Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Tales Retold

Charles Eastman in collaboration with his wife Elaine Goodale Eastman has assembled in this collection a composite condensed sampling of his tribe’s values and presents them in a language that is at once direct and engaging. To say these allegories are ‘wise’ begs the question; they are the distilled conclusions of generations upon generations of Plains society and point to the essence of what it is to be a decent thoughtful respectable human being―a Sioux Tao told in prose a child of any culture of any time can comprehend. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux who became one of the best-known Indians of his time. He earned a bachelors degree from Dartmouth and a medical degree from Boston University. From his first appointment as a physician at Pine Ridge Agency; where he witnessed the events that culminated in the Wounded Knee massacre he sought to bring understanding between Native and non-Native Americans. He wrote eleven books some such as Sister to the Sioux (also available as a Bison Book) in collaboration with Elaine Goodale Eastman. His From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian Indian Boyhood Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains Old Indian Days and The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation are all available as Bison Books.