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The Soul of the Indian

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First published: 1911
Pages: 57

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Read by David Mix · 1 h 36 min · 7 parts

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00 - Forward
4:31
01 - Ch 01 - The Great Mystery
13:18
02 - Ch 02 - The Family Altar
14:26
03 - Ch 03 - Ceremonial and Symbolic Worship
19:01
04 - Ch 04 - Barbarism and the Moral Code
17:09
05 - Ch 05 - The Unwritten Scriptures
15:25
06 - Ch 06 - On the Border-Land of Spirits
12:50

The Soul of the Indian (1911) is a public domain work.

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About this book

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.

About the author

Charles A. Eastman

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), born Ohiyesa, was a Santee Dakota writer and physician educated at Dartmouth and Boston University. He served as a doctor at Pine Ridge at the time of Wounded Knee, wrote eleven books on Native life, and spent his career interpreting his people to white America.