Dr. Charles Eastman

By Nancy J. Farrier

 

Charles Eastman was born in 1858, in Minnesota. He was named Hakadah (the pitiful last) when his mother died a few days after his birth. He had three brothers and one sister. As a youth, he received the name, Ohiyesa (the winner).

 

Eastman in Sioux dress
Public Domain

Suring the “Sioux uprising of 1862” Ohiyesa was separated from his father and siblings. For the next ten years he was raised by his grandmother and uncle and lived a nomadic life. He believed those ten years were very formative and helped him the rest of his life

In his teen years, Ohiyesa wanted to avenge his father’s death. He was surprised when his father showed up in his camp. He had become a Christian and lived in the white man’s world and came to take his youngest son home. Ohiyesa was not happy but went with his father and eventually adjusted to that lifestyle. 

 

He had a thirst for learning and wasn’t satisfied with the small school close to them. His father encouraged his education. Ohiyesa walked 150 miles to a better school and at the encouragement of a missionary educator was accepted at Beloit College in Wisconsin. His father adopted the English name of his wife’s father, Eastman, and Ohiyesa became Charles Alexander Eastman.

 

Eastman went to several different schools, colleges and universities, before graduating from Dartmouth College in 1887 and going to Boston University to study medicine. He graduated with his medical degree in 1890, much faster than most students. 

 

Elaine Goodale, Public Domain
Wikimedia Commons

He became the Government Physician to the Sioux. Dr. Eastman was the first on the scene at Wounded Knee to treat the wounded Indians. After seeing the horrors inflicted on the tribes he became an advocate to help the Sioux. 

 

Charles married, Elaine Goodale, a white woman, a poet and Indian welfare activist, in 1891. They would have six children. He had to quit his job after a disagreement with a corrupt Indian agent. He and his wife moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where he began an medical practice. Within a short time he was offered a position as field secretary for the International Committee of the YMCA. 

 

He was also instrumental in promoting and working with Boy Scouts of America and Camp Fire Girls. He helped organize and establish many of the camps and even ran a camp on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. In 1915, his whole family settled in to run a camp at Granite Lake, New Hampshire.

 

Charles Eastman's Book

Dr. Eastman went to Washington D.C. to lobby for Sioux rights in 1897. He served again as Government physician to the Sioux tribe and then became an employee of the Indian bureau in 1903. He was charged with giving English names to all the
Sioux and recording names and family lineage. While doing this he met almost every living Sioux and interviewed them.

 

At his wife’s encouragement, Charles became an author, publishing his first book, Indian Boyhood, in 1902. The book was an immediate success. People were fascinated with his detail about life growing up among the Sioux. He published fifteen books, many used in schools, and also translated to French, German, Danish and Czech. He also wrote articles and was a public speaker.

 

Dr. Charles Eastman, Public Domain
Wikimedia Commons

By 1910, Dr. Eastman became involved in attempting to improve the circumstances of Indian tribes. He became President of the Society of American Indians. He set up a summer camp for young girls to teach them the Indian way of life.

 

In 1921, Charles and Elaine separated. They did not give the reason for this. Charles bought a plot of land on the north shore of Lake Huron. When he wasn’t traveling and speaking, he lived a primitive life in his small cabin. In later years, he would spend the bitter part of the winter with his son in Detroit. He died in 1939.

 

Dr. Eastman was the foremost advocate for Indian rights of his time. At the 1933 World’s Fair he was presented with a special medal honoring his achievements. His contribution to understanding Indian philosophy and religion were very significant. 

Have you heard about Dr. Eastman? I was fascinated at the extent of his education and the work he did for the cause of the different tribes. What did you find the most fascinating? I'd love to hear from you.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

 

 

 

 

The History of Church Camp

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Summer camps started in the 1880s. They answered the growing concerns of boys growing up in cities. Parents wanted to toughen the boys up and reconnect them with nature. 

Camps ran all summer. The activities ranged from swimming and hunting to playing Indian. Church services connected the boys with God in outdoor services on Sundays but were not the primary reason for camp.

In 1892, the first girl’s camp allowed girls to attend a boy’s camp for one month out of the summer. The first all girls camp started in 1902, Camp Wyonegonic in Bridgeton, Maine.

The first camp to emphasize spiritual growth, also began to introduce boys to nature and outdoor life. In 1885, Sumner Dudley started the first YMCA camp in Westport , New York.

