The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation

I love firsthand accounts to begin with and I love a good book about history. This was a quick read. It's a small book. This is an honest account of Native practices, to the best of the author's remembrances, prior to the introduction of white and Christian influences, and the beliefs and/or motivations of those practices.

Whether you agree or disagree with the practices or the motivations, this is must read to try to understand another culture or to discover your own, if you happen to be native.

He describes in some detail the struggle of being a product of both worlds, what that encompasses and how his feelings evolved on the matter.

While this is an honest account, he was more than fair and gracious about the effects of white, show more Christian culture on the native population.

At times dry, and at other times very poetic, it's by far a good read and I intend to seek out more of his work. I would recommend this book to anyone, but you cannot have my copy. Good luck and good reading. show less

simply marvelous! Short book outlining not just one man's integration between his experience with Sioux spirituality and his Christian faith. The way Baptism and the Eucharist were reimaged into the Native American culture was truly refreshing. It reminded me of the Christianity's current struggle to integrate and imagine within our current culture.

Very quick read and an extremely simplified account of Sioux religious practices that the author a Sioux himself applied to all Native American cultures. All cultures are not a like and this painting with such a broad brush does not do justice to the other cultures who practiced religion different than the Sioux. It is still an enlightening book on the practice of having a very personal type of religion that does not rely on someone between you and your Lord

This is definitely an interesting book and an important accounting for traditions of the Sioux. Yet it is done from a perspective "after the white man's arrival." And this leads to my conclusion that Mr. Eastman's histrionics are putting an acceptable slant on this Native American's culture.

Essentially The Soul of the Indian is a comparison of Sioux religiosity to Christianity. Self-admittedly, the author explains the basis of Indian culture and religion is the antithesis of Biblical religion. Yet he then proceeds to find similarities of varying proportion. He extolls the virtue of Indian religion and expresses disdain for the materialism or monetarism of Christianity.

Mr. Eastman takes time to include a section on familiar hierarchy and show more societal culture. One aspect I found suspect was his play down of the warrior culture. Understanding this book was written after the segregation of Indians to reservations Mr. Eastman likely tempered this profile of his people, in an effort to "humanize" the Native Americans.

Hence, I sensed that while the author was conveying his culture to white man, he was simultaneously trying to raise the Sioux religion to the level he perceives Christianity. Struggling to veil his contempt for Christianity but fully cognizant that his target audience was Americans, he paints the Sioux as simply a different strain of Christianity.

Blaming some of the misconceptions and alterations of long-standing cultural modalities on arrival of the White, this book needs to be read with a grain of salt. Granted his interpretations may be truly a perspective free of my suspected distortion towards his audience, the same caution afforded to autobiographies applies to this first-person defense of culture and religion. show less

I wanted a book which did not have a Christian theme, and found this little book in the Religious section at Project Gutenburg: The Soul of the Indian by Charles Alexander Eastman. It was published in 1911, and is an overview of some of the religious customs of the 'Indians' written by a Sioux who was raised in his native traditions, but later educated at Dartmouth and Boston University. This was an interesting book, as the author tried to separate the later traditions of his people from those they held before the white man came and corrupted them. The author is able, in the beginning of the book, to portray the beauty and peace of his people's silent and solitary communion with "the great mystery".

Charles Eastman was a native American who was taught in white schools in the early part of the last century.

His purpose in life was to communicate just what the American Indian believed. In this book he showed the values of the Indian *before* he was essentially spiritually polluted by the white invasion of his world.

CCA-5