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Goodale Sisters
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Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) and Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) were American poets and sisters from Massachusetts. They published their first poetry as children still living at home, and were included in Edmund Clarence Stedman's classic An American Anthology (1900).
Key Information
Elaine Goodale taught at the Indian Department of Hampton Institute, started a day school on a Dakota reservation in 1886, and was appointed as Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas by 1890. She married Dr. Charles Eastman (also known as Ohiye S'a), a Santee Sioux who was the first Native American to graduate from medical school and become a physician educated in Western medicine. They lived with their growing family in the West for several years. Goodale collaborated with him in writing about his childhood and Sioux culture; his nine books were popular and made him a featured speaker on a public lecture circuit. She also continued her own writing, writing both as a journalist in many of the newspapers and magazines of the day, and books in genres including novels, biography and memoir. Her last book was published in 1930; a memoir edited by Kay Graber was published posthumously in 1978.
Dora Read Goodale published a book of poetry at age 21 and continued to write. She became a teacher of art and English in Connecticut. Later she was a teacher and director of the Uplands Sanatorium in Pleasant Hill, Tennessee.[1] She attracted positive reviews when she published her last book of poetry at age 75 in 1941, in which she combined modernist free verse with the use of Appalachian dialect to express her neighbors' traditional lives.[2]
Early life and education
[edit]Elaine and Dora were born in the 1860s to Dora Hill Read and Henry Sterling Goodale, a farmer and writer in Mount Washington, Massachusetts. Dora Read Goodale was the daughter of a notable colonial family, and Henry Goodale could trace his family tree all the way back to 1632, to an ancestor who settled in Salem, Massachusetts. Elaine, born October 9, 1863, was the couple's first child. Elaine's sister Dora was born four years later.
From 1876 to 1879 Elaine and Dora's father served as a delegate to the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.[3] His poem "Does Farming Pay?", in the October 1880 issue of Harper's Monthly, was reviewed in The New York Times as a "terrific" piece of dialect verse.[4]
The Goodale sisters grew up on their parents' farm, known as Sky Farm. They had a brother Robert, and a sister, Rose Sterling Goodale, who married James A. Dayton and preserved much of the family's history and manuscripts.[5] The entire family absorbed the New England Transcendental culture.
Elaine and Dora were precocious writers, starting poetry while young. Elaine self-published her poems at age eight in her Sky Farm Life, a monthly. Her first pastoral poem appeared in the Springfield Republican when she was twelve.[6] Friends helped collect the two girls' early writings; Elaine was fifteen and Dora twelve when their first book was published:
- Apple Blossoms: Verses of Two Children (1878)
- In Berkshire with the Wildflowers (1879)
- All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm (1880)
Beginning in 1881, the Goodale sisters contributed to such periodicals as Scribner's Monthly, Harper's and Sunday Magazine.[2] In 1887 both sisters had their poetry published in St. Nicholas Magazine, as well. As the biographer Theodore Sargent noted, both young poets were included in Edmund Clarence Stedman's classic An American Anthology, 1787-1900, published in 1900.[5]
Elaine Goodale Eastman
[edit]
In 1881 Elaine published The Journal of a Farmer's Daughter. Two years later she became a teacher at the Hampton Institute, in Virginia for the education of freedmen. She taught a new group of 100 Native American students from the West. In 1885 Goodale made a tour through the Sioux Reservation, as she wanted to learn more about her students' world.