The Bennett Spring Church Camp funded by the American Bible Society started in Lindenlure, Missouri in 1936. In the 1940s and 1950s, church camps began to spring up in every denomination. 

Through the years, church camps have become shorter and more organized. One thing that has not changed is that they have impacted the lives of countless young people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and was a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest. Her Novel, Alice’s Notions and her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

Hoosier Hysteria and the History of Basketball

by Ramona K. Cecil

About this time of year, an odd malady strikes my state of Indiana. No, it’s not influenza, which is also prevalent now. I’m speaking of Hoosier Hysteria, the moniker attached to the fanatical excitement exhibited by crazed fans of basketball, especially high school basketball.

I must confess, while cheering for my favorite team I’ve never once mused about the origin of this excitement, or even the sport itself. But in a quieter moment I wondered, how did it all begin?

Actually, the ancient Aztecs in Mexico invented a game sometime before 1400BC that had some of the basics as our modern game of basketball. Called ollamalitzli, this sport was not a game for the faint of heart. Often brutal and even fatal, ollamalitzli resembled modern basketball only in that the object was to get a rubber ball through a metal ring at each end of a court. This was accomplished by basically a no-holds-barred free-for-all in which the loser might have to face a sacrificial dagger. Yikes! And we think the NBA can be rough!

Aztecs playing ollamalitzli

The invention of our modern game of basketball is credited to a man named James Naismith, who had never heard of the Aztecs game of ollamalitzli. 

In 1891, James Naismith was a young physical education instructor at the International Training Institution in Springfield, Massachusetts. The physical education department had been charged with developing some sort of physical game the students could play indoors. When the more senior PE teachers failed to come up with such a game, Naismith took a crack at the problem. 

James Naismith with soccer ball and peach basket

At first he envisioned some sort of indoor football, but nixed the idea fearing it would be too rough. He then considered a form of boxball, where players would pitch a football into boxes affixed to either end of the gymnasium. When he asked the janitor for boxes, all the man could produce were some peach baskets. After some trial and error, Naismith settled on baskets nailed ten feet above the floor at each end of the court and a round soccer ball instead of a football. He developed thirteen rules for the game, twelve of which are still in use.

Naismith's original 13 rules for the game of basketball

The next day he introduced the game to his eighteen student, dividing them into two teams of nine.

Naismith in center surrounded by 9 of his students

Basketball being played with basket in 1892

The game was an instant hit, though it remained plagued by some pesky problems. The peach baskets took a beating, so had to be replaced often. This problem was eventually remedied by replacing the baskets with sturdy metal rings to which nets made of cord were attached. But whether played with peach baskets or nets, another problem still remained. Each time a player made a “basket,” someone had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball.  



                           Early nets that replaced peach baskets. Note the attached

                           string that opened the net to allow the basket to fall through.

Five years later, in 1896, an anonymous player on a semi-pro team got fed-up with this frustrating aspect of the game and simply cut a hole in the bottom of the net. A real game-changer!

But we’ll back up a bit. How, you ask, did basketball come to Indiana and become such a rage in the Hoosier state? Reverend Nicholas McKay, a Presbyterian minister who had been assigned to head the Crawfordsville, Indiana YMCA and had met Naismith and learned about his new game, brought basketball with him to Crawfordsville in 1894. Hungry for a game kids could play indoors during it's cold winters, Indiana was a fertile field for the game of basketball. Baseball and football had never caught on in the mainly rural state where youngsters’ summers and autumns were filled with farming chores. But winter brought more leisure time and basketball fit the bill perfectly.

James Naismith himself is quoted as saying "Basketball really had it origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport."

The first basketball game in Indiana was played in the Crawfordsville Terminal Building March 16,1894. In this perfect Hoosier environment, the game took root and grew like weeds in a fallow field until it has become a near religion in the state. 

Crawfordsville, Indiana men's basketball team Circa 1923

Decatur, Indiana girl's basketball team 1920 - 1921

It's hard to imagine anyone growing up in Indiana after 1894 and not having their life touched in some way by basketball. The 1986 movie Hoosiers in which a small rural team battles a much larger school for the 1954 state championship, expertly depicts how the game has woven itself into the fabric of Indiana.

So as Hoosier Hysteria breaks out across the state again, I pause my cheering for a moment to remember how it all began and to pay homage to James Naismith, Nicholas McKay, and yes, even the Aztecs although I’m glad that if my team loses, they won’t be required to pay with their lives.

Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of Indiana.

  

Check out her website at www.ramonakcecil.com