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This quote from the introduction will give you a good idea of what one can expect from the book:
It's a book written in 1913 about the Sioux lifestyle written by a man who is himself Sioux, who was born in the mid-1800s. But written, as is understandable, from a very particular slant: to make the life seem approachable and acceptable to white people, to make them think more kindly of Indigenous people in the face of widespread prejudice. It definitely seems to me to romanticise things in places.
So it's an interesting look at one man's memories of what it was like to grow up Sioux in the 19th century (...I accidentally mistyped that at first as 29th century and I'd LOVE to read a book about that tbh!) but it probably needs to be taken with a few grains of salt in places.
It's a very episodic book, with each chapter being on its own theme or topic, and the chapters are mostly not connected to each other at all. Some chapters are more interesting than others, and I personally find that the chapters where Eastman's particularly talking about his own experiences are more interesting than the ones where he relates tales of other people. Probably what this means is that I should have instead read Eastman's memoir of his childhood, Memories of an Indian Boyhood, instead of this book but OH WELL this is the one that fell into my hands so this is the one I read.
(One detail in this book that amused me was his mention of young girls' playthings all being small versions of adult tools, and the girl with her little hide scraper happily helping her mother, and comparing it to the main character in The Birchbark House which I read earlier this year where the young girl haaaaates scraping hides.)
Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly. He is not willing that all your knowledge of the race that formerly possessed this continent should come from the lips of strangers and enemies, or that you should think of them as blood-thirsty and treacherous, as savage and unclean.
It's a book written in 1913 about the Sioux lifestyle written by a man who is himself Sioux, who was born in the mid-1800s. But written, as is understandable, from a very particular slant: to make the life seem approachable and acceptable to white people, to make them think more kindly of Indigenous people in the face of widespread prejudice. It definitely seems to me to romanticise things in places.
So it's an interesting look at one man's memories of what it was like to grow up Sioux in the 19th century (...I accidentally mistyped that at first as 29th century and I'd LOVE to read a book about that tbh!) but it probably needs to be taken with a few grains of salt in places.
It's a very episodic book, with each chapter being on its own theme or topic, and the chapters are mostly not connected to each other at all. Some chapters are more interesting than others, and I personally find that the chapters where Eastman's particularly talking about his own experiences are more interesting than the ones where he relates tales of other people. Probably what this means is that I should have instead read Eastman's memoir of his childhood, Memories of an Indian Boyhood, instead of this book but OH WELL this is the one that fell into my hands so this is the one I read.
(One detail in this book that amused me was his mention of young girls' playthings all being small versions of adult tools, and the girl with her little hide scraper happily helping her mother, and comparing it to the main character in The Birchbark House which I read earlier this year where the young girl haaaaates scraping hides.)
