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Dakota Village on the Mississippi near Fort Snelling, 1845-48 "Whenever, the course of a daily hunt, the hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful, or sublime; a black thundercloud with the rainbow's glowing arch above the mountain, a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge, a vast prairie tinged with the bood-red of the sunset; he pauses for an instant in the attitude of worship. He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, because to him all the days are God's days."

Ohiyesa (Dr. Charles Eastman), from The Soul of the Indian, 1911.

According to many, the area now known as Minnesota has been called "home" by Dakota people for thousands of years. For hundreds of years the Santee (or Eastern) Dakota moved their villages and varied their work according to the seasons. They spent the winter living off the stores of supplies built up during the previous year. Women gathered wood, processed hides, and made clothes while men hunted and fished. In the spring, villages dispersed and men left on hunting parties, while women, children, and the elderly moved into sugaring camps to make maple sugar and syrup. During the summer months families gathered in villages and men hunted and fished while women and children cultivated crops such as corn, squash, and beans. Once the corn had been harvested, families focused on gathering wild rice along the rivers. In autumn, families moved to the year's chosen hunting grounds for the annual hunt. This traditional lifestyle of communal support was the basis for Dakota society and culture.

Read more about Dakota values in Beginning Dakota/Tokaheya Dakota Iyapi Kin and Dakota connection to the land at the Bdote Memory Map.

Theme:

Dakota History

Topics:

Dakota Land

Bibliography:

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997.

Deloria, Ella. The Dakota Way of Life. Sioux Falls, SD: Mariah Press, 2007.

Deloria, Ella. Speaking of Indians. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Eastman, Charles Alexander. The Soul of the Indian. Houghton Mifflin: Boston & New York, 1911.

Gibbon, Guy. The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Oneroad, Amos E., and Alanson B. Skinner. Being Dakota: Tales and Traditions of the Sisseton and Wahpeton. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003.

Spector, Janet D. What This Awl Means: Feminist Archeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1993.

Waziyatawin. Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Waziyatawin. What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland. St. Paul, MN: Living Justice Press, 2008.

Resources for Further Research:

Websites

Bdote Memory Map

Dakota Wicohan

Primary

View a selection of American Indian objects in the Society's collections.

Deloria, Ella. The Dakota Way of Life. Sioux Falls, SD: Mariah Press, 2007.

Deloria, Ella. Speaking of Indians. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Eastman, Charles Alexander (Ohiyesa). The Soul of the Indian. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003.

Secondary

Allen, Clifford, Stuart, Arlene, Knutson, Joy, Stuart, Paul, Pratt Vince, and Weston, Dwayne. "Dacotah: A history of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe." Flandreau, SD: Tribal History Program, Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, 1971.

Gibbon, Guy. The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Knudson, Nicolette, Jody Snow, and Clifford Canku. Beginning Dakota:Tokaheya Dakota Iapi Kin : 24 Language and Grammar Lessons with Glossaries. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011.

Westerman, Gwen, and Bruce M. White. Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012.

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Key People

Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman)

Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman)

Reprinted from MNopedia: Minnesota's Encyclopedia.
Author Molly Huber
Famed author and lecturer Charles Eastman was raised in a traditional Dakota manner until age fifteen, when he entered Euro-American culture at his father's request. He spent the rest of his life moving between American Indian and white American worlds, achieving renown but never financial security.
The boy later known as Charles Alexander Eastman was born on February 19, 1858, near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. His mother, Wakantankawin (Sacred Woman) or Mary Nancy Eastman, daughter of well-known painter Seth Eastman, only survived her son's birth by a few months, so he was called Hakadah (the Pitiful Last). His paternal grandmother, Uncheedah, raised him, first in Minnesota and then, after the US–Dakota War of 1862, in Canada where his family had fled to safety.

In Canada, Hakadah was renamed Ohiyesa (the Winner) following a victory by his band in a lacrosse game. He was instructed in traditional Dakota lifeways by his grandmother and uncle, Mysterious Medicine. Ohiyesa's father, Ite Wakanhdi (Many Lightnings), and older brothers were thought killed in the aftermath of the US–Dakota War. However, they had survived, and in 1873, Ite Wakanhdi, then called Jacob Eastman, traveled north to find his youngest son and bring him back to the United States.

Ohiyesa was shocked by his father's sudden reappearance and request that he give up traditional Dakota ways. But Ohiyesa agreed to follow his father to his homestead in Flandreau, Dakota Territory, and adopt white ways, taking the name Charles Alexander Eastman.

In Flandreau, Eastman started formal schooling, which he continued at various institutions for the next seventeen years. He moved from Indian schools such as Santee Normal in Nebraska to all-white colleges such as Beloit and Dartmouth. He completed his education in 1890 with a medical degree from Boston Medical School.

Eastman wanted to give back to his community as a reservation physician, so he applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and received an appointment to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. At Pine Ridge, he met Elaine Goodale, a teacher and published author, and they were married in 1891.

Eastman arrived at Pine Ridge in November 1890, just before the tragic events at Wounded Knee on December 29. As the reservation's resident physician, he provided medical assistance to the day's few survivors and found his confidence in white culture severely shaken. Eastman's time at Pine Ridge was troubled overall and lasted only until 1893, when he left because of conflict with the Indian agent.

Eastman and his wife then moved to St. Paul, where he attempted to set up a private medical practice. Unsuccessful, he took a job with the YMCA as supervisor of their Indian programs in the western United States and Canada.

He tried reservation medical practice again in 1900, at Crow Creek Reservation, but resigned after only two years due to conflict with his supervisors. In 1903 he was offered another job within the Indian service: to assist Dakota in establishing family names that would translate well into English and could be used legally. He continued this work for six years.

In 1902, Eastman became a published author. His first book, Indian Boyhood, is a compilation of stories he had been telling his own children about his childhood. The book was immediately popular. Encouraged by its success, Eastman continued to write for children and adults. He published thirteen books in all, two co-written with his wife, who served as his editor.

Largely because of his publishing success, Eastman became a noted speaker and traveled widely. In 1910, he took a job with the Boy Scouts of America as their Indian advisor. Inspired by this experience, he opened a summer camp for children in New Hampshire that he and his family ran from 1915 to 1921.

In 1921, Eastman and his wife permanently separated after many unhappy years together and never saw each other again. During the remaining eighteen years of his life, Eastman continued to lecture but no longer published. He increasingly withdrew from white society, building himself a small cabin in the woods of upstate New York, where he spent most of his time. He died of heart failure in 1939 while visiting his son, Ohiyesa II, in Detroit, Michigan.

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