Charles Alexander Eastman (February 19, 1858 - January 8, 1939) was a Native American writer, physician, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Active in politics and issues on American Indian rights, he also helped found the Boy Scouts of America. He was named Ohiyesa at his birth on a reservation near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. In Dakota, Ohíye S’a means 'Wins often'.[1]. He was the son of Wak-anhdi Ota (Many Lightnings) and his mixed-blood wife, Wakantankanwin (Goddess), a.k.a. Mary Nancy Eastman. Mary, also known as Winona (first-born daughter), was the daughter of the American painter Seth Eastman (he was stationed as a captain in the army at Fort Snelling when she was born) and Wakháŋ Inážiŋ Wiŋ (Stands Sacred). Stands Sacred was the daughter of Cloud Man, a Dakota (Santee Sioux) chief. Ohiyesa was first called Hakéda (the "pitiful last") because his mother died at his birth. He was the youngest of five children, with three older brothers (John, David, and James) and an older sister Mary. During the Minnesota Uprising of Dakota in 1862-63, Ohiyesa was separated from his father. He was cared for by paternal relatives who fled into North Dakota and Manitoba, Canada. Later he was reunited with his father in South Dakota, who had taken the name Jacob Eastman, and older brother John. The Eastman family established a homestead in Dakota Territory. Like his father and brother, Ohiyesa accepted Christianity; he adopted the name Charles Alexander Eastman. With his father's strong support for education, Eastman and his older brother John attended mission, preparatory schools, and college. Eastman attended Beloit College and Knox Colleges; he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1887. He went on for medical school at Boston University, where he graduated in 1889 with a medical degree. His older brother became a minister. Rev. John (Marpiyawaku Kida) Eastman was a Presbyterian missionary at Flandreau, South Dakota. Charles Eastman worked as agency physician for the Bureau of Indiana Affairs (BIA) Indian Health Service on the Pine Ridge Reservation and later at the Crow Creek Reservation, both in South Dakota. He cared for Indians after the Wounded Knee massacre. He also established a private medical practice. Between 1894-97, Eastman established 32 Indian groups of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). In 1899, he helped recruit students for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Because of his work with boys, in 1910, he was invited to work with Ernest Thompson Seton, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and Daniel Carter Beard of the Sons of Daniel Boone, to help found the Boy Scouts of America.[2] Eastman was active in national politics, particularly in matters dealing with Indian rights. He served as a lobbyist for the Dakota between 1894 and 1897. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt assigned Eastman the responsibility to revise the allotment method of dividing tribal lands. From 1923-25, Eastman served under Calvin Coolidge as an Indian inspector. He was also a member of the Committee of One Hundred, a reform panel examining federal institutions and activities dealing with Indian nations. In 1925, the Bureau of Indian Affairs asked him to investigate the death and burial location of Sacagawea, the woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. He determined that she died of old age at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming on April 9, 1884. (More recently because of records discovered, historians believe that she died as a result of an illness following childbirth in 1812 at Fort Manuel Lisa in what became North Dakota. ) In 1902 Eastman published the autobiographical Indian Boyhood, recounting his first fifteen years of life among the Sioux during the waning years of the nineteenth century. In the following years he wrote a total of eleven books, most concerned with his Native American heritage. They enjoy regular reprints and some books have translated in French, German and other European languages. A compilation of his writings was published posthumously as The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) (2007). With the publication of his books and his work with the Boy Scouts, he was in demand as a public lecturer. Eastman was chosen to represent the American Indian at the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911.[2] His public speaking continued for the remainder of his life. In 1891, Eastman married the poet and Indian welfare activist Elaine Goodale, who served briefly as superintendent of Indian boarding schools in the Dakota Territory. They had six children together. The marriage prospered at first, but Eastman's many jobs, financial pressures, and absences on the lecture circuit, which left his wife to parent their children alone, put increasing strain on the marriage, they separated about 1920. Her latest biographer believes that cultural differences also contributed the breakdown of the marriage.[3] Others have suggested their differing views on assimilation. Goodale believed the Indians must totally assimilate. Eastman believed that they could retain strong elements from their culture and still participate fully and contribute to American life. Elaine Goodale Eastman died in 1953. Charles Eastman built a cabin on the eastern shore of Lake Huron where he spent his later-year summers. He wintered in Detroit with one of his sons where he died January 8 1939 of a heart attack at the age of 80, and buried in an unmarked grave. As a child, Ohiyesa had learned about herbal medicine from his grandmother. Going to medical school enabled him to draw from both sides of his heritage in becoming a doctor. In 1933 Eastman was the first to receive the Indian Achievement Award.[4]