rare intellect - Floyd Favel - Playwright

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Indian Boyhood

by Charles A. Eastman Ohiyesa

Dover Publications-1902

This is a book of boyhood recollections and Dakota tribal lore of Ohiyesa, later known as Charles A. Eastman, who was born in Minnesota in 1860 of the Wahpeton band of the Santee Sioux (Dakota).

He writes about the time before his group was driven from their homelands in Minnesota to Manitoba because of the Little Crow uprising when the Santee Sioux rose up against the American invaders and colonizers.

Charles A. Eastman later studied at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylania and went on to become a doctor. He served as a medic at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. He was also an activist for the causes of the American Indian in the early part of the 1900s, becoming involved with the league of the American Indians, attending meetings and writing articles and essays critical of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and its treatment of the American Indian.

This book starts with his birth and the death of his mother, and his subsequent adoption by an old woman called Uncheedah, who is elderly. She introduces him to the knowledge of this people-herbs, legends, morals and ethics.

As a reader we get a first-hand look at life before the reservation years, when our people had an active relationship with the land for their spiritual and corporeal sustenance.

This is remarkable, given the lack of books or literature written by our own people. On one of Ohiyesas excursions into nature with his grandmother to collect herbs she tells him,

"Some day Ohiyesa will be old enough to know the secrets of medicine, then I will tell him all. But if you grow up to be a bad man, I must withhold these treasures from you and give them to your brother, for a medicine man must be a good and wise man..."

His uncle had an important role in his early training. In regard to observing and learning he tells little Ohiyesa,

"...you ought to follow the example of the shunktokeeha (wolf). Even when he is surprised and runs for his life, he will pause and take one more look at you before he enters his final retreat. So you must take a second look at everything you see."

This book is a gem in that we are offered a glimpse into traditional ways of child rearing and teaching, and the transmission of our oral tradition, and this glimpse is presented in a very accessible and very literate manner.

Yes, the English is old fashioned, but this is also its charm. The stories and anecdotes stress the need for a strong mental, emotional, spiritual and physical basis for the proper development of a human being.

I think this book is of great value to us in these modern times as we develop ways of retaining and developing our traditional practices within a modern society. It is recommended reading to all.