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    Indian Child Life
    Indian Child Life
    Indian Child Life
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    Indian Child Life

    By George Varian and Charles Alexander Eastman

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateDec 1, 2002

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      Book preview

      Indian Child Life - George Varian

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Child Life, by Charles A. Eastman

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Indian Child Life

      Author: Charles A. Eastman

      Illustrator: George Varian

      Release Date: June 27, 2008 [EBook #25907]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN CHILD LIFE ***

      Produced by K Nordquist and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

      produced from images generously made available by The

      Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

      Snana called loudly to her companion turnip-diggers.

      Frontispiece

      .

      See page 123.

      INDIAN CHILD LIFE

      By

      CHARLES A. EASTMAN

      (Ohiyesa)

      ILLUSTRATED BY

      GEORGE VARIAN

      BOSTON

      LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

      1915

      Copyright, 1913,

      By Little, Brown, and Company.

      All rights reserved

      Printers

      S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

      ,

      A LETTER TO THE CHILDREN

      Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly. He is not willing that all your knowledge of the race that formerly possessed this continent should come from the lips of strangers and enemies, or that you should think of them as blood-thirsty and treacherous, as savage and unclean.

      War, you know, is always cruel, and it is true that there were stern fighting men among the Indians, as well as among your own forefathers. But there were also men of peace, men generous and kindly and religious. There were tender mothers, and happy little ones, and a home life that was pure and true. There were high ideals of loyalty and honor. It will do you good and make you happier to read of these things.

      Perhaps you wonder how a real, live Indian could write a book. I will tell you how. The story of this man's life is itself as wonderful as a fairy tale. Born in a wigwam, as he has told you, and early left motherless, he was brought up, like the little Hiawatha, by a good grandmother. When he was four years old, war broke out between his people and the United States government. The Indians were defeated and many of them were killed. Some fled northward into Canada and took refuge under the British flag, among them the writer of this book, with his grandmother and an uncle. His father was captured by the whites.

      After ten years of that wild life, now everywhere at an end, of which he has given you a true picture in his books, his father, whom the good President Lincoln had pardoned and released from the military prison, made the long and dangerous journey to Canada to find and bring back his youngest son. The Sioux were beginning to learn that the old life must go, and that, if they were to survive at all, they must follow the white man's road, long and hard as it looked to a free people. They were beginning to plow and sow and send their children to school.

      Ohiyesa, the Winner, as the boy was called, came home with his father to what was then Dakota Territory, to a little settlement of Sioux homesteaders. Everything about the new life was strange to him, and at first he did not like it at all. He had thoughts of running away and making his way back to Canada. But his father, Many Lightnings, who had been baptized a Christian under the name of Jacob Eastman, told him that he, too, must take a new name, and he chose that of Charles Alexander Eastman. He was told to cut off his long hair and put on citizen's clothing. Then his father made him choose between going to school and working at the plow.

      Ohiyesa tried plowing for half a day. It was hard work to break the tough prairie sod with his father's oxen and the strange implement they gave him. He decided to try school. Rather to his surprise, he liked it, and he kept on. His teachers were pleased with his progress, and soon better opportunities opened to him. He was sent farther east to a better school, where he continued to do well, and soon went higher. In the long summer vacations he worked, on farms, in shops and offices; and in winter he studied and played football and all the other games you play, until after about fifteen or sixteen years he found himself with the diplomas of a famous college and a great university, a Bachelor of Science, a Doctor of Medicine, and a doubly educated man—educated in the lore of the wilderness as well as in some of the deepest secrets of civilization.

      Since that day, a good many more years have passed. Ohiyesa, known as Doctor Charles A. Eastman, has now a home and six children of his own among the New England hills. He has hundreds of devoted friends of both races. He is the author of five books which have been widely read, some of them in England, France and Germany as well as in America, and he speaks face to face to thousands of people every year. Perhaps some of you have heard from his own lips his recollections of wild life. You may find all the stories in this book, and many more of the same sort, in the books called Indian Boyhood, and Old Indian Days, published by Doubleday, Page and Company, of Garden City, L.I., who have kindly consented to the publication of this little volume in order that the children in our schools might read stories of real Indians by a real Indian.

      CONTENTS

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      PART ONE

      MY INDIAN CHILDHOOD

      I

      THE PITIFUL LAST

      What boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine. Every day there was a real hunt. There was real game.

      No people have a better use of their five senses than the children of the wilderness. We could smell as well as hear and see. We could feel and taste as well as we could see and hear. Nowhere has the memory been more fully developed than in the wild life, and I can still see wherein I owe much to my early training.

      Of course I myself do not remember when I first saw the day, but my brothers have often recalled the event with much mirth; for it was a custom of the Sioux that when a boy was born his brother must plunge into the water, or roll in the snow naked if it was winter time; and if he was not big enough to do either of these himself, water was thrown on him. If the new-born had a sister, she must be immersed. The idea was that a warrior had come to camp, and the other children must display some act of hardihood.

      I was so unfortunate as to be the youngest of five children who, soon after I was born, were left motherless. I had to bear the humiliating name Hakādah, meaning the pitiful last, until I should earn a more dignified and appropriate name. I was regarded as little more than a plaything by the rest of the children.

      The babe was done up as usual in a movable cradle made

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