e was brought up, like the little Hiawatha, by a good
grandmother. When he was four years old, war broke out between his
people and the United States government. The Indians were defeated and
many of them were killed. Some fled northward into Canada and took
refuge under the British flag, among them the writer of this book, with
his grandmother and an uncle. His father was captured by the whites.

After ten years of that wild life, now everywhere at an end, of which
he has given you a true picture in his books, his father, whom the good
President Lincoln had pardoned and released from the military prison,
made the long and dangerous journey to Canada to find and bring back
his youngest son. The Sioux were beginning to learn that the old life
must go, and that, if they were to survive at all, they must follow
"the white man's road," long and hard as it looked to a free people.
They were beginning to plow and sow and send their children to school.

Ohiyesa, the Winner, as the boy was called, came home with his father
to what was then Dakota Territory, to a little settlement of Sioux
homesteaders. Everything about the new life was strange to him, and at
first he did not like it at all. He had thoughts of running away and
making his way back to Canada. But his father, Many Lightnings, who had
been baptized a Christian under the name of Jacob Eastman, told him
that he, too, must take a new name, and he chose that of Charles
Alexander Eastman. He was told to cut off his long hair and put on
citizen's clothing. Then his father made him choose between going to
school and working at the plow.

Ohiyesa tried plowing for half a day. It was hard work to break the
tough prairie sod with his father's oxen and the strange implement they
gave him. He decided to try school. Rather to his surprise, he liked
it, and he kept on. His teachers were pleased with his progress, and
soon better opportunities opened to him. He was sent farther east to a
better school, where he continued to do well, and soon went higher. In
the long summer vacations he worked, on farms, in shops and offices;
and in winter he studied and played football and all the other games
you play, until after about fifteen or sixteen years he found himself
with the diplomas of a famous college and a great university, a
Bachelor of Science, a Doctor of Medicine, and a doubly educated
man--educated in the lore of the wilderness as well as in some of the
deepest secrets of civ