Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) was the most widely known Native American author in the United States and abroad during the first decades of the twentieth century. His eleven books and many articles for national magazines explained Indian customs,...

Charles Eastman (1858-1939) was the first Native American physician to serve on the Pine Ridge Reservation and a prolific author of works about Indian life and culture. Born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, of mixed Santee Sioux and white parentage,...

My father added: "I am glad that my son is strong and brave. Your brothers have adopted the white man's way; I came for you to learn this new way, too; and I want you to grow up a good man." Charles...

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He wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his role as a Native American Marine in "Flags of Our Fathers," but Adam Beach still feels like a winner."Just to hear that people were upset that I didn't get nominated really means a lot," he says of...

In the essay that follows, Peterson claims that autobiographies such as Charles Eastman's exemplify an attempt to reconcile cultural and political tensions between Native American and white societies, and reflect the conflicting responses of Native Americans to Western expansion.

As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I became civilized. I lived the natural life, whereas I now live the artificial. Any pretty pebble was valuable to me then; every growing tree an object of reverence. Now I worship with the white man before a painted landscape whose value is estimated in dollars! Thus the Indian is reconstructed, as the natural rocks are ground to powder and made into artificial blocks which may be built into the walls of modern society. Charles Eastman ...

Often well educated in white schools and comfortable in white society, the first generation of Indian leaders to emerge on the national level included persons like Charles Eastman and Gertrude Bonnin. Yet despite their acceptance of assimilationist ideals, they also contributed a new ideal of their own: a Pan-Indian identity that emphasized the commonness of Indians of all tribes. They recognized things that Indians held in common, much more than previous tribal leaders had done. While they valued a "...