The Soul of the Indian

Charles Eastman was born Ohiyesa, raised in Santee Dakota traditions, and later trained as a physician in Boston, which put him in an unusual position to write this 1911 book. He set out to describe Native religious life on its own terms, before missionary contact reshaped it: the silence and solitude at the center of prayer, the training of children, the attitude toward death, the moral code that governed the hunt and the camp. He wrote it partly as correction, for readers who assumed there was nothing there to describe. The prose is spare and personal, and the argument that this was a coherent spiritual system rather than superstition still lands. Free PDF and EPUB edition available here.