story told in his books as well as from the lecture platform, is the story of his own people, their inner life, their ideals and aspirations.  He is setting forth in a fashion as convincing as it is picturesque THE TRUTH about the much misunderstood red man.




The white historian has not fairly presented—could not fairly present—the Indian's side of the conflict between the two races that forms so important a chapter in the history of America.  Dr. Eastman has lived through two Indian wars, knows intimately the greatest living Indians, and has made a careful study of general Indian history.





Popular Lectures



Dr. Eastman's popular lectures, given before men's and women's clubs, for churches and Y. M. C. A.'s, and on lecture courses from Maine to California (in nearly a hundred different towns and cities in New England alone), are as follows:


The Real Indian.


A School of Savagery.


Indian Wit. Humor, Poetry and Eloquence.


An Indian Boyhood
 (for children).


The Religion of the Indian, or the Great Mystery
 (Sunday lecture).





All of these are given without notes, and the lecturer is able to adapt himself to his audience with freedom and spontaneity.




Dr. Eastman aroused enthusiasm in this city, particularly among serious thinkers along anthropological lines, and attracted strong men to hear him.  There are many people in Columbus who will never again be able to think of Indians with disparagement,
 says a correspondent in Columbus, Ohio.




E. S. Russell, Principal State Normal School, Worcester, Mass.




The secret of your power I can not fathom, but I suspect it is in part that you do not 
give
 the lecture, but 
you are the lecture.




The News, Plainfield, New Jersey


Putting the American Indian in a different light from the one commonly accepted, Dr. Charles A. Eastman gave 
an intensely interesting sketch
 of the red man before the Monday Afternoon Club yesterday.






The Register, New Haven, Conn.


Dr. Charles A. Eastman, whose mind has progressed as far from the untutored state as that of any member of his race, touched upon the matter of the Indian's past life at a recent meeting of Dartmouth College alumni.  He called the attention of his white brethren to the fact that in their rush to accumulate dollars and build sky-scrapers they are not always accumulating years and building stable bodies, which only can be the houses of a sound and staying brain.  He took a leaf from the book of his own race to teach them a lesson.  Among the Indians, he said, there was a steady bodily development from six to sixty, and a grandfather would sometimes win in a foot-race with his grandson.…  We white Americans have our athletic exercises, and we think we know and practice the rules of hygiene; but if we would know how to develop sound bodies and live long, 
we can learn a vast deal from a study of how the Indians lived.




The Democrat, Dover, New Hampshire


Dr. Eastman knows whereof he speaks, as he was educated both by his Indian forebears and by Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in the class of 1887.…  His lecture was 
marvelously interesting,
 and disclosed the fact that the Indians with whom he was acquainted, at least, were not an idle people, nor unintelligent in the ways and workings of Nature.…  The managers of the Dover Women's Club made no mistake when they engaged Dr. Eastman to speak for them.






DR. CHARLES A. EASTMAN

As An Author



DR. EASTMAN has already published three books, 
Indian Boyhood
 (1902), 
Red Hunters and the Animal People
 (1904), and 
Old Indian Days
 (1907), and his 
Wigwman Stories:  Sioux Folk-tales Retold,
 is now in press.  
This strong and interesting Sioux-American,
 says the Saint Paul Dispatch, 
has come to be regarded as 
the literary spokesman of his race.
  It is well to remember that sociologists accept Dr. Eastman's books as authoritative.




Dr. Eastman,
 says Putnam's Monthly, 
renders a 
valuable double service
 to the people of the United States.  He tells delightful stories, well worth reading in comparison with the best short story productions of contemporary authors, and more than that, he has given true pictures of the tribal life of the wild Indians from the point of view of full-blooded Sioux.  .…  The Indian's motives are revealed so as to show that there is about the same human side to him, after all, that there is to the white man!




Better than almost any other man,
 says Dr. George Bird Grinnel in Forest and Stream, 
Dr. Eastman is fitted to tell the story of the Indian as it should be told, because, notwithstanding his training in the white man's ways, he remains at heart an Indian.  His 'Indian Boyhood' is 
one of the truest and sweetest pictures of primitive life ever written.






