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Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman (Sioux: Ohiyesa, February 19, 1858 - January 8, 1939) was a Native American author, physician and reformer. He was active in politics and helped found the Boy Scouts of America.

Ohiyesa was born on a reservation near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. He was the son of the Dakota Many Lightnings and his mixed-blood wife, Mary Nancy Eastman, who died at his birth. Mary Eastman was the daughter of the painter Captain Seth Eastman. During the Minnesota Uprising of Dakota in 1862-63, Ohiyesa was cared for by paternal relatives who fled into North Dakota and Manitoba. When he was later reunited with his father, now using the name Jacob Eastman, and older brother John, the Eastman family established a homestead in Dakota Territory.

With his father's encouragement, Eastman attended mission and preparatory schools and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1887. He graduated from Boston University, with a medical degree, in 1889. Eastman worked as agency physician for the Indian Health Service on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and later at the Crow Creek Reservation, both in South Dakota. He also established a private medical practice. Between 1894-97, Eastman established 32 Indian groups of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1899, he helped recruit students for the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. In 1910, along with Ernest Thompson Seton of the Woodcraft Indians and Daniel Carter Beard of the Sons of Daniel Boone, Eastman helped found the Boy Scouts of America.

Eastman was active in politics, particularly in matters dealing with Indian rights. He served as a lobbyist for the Dakota between 1894 and 1897. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt assigned Eastman the responsibility for revising the allotment method of dividing tribal lands. In 1923-25, Eastman served under Calvin Coolidge as an Indian inspector. He was also a member of the Committee of One Hundred, a reform panel examining federal institutions and activities dealing with Indian nations. In 1925, the Bureau of Indian Affairs asked him to investigate the death and burial location of Sacagawea, the woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. He determined that she died of old age at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming on April 9, 1884, although later historians believe it more likely that she died as a result of an illness in 1812.

Eastman was the recipient of the first Indian Achievement Award in 1933.

Eastman was married to Elaine Goodale, and had six children. Goodale briefly served as superintendent of Indian education in the Dakota Territory, and was a well known poet.

Eastman published the autobiographical Indian Boyhood in 1902, recounting his first fifteen years of life among the Sioux during the waning years of the nineteenth century. He also wrote The Soul of the Indian (1911) and From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916).

'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' debuts on HBO

CANASTOTA, N.Y. - Adam Beach has mastered the ability of walking in two worlds, a balance that has allowed him to become a successful actor yet maintain his cultural identity within his Saulteaux heritage.

Beach, 34, stars in the epic drama ''Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,'' a project by HBO Films and inspired by Dee Brown's seminal nonfiction book of the same title. The movie, which will debut May 27 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO, explores the tragic impact of the United States conquest over Native America. Beach plays the role of Charles Eastman or Ohiyesa, a young Sioux doctor who was used by the U.S. government as an example of the alleged success of assimilation and the American Indian boarding schools.

''Charles Eastman is a separate entity of the book 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,''' Beach said. ''He was added in as a character so that there could be a back story to represent how the U.S. was trying to get Indian people to be educated into society.''

Beach said Eastman was used as a window into the world of Indian country in the late 19th century. His character was a way to better explain the reservations system that the government was trying to force upon the community of the Lakota people, which Eastman was a part of. Through the movie, Eastman is taken away from his community, forced to cut his hair, change his name and receive an American education.

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415050

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Battle With the Snakes

Iroquois



There was a man who was not kind to animals. One day when he was hunting, he found a rattlesnake and decided to torture it. He held its head to the ground and pierced it with a piece of bark. Then as it was caught there, he tormented it.

"We shall fight," he said and then burned the snake until it was dead. He thought this was a great jest and so, whenever he found a snake, he would do the same thing.

One day another man from his village was walking through the forest when he heard a strange sound. It was louder than the wind hissing through the tops of tall pine trees. He crept closer to see. There, in a great clearing, were many snakes. They were gathered for a war council and as he listened in fright he heard them say:

"We shall now fight with them. Djisdaah has challenged us and we shall go to war. In four days we shall go to their village and fight them."

The man crept away and then ran as fast as he could to his village to tell what he had heard and seen. The chief sent other men to see if the report was true. They returned in great fright.

"Ahhhh," they said, "it is so. The snakes are all gathering to have a war."

The chief of the village could see that he had no choice. "We must fight," he said and ordered the people of the village to make preparations for the battle. They cut mountains of wood and stacked it in long piles all around the village. They built rows of stakes close together to keep the snakes out. When the fourth day came, the chief ordered that the piles of wood be set on fire. Just as he did so they heard a great noise, like a great wind in the trees. It was the noise of the snakes, hissing as they came to the village to do battle.

Usually a snake will not go near a fire, but these snakes were determined to have their revenge. They went straight into the flames. Many of them died, but the living snakes crawled over the bodies of the dead ones and continued to move forward until they reached the second row of stakes.

Once again, the chief ordered that the piles of wood in the second row of defense be set on fire. But the snakes crawled straight into the flames, hissing their war songs, and the living crawled over the bodies of the dead. It was a terrible sight. They reached the second row of stakes and, even though the people fought bravely, it was no use. The snakes were more numerous than fallen leaves and they could not be stopped. Soon they forced their way past the last row of stakes and the people of the village were fighting for their lives. The first man to be killed was Djisdaah, the one who had challenged the snakes to battle.

It was now clear that they could never win this battle. The chief of the village shouted to the snakes who had reached the edge of the village: "Hear me, my brothers. We surrender to you.
We have done you a great wrong. Have mercy on us."

The snakes stopped where they were and there was a great silence.

The exhausted warriors looked at the great army of snakes and the snakes stared back at them. Then the earth trembled and cracked in front of the human beings. A great snake, a snake taller than the biggest pine tree, whose head was larger than a great long house, lifted himself out of the hole in the earth.

"Hear me," he said. "I am the chief of all the snakes. We shall go and leave you in peace if you will agree to two things."

The chief looked at the great snake and nodded his head. "We will agree, Great Chief," he said.

"It is well," said the Chief of the Snakes. "These are the two things. First, you must always treat my people with respect. Secondly, as long as the world stands, you will never name another man Djisdaah."

And so it was agreed and so it is, even today.

Code talker

Code talkers were Native American Marines serving in the U.S. armed forces who primarily transmitted secret tactical messages. The Code Talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages.

The name is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited, for the first time during World War II, by the United States Marine Corps, under the Dept. of the Navy to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. However the United States Army, under the Dept. of War, on a smaller scale also used Native American Indians to perform the same missions in both World War I and World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker

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