Steven Newcomb: Dakota doctor became avowed Christian

Dr. Charles Eastman was truly remarkable. Born in 1858, into a traditional Dakota way of life, in what is now commonly called Minnesota, as a teenager he later entered the white man’s world where he converted to Christianity, just as his father had. Eastman excelled in the white man’s school system, attended Boston University and eventually became a medical doctor. He was, by a cruel twist of fate, the attending physician of the wounded and dying victims of the Wounded Knee massacre who were transported to Pine Ridge on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

In his book From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), Eastman recounts a time when he joined the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). “I traveled over a large part of the western states and in Canada,” he wrote, “visiting the mission stations among Indians of all tribes and organizing young men’s associations wherever conditions permitted. I think I organized some forty-three associations.”

During that time, as an avowed Christian, Eastman nevertheless seemed to maintain a reflective stance toward that religion because of his early traditional Dakota upbringing.