The News, Bethel, Maine


Recently Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Sioux Indian, lectured before an audience of thinking men and women at Rumford Falls, and it is safe to say that no one who heard him will deny that the civilization of savagery has many superior elements to the savagery of civilization.  Dr. Eastman is a college-educated man, but his natural education was completed before he began the artificial, and he had laid the basis for a most useful all-around career.  His rugged and intellectual features and splendidly shaped head, as well as the handsome and delicately moulded hands, are not the product of civilization—they are the natural inheritance from an ancestry of so-called 
savages.
  If he is a typical Sioux Indian, then the Sioux are, in type, 
the equal of any white race.
  Dr. Eastman's description of the education of the Indian youth, which he says begins before its birth, was very interesting.  The Indian boy at fifteen has mastered the history of his tribe.  He also knows the birds of the air and every animal by its cry, or by the impress of its foot.  This is not a speculative knowledge, not something he takes for granted because some one has told him so.  He proves it, and when he is hunting he reads the signs at a glance and makes no mistakes.  His body is built to withstand the storms of winter and the stress of famine.  He is taught to keep his feelings to himself, and the stoical visage that he wears does not betray him.  The Indian has a clear conception of justice and is one of the most spiritual of men.  He is clairvoyant and lives in harmony with spiritual laws.…  He knew not the idea of money or commerce.  No Indian or tribe held surplus property.…  Dr. Eastman said much more that we should like to set before our readers, but we have sufficiently outlined his speech to carry conviction that the Indian character has been misunderstood.




Rev. O. S. Kriebel, Perkiomen Seminary, Pennsburg, Pa.




I want to commend your lectures most highly to all who are interested in these questions.  It has never been my fortune to hear any one who was able to talk so intelligently and so lucidly and with so much authority on the subject of Indian life and Indian conditions as you yourself did in your two lectures recently given to the students and friends of Perkiomen Seminary.




J. Weston Allen, Boston, Mass.




I am repeatedly hearing enthusiastic comment from those who listened to you, and Dr. S— said at a dinner last night that he considered it 
the best lecture on such a subject that he had ever heard.




Mrs. M. D. Frazer, Somerville Women's Club, Somerville, Mass.




I wish again to thank you for your most delightful lecture.  In the years of our club life, 
we have never had a more satisfactory evening.
  The strong and simple story, with its wonderful philosophy and beauty, appealed to us all.  You have shown us the dangers in our over-civilization, and given us good reasons for sympathy with a people who have suffered much at our hands.




Frank H. Jarvis, Superintendent of Schools, Wyoming County, Pa.




Dr. Charles A. Eastman gave his lecture on the 
Real Indian
 before our annual Teachers' Institute, Dec. 11, 1908.  He held his large audience spell-bound for an hour and forty minutes, and they 
would have enjoyed another hour.




The Advocate, Arlington, Mass.


The subject of the afternoon was 
An Indian Boyhood.
  The Indian in his home, the training for agility and swiftness of foot and endurance was graphically recited, but in such simple language as to hold the attention of the boys and girls for over an hour without apparent fatigue.  It was 
an ideal talk,
 affording a glimpse into the nature of the Indian.




The Telegram, Portland, Maine


To take one to the very heart of the woods, to make him hear the music of the rippling brook, the rustling leaves, the sighing winds, to make him live for one afternoon the life of the native American, the 
Real Indian,
 to think his thoughts and feel the force of his philosophy is no light task, but this Dr. Eastman was able to do in 
his masterly address
 at Kotschmar Hall, when he gave his vivid description of the life and surroundings of the true American.  Himself an Indian, tall, dark, graceful, well-poised, a living example of that self-control which he says is such a strong characteristic of his people, possessing a melodious voice and a splendid control of English, Dr. Eastman sways his audience as much by his magnetic personality as by his logic and his wit.




The Record, Wilkesbarre, Pa.


Dr. Eastman, who is a full-blooded Indian, proved a most interesting speaker.  His control of the English language is such as might be envied by many to whom it is their native tongue.  His delivery is quiet, but eloquent, with gestures and allusions in which the Indian orators excel, and at times his sly digs at the inconsistencies of the so-called 
civilization
 of today, as compared with the habits of thought and life of the 
real Indian
 brought out rounds of merited applause.