Wigwam Evenings

Twenty-seven Dakota tales sit inside a frame story: through a cold December in a Sioux winter camp on the lake shore, village children crowd into the teepee of old Smoky Day, the school-master of the woods, who gives them one story each evening. Nine-year-old Tanagela and her small brother listen closest. The first night brings a field-mouse who kills a buffalo and then loses everything to a hungry fox, a lesson about pride and greed. Later evenings turn to the trickster Unktomee, the hero cycle of the Little Boy Man, and stranger closing pieces such as “The Girl Who Married the Star” and “The Ghost-Wife.” Charles Eastman, a Santee Dakota physician, and his wife Elaine Goodale Eastman chose the shorter tales and adapted them freely, hoping to keep their spirit for young readers.