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(More customer reviews)Ohiyesa wrote this book in 1911, and did a masterful job at conveying spiritual truths in simple language that anyone can understand.
Ohiyesa tries to impart that this form of spirituality is more about a state of mind and heart instead of performing ceremonies by rote.
There are many little gems of wisdom in this book, and it would be a great place to start if you wish to explore the American Indian (Sioux) form of spirituality.
Here are a few of those gems I mentioned above.
Page XII "My little book does not pretend to be a scientific treatise. It is as true as I can nake it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals"
Page XIII "We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and the barbarian is after all the same God;"
Page 4 "Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced on any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution"
Page 4 "He (the indian) would deem it sacriledge to build a house for Him (the Great Spirit) who may be met face to face in the mysterious , shadowy aisles of the primeval forest"
Page 13 "The Indian no more worships the Sun than the Christian adores the Cross"
Page 14 "We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature posesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself."
Page 15 "He (The indian) paid homage to the spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings)
Page 45 "In the life of the indian there was only one inevitable duty,--the duty of prayer--the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. His daily devotions were more necessary to him than daily food."
Much wisdom for a book more than 90 years old!
I encourage questions and comments about my reviews; Two Bears.
Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)
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Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939) was a mixed-blood Sioux. His maternal grandmother, daughter of Chief Cloudman of the Mdewankton Sioux, was married to a well-known western artist, Captain Seth Eastman, and in 1847 their daughter Mary Nancy Eastman became the wife of Chief Many Lightnings, a Wahpeton Sioux. Their fifth child, Charles Alexander Eastman, as a four-year old was given the name Ohiyesa (the Winner). During the Sioux Uprising of 1862 Ohiyesa became separated from his father-his mother had died soon after his birth-and fled from the reservation in Minnesota to Canada under the protection of his grandmother and uncle. There he was schooled in the Indian ways until the age of fifteen, when he was reunited with his father, who took him back to his homestead in present South Dakota. Eastman went on to become one of the best-known Indians of his time, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 1887 and a medical degree from Boston University three years later. From his first appointment as a physician at Pine Ridge Agency, where he witnessed the events that culminated in the Wounded Knee massacre, he sought to bring understanding between Native and non-Native Americans. In addition to two autobiographical works, Indian Boyhood (1902) and From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), Charles Eastman wrote nine other books, some in collaboration with his wife, Elaine Goodale Eastman (who has told her story in Sister to the Sioux, also a Bison Book).In The Soul of the Indian, first published in 1911, the author's aim has been "to paint the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man."
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