Having become interested in the cause of Indian reform, in 1886 Elaine Goodale received a government appointment to teach Indians at the White River Camp, where she set up a day school. She strongly supported educating children at day schools on the reservations rather than sending them away to boarding schools. In 1890 Goodale was appointed Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[7]
In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890, she cared for the wounded with Dr. Charles Eastman, a Santee Sioux doctor of part Anglo-American ancestry. They fell in love, and in 1891 she and Charles were married in New York.[8]
The couple had six children:
- Dora Winona Eastman, d. August 22, 1964, Northampton, MA
- Irene Eastman, d. October 23, 1918, Keene, NH
- Virginia Eastman, d. April 2, 1991, Amherst, MA (married Mr. Sterling Whitbeck)
- Eleanor Eastman, d. May 2, 1999, Pittsford, NY (married Mr. Ernst Mensel)
- Florence Eastman, d. December 30, 1930, Holyoke, MA (married Mr. Robert Prentiss)
- Charles Eastman Jr. (Ohiyesa), d. January 15, 1940, Detroit, MI (married Miss Marion Nutting)
The couple remained together for three decades, returning to Massachusetts in 1903. They had struggled financially after Eastman was forced out of two physician positions with the Indian Health Service. For a time they both worked at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.[8] There Goodale Eastman edited the school newspaper, the Red Man.
After Goodale Eastman started helping Eastman write his stories of childhood and Indian culture, he became well known and sought after for lectures. The family was based in Amherst, near Goodale's family, as Eastman increasingly traveled for public lectures and other activities. Goodale managed his lecture tours and associated publicity, as he had about 25 lectures annually.[8] They also collaborated on writing, and he published eight books while they lived in Amherst; Goodale Eastman published three during the time they were married;[5] after they separated she published four additional books. The extent to which Goodale Eastman edited or influenced Charles Eastman’s writing is a source of much debate.[9]
In 1915 the family founded their own summer camp, Camp Oáhe, at Granite Lake, New Hampshire, where the adults and three oldest children all worked for several years. Their daughter Irene, a promising opera singer and Charles' favorite, died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, leaving both parents devastated and further straining their relationship.[5] In 1921, after allegations that Charles had an affair and an illegitimate child, the couple separated. They never divorced or publicly acknowledged the separation. Charles Eastman did not publish any books after their separation.[8][9]
Goodale Eastman continued to write, publishing four books after her separation from Charles: The Luck of Old Acres (1928), a novel about a summer camp; and her last book of poems, The Voice at Eve (1930), which included a biographical essay entitled "All the Days of My Life". In 1935, when she was more than 70 years old, she published both her best novel, One Hundred Maples, and a biography of Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School.[8] She also published numerous articles, letters and book reviews in a variety of journals.[5] Her 1935 biography of Pratt and a 1945 article on the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee Massacre are recognized as "important historical documents on the transition period in Plains Indian history."[8]
After her death of natural causes on December 22, 1953, her ashes were scattered in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Florence, Massachusetts, near where her daughter Dora and her family lived.[5] Goodale Eastman had written a memoir about her experiences as a school teacher of the Sioux called Sister to the Sioux. The manuscript was published posthumously in 1978 by the University of Nebraska Press.
Dora Read Goodale
[edit]After graduating from Smith College in 1890, Dora published her first independent book of poetry in 1887, Heralds of Easter. She became a teacher of art and English in Reading, Connecticut, which her mother's family had settled.[1] She never married, but she and her sister Elaine exchanged numerous letters over the decades in which they examined the various alternatives for women.[5]
Later in life Dora worked as a teacher and director of Uplands Sanatorium in Pleasant Hill, Tennessee. In 1941 she published Mountain Dooryards, her last book of poetry, a work that was written in modernist free verse and used the dialect of the people of the Appalachians and expressed their traditional but changing world.[2]
Legacy
[edit]- In 1950 Goodale Eastman donated her papers to Smith College, where she had earned her undergraduate degree. (She had removed most of the references to Charles Eastman.)[5] Her sister, Rose Sterling Goodale Dayton, subsequently donated many papers to the collection.
Film portrayal
[edit]In the HBO film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007), Elaine Goodale was portrayed by the actress Anna Paquin.
Works
[edit]Poetry:
- Elaine Goodale and Dora Read Goodale. Apple-blossoms: verses of two children, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1878.
- ______________________. (and illustrated by William Hamilton Gibson). In Berkshire with the wild flowers, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1879.
- _____________________. All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm, G.P. Putnam's Sons, (1880).
- Goodale, Dora Read. Heralds of Easter (1887).
