Native American history

It started for Charles Eastman before he graduated from college.

“A Dartmouth Sioux Indian sophomore’s native name is Wiychpeyatamicasta, but he passes as Charles A. Eastman” read an 1885 short notice in the Boston Evening Transcript. In fact, his Lakota name was Ohíye S’a, but since 1873 he had been called Charles Alexander Eastman.

The Boston Evening Transcript wasn’t alone in trying to set the Dartmouth student off as different, even exotic. This notice appeared in dozens of newspapers around New England and across the United States. And it was only the first of many times that Charles’ Native heritage would be singled out in the press. Often his Lakota background was highlighted more than his many accomplishments.

Throughout his life, he never escaped his public image as an Indian curiosity despite his accomplishments as a social reformer, cofounder of the Boy Scouts, author, historian, lecturer and Native rights advocate.

Portrait of Charles Eastman

Charles Eastman

Charles Eastman was born in 1858 near Redwood Falls, Minn. His early life was marked by tragedy and displacement. His mother died shortly after he was born. That led his relatives to name him “Hakadah,” or “pitiful last.” When the Dakota War of 1862 broke out, the boy escaped with his grandmother and uncle and fled to Manitoba. They feared his father and brothers were killed.

Until his teen years, Hakadah learned the ways of his Santee Lakota people. While still young, his athletic prowess earned him a new name: Ohíye S’a, or “the winner.”

One day when he was about 15, Ohíye S’a returned from hunting to find an unfamiliar person waiting for him, a Lakota wearing Euro-American clothing. It turned out to be his own father, who had been imprisoned, not killed. Jacob Eastman, as he now called himself, firmly believed that Indians in 19^th century America had one path forward: become Christians, take Euro-American names and get a westernized education. And so Ohíye S’a became Charles Alexander Eastman, began attending church and studied at a series of boarding schools and preparatory programs. Eventually that led him to Dartmouth College, and then to Boston University Medical School. He was the only Native American in his class at both institutions.

Early Fame

The combination of his good looks, articulate speech and educational pedigrees meant that newspapers often published stories about Charles. Reflecting on this in his second autobiographical book, Charles recalled his surprise when a journalist encountering him on the beach at Nantasket published a gossip column about him. In it, he referred to Charles as “the hero of the Boston society girls…a Sioux brave.”

Screenshot of a photo and caption from the Bridgeport, Conn., Times and Evening Farmer, Jan. 4, 1919. Caption reads “Full Blood Sioux Indian.” Colorized version by ChatGPT.

After graduating from BU in 1890, Charles took a job working as agency physician at the Pine Ridge Reservation in the newly declared state of South Dakota. There that he met a young woman named Elaine Goodale.

Elaine Goodale

Elaine grew up in the tiny Berkshires town of Mount Washington. As a girl she earned early acclaim as a poet; by the time she was 20, she had published five books of poetry and essays. As a young woman with few career options Elaine turned to teaching. Rather than teach in the local one-room schoolhouse, she began her career at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, teaching Native American students. After becoming fascinated with her young charges Elaine decided to travel to the Dakota Territory in 1885. Two years later she opened a day school on a reservation, believing that education would be more impactful if her pupils were not torn from their families and communities and sent to boarding schools like Hampton. She also learned the Lakota language with the idea that bilingual education could be more powerful.

Elaine Goodale

Elaine’s innovative teaching methods and her ability to parlay them to audiences back East through the many articles she wrote and published in the leading newspapers and magazines of the day led to her appointment as the first Superintendent of Education for Indian schools in the Dakotas in 1890. It was in this capacity that she traveled to Pine Ridge.

Mrs. Charles Eastman

Surprisingly, these two young people who came from such different worlds met. Even more surprising, they fell in love. They announced their engagement at Christmas. Several days later their happiness was shattered by the Wounded Knee Massacre, in which at least 250 Lakota men, women and children were killed. Charles tended to the victims as best he could; Elaine acted as a nurse. But the medical training he had received in Boston did not prepare Charles for the situation of mass causalities he faced. This tragic experience seared into their respective memories, affecting them for rest of their lives.

The battlefield at Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee also heightened their desire to work on behalf of Native Americans, and to do this work together. They married in 1891 in New York, despite the considerable opposition of Elaine’s family.

Not surprisingly, their unusual interracial marriage proved good fodder for newspapers. Their union was gleefully -– and often, inaccurately –- covered in hundreds of articles.

Wedding Notices

Sometimes just the headlines told the main story. For example, the Augusta (Maine) Kennebec Journal ran a long article on page 1 under the headline, “She Will Marry Dr. Eastman, A Full-Blooded Sioux.”

Other articles sought to differentiate the newlyweds by focusing on racialized stereotypes. An article in The Day from New London, Conn., proclaimed “Romance of a Poetess: Elaine Goodale’s Marriage to a Full Blooded Sioux – But he is no common Red Man.” “He is of medium height, straight and slender, with all the racial peculiarities of his people in his features” this article read. Another article in the Boston Daily Globe mentioned Charles was “a splendid specimen of manhood” with looks that “…characterize his race, but notwithstanding this fact, is a handsome man.” Though sometimes these articles would mention Charles’ educational background (where he was frequently described incorrectly as “a graduate of Harvard Medical School” or “an alumnus of Yale College”), almost always they focused on distinguishing him as the “Indian Other.”

This kind of newspaper coverage followed Charles his entire life.

