Sister to the Sioux: The Memoirs of Elaine Goodale Eastman, 1885-1891

By Elaine Goodale Eastman

Book Overview

In 1885 a genteel New England girl traveled to the western frontier to open a school on the Great Sioux Reservation. For six years, Elaine Goodale Eastman taught, hunted with, and lived among the Lakotas, who were experiencing profound changes as buffalo herds dwindled and they were forced to adjust to reservation life. Her informative and sometimes poignant recollections of those years tell much about the daily lives of the Lakotas and how they grappled with challenges to their way of life. Goodale Eastman witnessed the arrival and flowering of the Ghost Dance religion, visited with Sitting Bull shortly before his death, and in December 1890 was at Pine Ridge, where she and her future husband, Dr. Charles Eastman, cared for the survivors of the Wounded Knee massacre. Sister to the Sioux bears witness to a critical and tragic era in Lakota history and reveals the frequently contradictory attitudes of outsiders drawn to them.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803267525
• ISBN13: 9780803267527
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A Woman Before Her Time

Mrs. Eastman should be considered a pioneer in more ways than one. She was one of the first educators to teach in the Dakota territory. Mrs. Eastman advocated day schools which allowed the native children to remain with their families (a concept which was strongly discouraged by the church boarding schools of the time), she took the time to learn the D/Lakota language and conversed in it, and she lived within the community (as opposed setting herself against it). Mrs. Eastman worked many years while she was a single person (which was quite unusual). She also reported with accuracy what was really occuring on the reservations (often upsetting those in charge-including government and church officials). Among many things within this book, one can learn about: what works and does not work when teaching individuals whose first language is not English, the Native Americans of the Dakotas, a Feminist before her time, and the account of The Wounded Knee Massacre from someone who tended the few left alive.