A Tribute to Fern Eastman Mathias
November 27, 1930-March 31, 2002
Taken from the book We The People: Of Earth And Elders, Vol. II
HONEST ABE?
Written by Fern Mathias (Sisseton/Wahpeton Dakota)
Cloud Man was a Mdewakanton Dakota Chief who was born around 1780 in his father's village, about eight miles from present day Mendota, near Minneapolis. He attained status among the Santee Dakotas as a whole, and leadership of his Mdewakanton band, through his actions. He was a man who fulfilled his commitments, initially in battle in defense of his people and later in his attempts to keep the peace. His military experiences led him to instill a strict ethical code in combat that might be compared to the conventions for conduct in war that were adopted over a century later by the US and others. In war nobody from his band would harm non-combatants and in times of peace nobody would engage in combat of any kind or break that trust. Due to the geographical location of his people, Cloud Man was one of the earliest Sioux Leaders of any band of nation of the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, to recognize the military power of the Americans and that treaties would become the means to physical survival. Some criticized his approach to the whites and willingness to accept agriculture, but at Cloud Man's village the people had been raising crops for years before the settlers invaded. One on a buffalo hunt, Cloud Man had nearly lost his life and those of the others in the party when they were trapped in a blizzard, and after that he believed there was a need to supplement their existing subsistence lifestyle with agriculture, so they began raising corn.
Cloud Man's youngest daughter, Stands Sacred, married Captain Seth Eastman, an officer and artist posted at Fort Snelling, and they had one daughter, Mary Nancy Eastman, who was born in 1831. Eastman transferred a few years later and left Stands Sacred, returning around 1840 with a white wife to become commander of Fort Snelling. Stands Sacred returned to her people and her daughter Mary became renowned in the area for her beauty. Mary had a number of admirers, and there a few different versions of how she came to marry my great-grandfather, Many Lightnings, a Mdewakanton/Wahpeton Dakota Chief. My great-grandfather faced difficult choices in what were extremely precarious and turbulent times in the history and very existence of our people. Manifest Destiny was the order of the day, obeyed by the immigrants and armies invading our homeland. The prevailing attitude of the US government and the majority of the settlers in 1862 is represented by a famous quote from one of the government traders who operated in our territory. "If they are hungry," said Andrew Myrick, "let them eat grass or their own dung." They weren't hungry, they were starving due to government corruption, and most felt that of the two options available to them, fighting was better than starving to death.
Little Crow was the Mdewakanton leader who, it is said by some, reluctantly accepted the responsibility to lead the campaign and my great-grandfather told him, "We will not kill women and children but we will fight the soldiers when they come." Many Lightnings was badly wounded at the Battle of Wood Lake and when the so-called "Minnesota Sioux Uprising' ended, he was referred to as 'one of the fortunate hostiles' because he was exiled and imprisoned in Davenport, Iowa, unlike many others who were hung. Three hundred and ninety-two Dakota men were tried after this three-month fight for survival, the trials having proceeded at a rate of one prisoner every ten minutes. Three hundred and three were sentenced to death by hanging while their families starved and froze to death in a compound at Fort Snelling. Chief Mahkahto had been killed in the Battle of Wood Lake where my great-grandfather was wounded, and it was in the town that bears his name, "Mankato," that on December 26, 1862, thirty-eight Dakotas were hung in the largest mass execution in American history. President Abraham Lincoln signed the order that condemned them in the same week that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. People think Abraham Lincoln was a good person, but he was the one who did that and those whose sentences he commuted were imprisoned and ultimately ethnically cleansed from their homelands.
People have said and written that Many Lightnings was a willing convert to Christianity but it was, yet again, a matter of survival. After seeking sanctuary in Canada with other Dakotas, he was confined as a Prisoner of War at Fort Pembina in early 1864, and from there imprisoned in Iowa. It was during his incarceration that he converted to Christianity and became known as Jacob Eastman, adopting his late wife Mary's surname. Two other leaders who had been captured and held at Fort Pembina around the same time, Chiefs Shakopee and Medicine Bottle, didn't survive the kangaroo court and were hung. It is said that as he stood on the gallows Shakopee heard one of the first trains arriving in our country and said, "As the white man comes in, the Indian goes out." Upon his release, Many Lightnings returned to Canada to search for my grandfather, Ohiyesa. He found him and they settled with the other refugees in Santee, Nebraska, before moving closer to home, building a community in Flandreau, South Dakota. Like Many Lightnings, my grandfather survived in the white world by appearing to convert to Christianity and taking the name Charles Eastman. My grandfather became a respected physician and as the agency surgeon at Pine Ridge he was among the first on to the killing fields at Wounded Knee to try and save the survivors. He went on to become one of the first American Indians to have his work published and the books of Ohiyesa, often authored as Charles Eastman, provided the foundation upon which many Indian authors have followed.