- Goodale, Dora Read.Test of the Sky, 1926[5]
- Goodale, Dora Read.Mountain Dooryards, 1941; 1945, revised and enlarged[2]
- Eastman, Elaine Goodale. The Voice at Eve, collected poems (Unknown Binding - 1930).
Non-fiction:
- Eastman, Elaine Goodale. Journal of a Farmer's Daughter, (Unknown Binding - 1881).
- ________________. The Senator and the School-house ([Indian Rights Association. Publications. 1st ser.]), (Unknown Binding - 1886).
- ________________. Indian Wars and Warriors, (Unknown Binding - 1894)
- ________________ & Charles A. Eastman. Smoky Day's Wigwam Evenings: Indian Stories Retold, Little, Brown and Company, 1910.
- _________________. Pratt The Red Man's Moses, 1935. (biography of Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School
- ________________. Western Sentiment on the Indian Question, (Unknown Binding - 1946)
- ________________. Sister to the Sioux: The Memoirs of Elaine Goodale Eastman: 1885-1891, Kay Graber, editor, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
Fiction:
- Eastman, Elaine Goodale. Little Brother O' Dreams, Houghton Mifflin Company, February 1910.
- ______________. Yellow Star: A Story of East and West, Little, Brown and Company, 1911. (Goodale Eastman described these first two novels as "potboilers".[8])
- ______________. The Eagle and the Star,: American Indian Pageant Play in Three Acts, (Unknown Binding - 1916)
- ______________. The Luck of Oldacres (1928), New York: Century Company[5]
- ______________. Hundred Maples, Stephen Daye Press, 1935.
References
[edit]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Gilman, Daniel Coit; Peck, Harry Thurston; Colby, Frank Moore, eds. (1905). "Goodale, Elaine and Dora Read". The New International Encyclopædia. Vol. IX (1 ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. p. 32. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
- ^ a b "Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family", Sophia Smith Collection: Women's History Archives, Smith College, Northampton, MA, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ a b c d Paula Bennett, Nineteenth-century American Women Poets: An Anthology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1998, pp. 351-352, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ History of Berkshire County, Vol. 1, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ "Fresh Magazines. Harper's Magazine", The New York Times, 18 September 1880, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Theodore D. Sargent, The Life of Elaine Goodale Eastman (Women in the West), University of Nebraska Press (2006), accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ "The Bride of an Indian: Miss Elaine Goodale Married to Dr. Eastman", The New York Times, 19 September 1891, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ "Elaine Goodale Eastman", Only a Teacher: Schoolhouse Pioneers, Public Broadcasting Company (PBS), accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ a b c d e f g Ruth Ann Alexander, "Elaine Goodale Eastman and the Failure of the Feminist Protestant Ethic", Great Plains Quarterly, Spring 1988, accessed 3 February 2011
- ^ a b Dobrow, Julie (January 20, 2022). ""Poetry Wedded to Science." On the Love and Legacy of Elaine Goodale and Charles Eastman".
Further reading
[edit]- Clark, Carol Lea. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) and Elaine Goodale Eastman: A Cross-Cultural Collaboration, University of Tulsa, 1994.
- Dobrow, J., and Wilson, R. (Spring 2022). "'Good Night Irene': The Pandemic of 1918 and the Death of Irene Taluta Eastman" (subscription required). South Dakota History. 52(1).
External links
[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to Dora Read Goodale.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Elaine Goodale Eastman.
- Works by Elaine Goodale Eastman at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Elaine Goodale Eastman at the Internet Archive
- Works by or about Dora Read Goodale at the Internet Archive
- Works by Goodale Sisters at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Elaine Goodale Eastman at Library of Congress, with 26 library catalog records, and at WorldCat
- Dora Read Goodale at LC Authorities, with 8 records, and at WorldCat
- Eastman-Goodale-Dayton Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections.
