VIII An Indian Patriarch
Chief Cloudman or Man-of-the-sky, was one of the strongest characters among the natives on the headwaters of the Mississippi in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. He was one of the leading chiefs of the Santee band of Sioux Indians. He was born about 1780. He was brave in battle, wise in council, and possessed many other noble qualities, which caused him to rise far above his fellow chieftains. He possessed a large fund of common sense. Years prior to the advent of the white man in this region, he regarded hunting and fishing as a too precarious means to a livelihood, and attempted to teach his people agriculture and succeeded to a limited extent.
It was a strange circumstance that prompted the chief to this wise action. On a hunting tour in the Red River country, with a part of his band, they were overtaken by a drifting storm and remained, for several days, under the snow, without any food whatsoever. While buried in those drifts, he resolved to rely, in part, upon agriculture, for subsistence, if he escaped alive, and he carried out his resolution, after the immediate peril was passed. His band cultivated small fields of quickly maturing corn, which had been introduced by their chief in the early 30’s. He was respected and loved by his people and quite well obeyed.
Before the coming of the missionaries he taught and enforced, by his example, this principle, namely, that it as wrong to kill non-combatants, or to kill under any circumstances in time of peace. He favored peace rather than war. He was twenty-five years of age, and had six notches on the handle of his tomahawk, indicating that he had slain half a dozen of his Ojibway foes before he adopted this human policy.
His own band lived on the shores of Lakes Calhoun and Harriet, within the present limits of Minneapolis. On the present site of lovely Lakewood—Minneapolis’ most fashionable cemetery—was his village of several hundred savages, and also an Indian burial place. This village was the front guard against the war parties of the Ojibways—feudal enemies of the Sioux—but finally as their young men were killed off in battle, they were compelled to remove and join their people on the banks of the Minnesota and farther West. He located his greatly reduced band at Bloomington, directly west of his original village. This removal occurred prior to 1838.
He was never hostile to the approach of civilization, or blind to the blessings it might confer on his people.
He was one of the first of his tribe to accept the white man’s ways and to urge his band to follow his example. This fact is confirmed by the great progress his descendants have made.
He was the first Sioux Indian of any note to welcome those first pioneer missionaries, the Pond brothers. As early as 1834 he encouraged them to erect their home and inaugurate their work in his village. In all the treaties formed between the government and the Sioux, he was ever the ready and able advocate of the white man’s cause. He threw all the weight of his powerful influence in favor of cession to the United States government of the military reservation on which Fort Snelling now stands. He died at Fort Snelling in 1863, and was buried on the banks of the Minnesota in view of the fort.
He was the father of seven children, all of whom are dead, except his son David Weston, his successor in the chieftainship, who still lives at Flandreau, South Dakota, at the age of seventy-eight years. He was for many years a catechist of the Episcopal Church. His two daughters were called Hushes-the-Night and Stands-like-a-Spirit. They were once the belles of Lake Harriet, to whom the officers and fur traders paid homage. Hushes-the-Night married a white man named Lamont and became the mother of a child called Jane. She had one sister, who died childless, in St. Paul, in 1901. Jane Lamont married Star Titus, a nephew of the Pond brothers. They became the parents of three sons and two daughters. Two of these sons are bankers and rank among the best business men of North Dakota. They are recognized as leaders among the whites. The other son is a farmer near Tracy, Minnesota. Stands-Like-a-Spirit was the mother of one daughter, Mary Nancy Eastman, whose father, Captain Seth Eastman, was stationed at Fort Snelling—1830-36. Mary Nancy married Many Lightnings, a fullblood, one of the leaders of the Wahpeton-Sioux. They became the parents of four sons and one daughter. After Many Lightnings became a Christian, he took his wife’s name, Eastman, instead of his own, and gave all his children English names. John the eldest, and Charles Alexander, the youngest son, have made this branch of the Cloudman family widely and favorably known.
John Eastman, at twenty-six years of age, became a Presbyterian minister, and for more than a quarter of a century has been the successful pastor of the First Presbyterian church of Flandreau, South Dakota. He was for many years a trusty Indian agent at that place. He is a strong factor in Indian policy and politics. He has had a scanty English education in books, but he has secured an excellent training, chiefly by mingling with cultured white people.