After Wounded Knee, the Eastmans began an odyssey crisscrossing the country as Charles took on new jobs in medicine in Minnesota and South Dakota. He traveled throughout many states with the YMCA. He worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and with the Boy Scouts of America. Money was always a problem, and the Eastmans needed a steady income to support their growing family of six children. To supplement their finances, Charles began writing stories from his “Indian boyhood” and publishing them. This led to a new career as an author, and another as a public speaker.

Debating class, Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pa.

Amherst, Mass.

By 1903, Elaine had enough of moving from one state to another. She insisted that the family return to her native Massachusetts and remain in one place. They lived in Amherst for three decades.

The Amherst years were certainly Charles’ most productive in terms of his writing. He published eight books, and two more co-written with Elaine. She also published several books during this period and took a prominent role in editing Charles’ work.

His public speaking career also took off during this time. He spent more time on the road than he did in Amherst, leading to additional pressure on his marriage.

Charles Eastman’s writing and speaking careers also meant that there were hundreds of additional articles published about him. Often, the articles were accompanied by photographs. Though some of the photos showed Charles dressed in the fashionable Victorian suits and cravats of the day, many more of these photographs depicted Charles in feathered headdress and fringed buckskin.

And the way he chose to present himself often dominated the coverage he received. For instance, an article in the Lewiston (Maine) Sun ran under the headline, “Ohiyesa Came in Real Sioux Costume and told Story of Genuine Heart Interest.” “His headdress was a genuine war bonnet,” the reporter stated, “made of spotted eagle feathers…His costume was of tan colored skins, with wonderful bead trimmings, light blue forming the background for the bead work. Woven into this, were all sorts of symbols. The tomahawk which he carried was once owned and used by Crazy Horse.” Whether or not this was true was beside the point. The content of Charles’ talk was not recorded, at all.

An Indian at Heart

Sometimes when his lecture was discussed, it focused around separating Charles from those reading the newspaper. An article in The Brattleboro VT Reformer from 1911 related that an audience listened to “Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Sioux Indian…He told his story of an Indian boyhood in a marvelously interesting manner. Dr. Eastman is fitted to tell this story, because notwithstanding his training in white men’s ways he remains an Indian at heart [and] depicts the primitive life of an Indian from childhood to manhood.”

Because money was always tight, the Eastmans decided to tap into the growing American camping movement and rented a property along Granite Lake in New Hampshire. Indian–themed camps were becoming more popular all the time. Having a camp run by a “bona fide Indian” made it much easier to publicize the endeavor.

Granite Lake

In one of the many articles published about Camp Oáhe, the Boston Sunday Post suggested that “the best educated Indian in America, author of a dozen widely read books on Indian life and history, a practicing physician, lawyer, businessman and educator, is going to show wealthy white girls the little conveniences of life which native Americans seem to know by instinct. And here are some of the things the back to nature school is going to teach the pretty palefaces, most of them daughters of wealthy New Yorkers.” These skills include “how to make a fire when the grocery man forgets to bring matches; how to cook a porterhouse steak without a skillet; how to make a baby stop crying at night so that the landlord will not receive complaints from adjacent flat dwellers” as well as other “Indian skills” encapsulated with strangely citified applications.

Even Their Daughters…

The photo spread accompanying this article depicted the Eastman girls with bows and arrows, and captions such as the one under the picture of daughter Florence that inexplicably read, “Miss Mabel ‘Great Cloud’ Eastman, youngest daughter of the famous Ohiyesa. She is adept with the bow and arrow.”

The Eastmans shrewdly realized that Charles’ Lakota background was a great marketing device at a time that many Americans were seeking a return to simpler times and thought that Native Americans embodied this. But Charles also believed that Oáhe could serve as a way of educating Euro-American girls about important Native concepts.

But the Oáhe period wasn’t all the Eastmans might have hoped. Tragically, they lost their cherished second daughter, Irene Taluta in the influenza pandemic of 1918. After that, other events continued to unravel their marriage.

“Yellow Star,” published by Elaine Eastman in 1911

Charles Eastman, Indian Other to the Grave

The ways that Charles was portrayed in the press proved to be another stressor because they continued to emphasize his otherness. Even late in his life, the images of Charles Eastman in New England newspapers focused more on his Lakota heritage than on his accomplishments. His work on behalf of the Society of American Indians (SAI) advocating for citizenship in 1919, for example, got this mention in the Holyoke (MA) Transcript-Telegram: “Three hundred American Indians swept down on Minneapolis a few days ago. They didn’t come in their war paint and bells. They came as serious men, dressed in citizens clothes…Among the delegates …was Dr. Charles A. Eastman, president of the American Society of Indians.”

The Eastmans separated in 1921 but never divorced. Charles moved back to the Midwest, eventually building a cabin on Lake Huron. He continued trying to eke out a living through a series of different jobs, but money was always tight. His health declined precipitously.

Even his obituaries in 1939 continued the earlier patterns of presenting Charles Eastman as an “Indian other,” replete with incorrect information. In just one example from the dozens of obituaries that appeared around the world, the Keene (NH) Sentinel incorrectly listed Charles’ age and erroneously suggested “Ohiyesa” meant “the Unconquered One” while noting he was “the most learned member of his race” and Dartmouth’s “most picturesque figure.”

As had been happening his entire life, the man melded into the legend and the legend melded into the man.

 Julie Dobrow is a biographer and a professor at Tufts University. Her new book on Charles and Elaine Eastman, Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage, comes out November 4 from NYU Press.

Images: U.S. troops at Wounded Knee U.S. troops surrounding the Indians on Wounded Knee battle field. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2024693319/>. Granite Lake By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59336762. Carlisle Indian School Johnston, Frances Benjamin, photographer. Debating class, Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/98503015/>. Featured image colorized by ChatGPT.