Goodale Sisters
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Early Life and Family Background
Childhood and Upbringing in Massachusetts
Elaine Goodale was born on October 9, 1863, in Mount Washington, Massachusetts, a rural town in the Berkshire Mountains.[8] Her younger sister, Dora Read Goodale, followed on October 29, 1866, in the same location.[9] The sisters were the daughters of Henry Sterling Goodale, a farmer and writer, and Deborah "Dora" Hill Read Goodale, also an author who emphasized intellectual development in the household.[10] [11] The family resided on a New England farm, where the sisters experienced a close connection to nature amid the isolated, scenic landscape of western Massachusetts.[12] This rural setting fostered self-reliance and outdoor activities, with the Berkshire environment providing inspiration for their early observations of flora and fauna.[4] Deborah Goodale homeschooled her daughters, delivering a rigorous curriculum that included classical languages; by age twelve, Elaine had achieved proficiency in Greek and Latin.[13] The household's literary atmosphere, supported by both parents' writing pursuits, encouraged intellectual curiosity without formal institutional attendance during their formative years.[1] The Goodales' upbringing reflected progressive New England values, blending agrarian labor with cultural refinement in a family that valued education and self-expression.[3] Siblings, including a brother and other sisters, shared this environment, though Elaine and Dora formed a particularly close bond through shared experiences on the farm.[14] Their mother's influence extended to practical skills and moral grounding, preparing them for independent lives amid limited local opportunities in the remote Berkshires.[6]Initial Literary Interests and Family Influences
The Goodale sisters, Elaine (born October 9, 1863) and Dora Read (born October 29, 1866), grew up on Sky Farm, their family's homestead in Mount Washington, Massachusetts, where the surrounding Berkshire landscape profoundly shaped their early affinity for nature-themed poetry.[15][16] Their parents, Henry S. Goodale (1836–1906), a farmer and writer, and Deborah "Dora" Hill Read Goodale (1839–1910), a teacher and published poet, fostered a literate household environment that encouraged creative expression from a young age.[6][17] Elaine demonstrated precocious literary talent by composing poems as early as age eight and circulating them in a homemade monthly periodical titled Sky Farm Life, reflecting the family's rural routines and natural observations.[18] The sisters' shared interests culminated in their first joint publication, Apple-Blossoms: Verses of Two Children, released in 1878 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, featuring verses inspired by seasonal farm life and wildflowers when Elaine was 14 and Dora 11.[6][1] This debut drew acclaim for its youthful authenticity, with subsequent works like In Berkshire with the Wildflowers (1879) extending their focus on botanical motifs drawn from family excursions and home gardens.[15] Parental influence extended beyond encouragement; Deborah Read Goodale's own poetic endeavors and naming of Elaine after a character in Alfred Tennyson's works instilled a reverence for Romantic literature and verse forms.[19] The siblings' immersion in this setting, supplemented by contributions to national periodicals before adolescence, established poetry as a familial pursuit intertwined with empirical observation of the natural world rather than formal schooling.[6] Their early output emphasized unadorned depictions of flora and fauna, prioritizing sensory detail over abstraction, which aligned with the self-reliant ethos of their Yankee farming heritage.[18]Dora Read Goodale
Poetic Career and Botanical Pursuits
Dora Read Goodale's poetic career commenced in childhood through collaborations with her sister Elaine, producing nature-themed verse that drew from their Berkshire upbringing. Their debut joint volume, Apple Blossoms: Verses of Two Children, was published in 1878, showcasing simple, observant poems on seasonal flora and rural life when Dora was 12 years old.[20] This was followed in 1879 by In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers, a collection pairing original poems with engravings by W. Hamilton Gibson depicting native plants such as trilliums and violets, emphasizing the aesthetic and ecological details of local wildflowers.[21] Their third collaborative effort, All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm, appeared in 1881, extending themes of cyclical natural renewal across seasons on the family farm. Goodale's botanical pursuits intertwined with her poetry, manifesting as meticulous field observations rather than formal scientific study; In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers reflects her early fascination with regional botany, cataloging blooms through verse that notes habits like the "modest hepaticas" emerging in spring woods.