The Soul of the Indian

Raised among the Sioux until the age of 15, Charles Alexander Eastman completed his education at the Boston University School of Medicine and then accepted an appointment to a South Dakota Indian reservation, where he was the only doctor available to the victims of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Eastman further distinguished himself both as a writer and as a uniquely qualified interpreter of Native American ways. In The Soul of the Indian, Eastman defines American Indian religious life as it existed before contact with missionaries and other whites. Rather than a scientific treatise, Eastman has written a book "as true as I can make it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals, but from the human, not the ethnological standpoint." His discussions of the forms of ceremonial and symbolic worship, the unwritten scriptures, and the spirit world emphasize the universal quality and personal appeal of Native American religion. Unabridged republication of the classic 1911 edition.