SANTEE DAKOTA AUTHOR/DOCTOR OHIYE S’A (CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN) BORN
Eastman (whose Dakota name meant “Always Wins”) was a famed author and lecturer in the early 1900s. With the 1862 Dakota Uprising, his mother’s family (she died after his birth) took him believing his father was dead. Later, finding his father (now named Jacob Eastman), he became Charles Alexander Eastman. Educated at Dartmouth and Boston University, he was a physician at the Pine Ridge Agency during the Wounded Knee Massacre. By 1893, he established YMCA chapters on 32 reservations, began writing on his heritage, and presented The Sioux Mythology at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. His books include Indian Boyhood (1902), Soul of the Indian (1911), From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1918). He helped found the Boy Scouts of America (1910) and Society of American Indians (1911), represented Indians at the First Universal Races Congress (1911), and lectured at Oxford and Eton Colleges. He died on January 8, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan.
Source: Glenn Welker, “Ohiyesa (Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman), Santee Sioux,” Indigenous Peoples Literature. Retrieved 6/8/2019, http://www.indigenouspeople.net/ohiyesa.htm Photo: Wells Moses Sawyer (1863-1960), 4/1897. Public Domain in U.S.: Pre 1/1/1925. Public Domain elsewhere where copyright term is author’s life plus 100 years or less.
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