[22] Later, as a farmer and teacher, she sustained this interest via writings on Appalachian and mountain flora, including solo volumes like Mountain Dooryards (circa 1890s), which evoked hardy wild plants in verse.[23] Her independent debut, Heralds of Easter in 1887, shifted toward thematic poetry but retained natural imagery, marking her transition to periodical contributions in outlets like Scribner's Monthly and Harper's starting in 1881.[24] Throughout her career, Goodale's work privileged direct empirical engagement with landscapes, yielding over a dozen periodical pieces by 1890 on topics from wildflower cycles to rural botany, as documented in contemporary bibliographies.[25] This fusion of poetry and botanical observation distinguished her from purely lyrical contemporaries, grounding verse in verifiable natural phenomena observed on family lands.[6]Personal Life and Later Years
Dora Read Goodale never married, having concluded a three-year engagement to Thomas Sanford owing to familial responsibilities that required her ongoing support for relatives.[6] Following her parents' separation in 1882, she contributed to the family's stability amid relocations, including moves to Redding, Connecticut, that year; Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1887; and Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1891.[6] In her later career, Goodale shifted toward education and administrative roles, teaching art and English in Connecticut before joining Pine Mountain Settlement School in Kentucky in 1913 at age 47, where she served for one year.[6] [24] From 1929 onward, she worked at Upland Sanatorium and Pleasant Hill Academy in Tennessee, initially as a secretary and eventually advancing to director.[6] Goodale maintained her literary output into advanced age, releasing the poetry collection Mountain Dooryards in 1946 at 75 years old, with themes drawn from Appalachian experiences.[6] Her health deteriorated in the late 1940s, prompting residence with her brother Robert in Virginia prior to admission to a nursing home.[6] She died there on December 12, 1953, at age 87, ten days before her sister Elaine; she was buried in Redding Center Cemetery, Redding, Connecticut.[6] [26]Elaine Goodale Eastman
Early Activism and Work on Native American Reservations
Elaine Goodale's early activism in Native American education began in 1883 when, at age 20, she accepted a teaching position in the Indian Department of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, a school originally established for freed Black Americans but expanded in 1878 to include Native students under principal Samuel Chapman Armstrong. There, she taught Indian pupils and edited the Indian section of the institute's publication, Southern Workman, while publishing her first articles on Indian education in June 1884. Influenced by Armstrong's philosophy of industrial training and assimilation, Goodale advocated for practical education to integrate Native Americans into American society, though she later critiqued overly rigid boarding school models.[27][1] In autumn 1885, Goodale toured several Sioux agencies in Dakota Territory, including Lower Brule, Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Rosebud, and Pine Ridge, accompanied by reformers Florence Bascom and Herbert Welsh, to observe reservation conditions firsthand. She published accounts in outlets like the Boston Weekly Advertiser and Southern Workman, urging support for the Dawes Act to allot lands and promote individual farming over tribal communalism, viewing it as essential for civilizing progress. These experiences deepened her commitment to on-reservation education, leading her to establish a model day school at White River Camp near Lower Brule Agency in autumn 1886 as the first government-appointed teacher there. Unlike off-reservation boarding schools, she emphasized day schools to maintain family ties while imparting English, hygiene, and basic skills.[27][28] From 1887 to 1889, Goodale continued teaching at White River, participated in reform events such as the Lake Mohonk Conference and Women's National Indian Association gatherings, and immersed herself in Sioux culture by joining a late-summer 1889 hunting expedition with Whirling Hawk's band in Nebraska's Sand Hills. In early 1890, the Bureau of Indian Affairs appointed her Supervisor of Education for the Sioux Nation across the Dakotas, a role in which she traveled approximately 2,400 miles between March and November, inspecting 50 day schools, organizing teachers' institutes to train educators, and advocating for improved supplies, nutrition, and flexible discipline to enhance school effectiveness. Her reports highlighted the need for practical reforms amid agent resistance, positioning her as a key figure in the era's Indian reform movement, though her assimilationist stance reflected the paternalistic assumptions common among white reformers.[27][28][1]Marriage to Charles Eastman and Family Life