His proud statement once was; “every adult member of the Flandreau band is a professing Christian, and every child of school age is in school.” During the “Ghost Dance War,” in 1890, his band remained quietly at home, busy about their affairs. In the spring of 1891, they divided $40,000 among themselves.
Charles Alexander Eastman was born in 1858, in Minnesota, the ancestral home of the Sioux, and passed the first fifteen years of his life in the heart of the wilds of British America, enjoying to the full, the free, nomadic existence of his race. During all this time, he lived in a teepee of buffalo skins, subsisted upon wild rice and the fruits of the chase, never entered a house nor heard the English language spoken, and was taught to distrust and hate the white man.
The second period (third) of his life was spent in school and college, where after a short apprenticeship in a mission school, he stood shoulder to shoulder, with our own youth, at Beloit, Knox, Dartmouth and the Boston university. He is an alumnus of Dartmouth of ’87 and of Boston University, department of medicine, of ’90.
During the last fifteen years, he has been a man of varied interests and occupations, a physician, missionary, writer and speaker of wide experience and, for the greater part of the time, has held an appointment under the government.
At his birth he was called “Hakadah” or “The Pitiful Last,” as his mother died shortly after his birth. He bore this sad name till years afterwards he was called Ohiyesa, “The Winner,” to commemorate a great victory of La Crosse, the Indian’s favorite game, won by his band, “The Leaf Dwellers,” over their foes, the Ojibways. When he received this new name, the leading medicine man thus exhorted him: “Be brave, be patient and thou shalt always win. Thy name is “Ohiyesa the Winner.”” The spirit of his benediction seems to follow and rest upon him in his life-service.
His grandmother was “Stands-Like-a-Spirit,” the second daughter of the old chief Cloudman. His full-blooded Sioux father was a remarkable man in many ways and his mother, a half-blood woman, was the daughter of a well-known army officer. She was the most beautiful woman of the “Leaf Dwellers” band. By reason of her great beauty, she was called “Demi-Goddess of the Sioux.” Save for her luxuriant, black hair, and her deep black eyes, she had every characteristic of Caucasian descent. The motherless lad was reared by his grandmother and an uncle in the wilds of Manitoba, where he learned thoroughly, the best of the ancient folk lore, religion and woodcraft of his people. Thirty years of civilization have not dimmed his joy in the life of the wilderness nor caused him to forget his love and sympathy for the primitive people and the animal friends, who were the intimates of his boyhood.
Dr. Charles A. Eastman,
Famous Sioux Author, Orator and Physician.
He is very popular as a writer for the leading magazines. “His Recollections of Wild Life” in St. Nicholas, and his stories of “Wild Animals” in Harper, have entertained thousands of juvenile as well as adult readers. His first book, “Indian boyhood,” which appeared in 1902, has passed through several editions, and met with hearty appreciation. “Red Hunters and the Animal People,” published in 1904, bids fair to be, at least, equally popular.
During the last two years, he has lectured in many towns from Maine to California and he is welcomed everywhere. His specialty is the customs, laws, religion, etc., of the Sioux. Witty, fluent, intellectual, trained in both methods of education, he is eminently fitted to explain, in an inimitable and attractive manner, the customs, beliefs and superstitions of the Indian. He describes not only the life and training of the boy, but the real Indian as no white man could possibly do. He brings out strongly the red man’s wit, music, poetry and eloquence. He also explains graphically from facts gained from his own people, the great mystery of the battle of the Little Big Horn in which the gallant Custer and brave men went to their bloody death.
He was married in 1891 at New York City, to Miss Elaine Goodale, a finely cultured young lady from Massachusetts, herself a poetess and prose writer of more than ordinary ability.
They have lived very happily together ever since and are the parents of five lovely children. They have lived in Washington and St. Paul and are now residents of Amherst, Massachusetts. Whether in his physician’s office, in his study, on the lecture platform, in the press or in his own home, Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman is a most attractive personality.