Elaine Goodale married Charles Alexander Eastman, a Santee Dakota physician known as Ohiyesa, on June 18, 1891, at the Church of the Ascension in New York City.[29][30] The interracial union, between a white poet-educator and a Native American medical graduate, drew widespread media attention, with over 200 newspapers reporting on it, yet faced strong opposition from Goodale's family due to racial and cultural differences.[31] Following the wedding, the couple returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Eastman resumed medical duties for the Indian Bureau, and Goodale continued her advocacy work amid ongoing tensions post-Wounded Knee Massacre.[15] Their first child, daughter Dora Winona, was born on May 31, 1892.[32] In 1893, the family relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Eastman established a medical practice at 227 East Tenth Street and later served as Indian Secretary for the YMCA from 1894 to 1897, involving extensive travel to promote Native American welfare.[32] During this period, they resided in multiple homes, including Lyons Court in 1895 and 783 Holly Avenue by 1897, and spent summers at Bald Eagle Lake for writing and recreation; two more daughters, Irene (born February 24, 1894) and Virginia (born November 3, 1896), were born there.[32] The couple collaborated on articles like "Recollections of the Wild Life" for St. Nicholas Magazine (1893–1894), blending Eastman's traditional knowledge with Goodale's literary skills, while raising their growing family amid urban adaptation and racial scrutiny.[32] The Eastmans had six children in total: five daughters and one son, including a son, Charles Alexander Eastman Jr. (born September 18, 1898), and additional daughters Florence and one other.[33][32] By 1903, the family settled in Amherst, Massachusetts, living in three successive houses over 18 years, where Goodale emphasized homeschooling and cultural education for their biracial children, navigating societal prejudice that often marginalized their mixed heritage.[34] One daughter, Irene, died during the 1918 influenza epidemic.[8] Family life involved Eastman's lecturing and writing on Dakota traditions, Goodale's ongoing literary and reform efforts, and efforts to instill bicultural values, though underlying strains from Eastman's travels and external racism persisted.[12] The marriage ended in separation in 1921, after which Eastman left for Canada and Goodale remained in Massachusetts with some children; the estrangement stemmed partly from Eastman's relationship with another woman, resulting in an out-of-wedlock son, though the couple never divorced.[8][5] Despite challenges, their partnership produced collaborative works and a family that bridged Native and white worlds, with children pursuing diverse paths including education and public service.[32]Later Writings, Reforms, and Personal Challenges
In the years following her marriage to Charles Eastman, Elaine Goodale Eastman continued her literary output, focusing on themes of Native American life and cultural integration. She co-authored Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Tales Retold in 1909, a collection of traditional stories adapted for young readers, and published the novel Yellow Star: A Story of East and West in 1911, which depicts an orphaned Ojibwe girl adopted into a white New England family, advocating for on-reservation day schools over distant boarding institutions to preserve family structures.[35][36] Other works included Little Brother o’ Dreams (1910), a children's book, and Indian Legends Retold (1919), retellings of indigenous narratives.[28] After her permanent separation from Charles Eastman in 1921, prompted by his extramarital affair with a Finnish woman named Henrietta and his refusal to support their illegitimate son Bonno Hyessa, Eastman faced financial hardship while raising their children and managing Camp Oáhe, a girls' summer camp in New Hampshire from 1915 to 1924.[5][28] She relocated to Northampton, Massachusetts, in her later years, where she resided until her death on December 24, 1953, at age 90.[15] These challenges subordinated her own literary ambitions to familial and reformist duties, as she later reflected in correspondence expressing frustration over unfulfilled artistic potential.[28] Eastman's post-separation publications included The Luck of Old Acres (1928), a novel drawing from her camp experiences, and One Hundred Maples (1935), which incorporated autobiographical elements critiquing marital betrayal in a chapter titled "A Hollow Shell."[28][5] In Pratt, the Red Man's Moses (1935), she defended Richard Henry Pratt's assimilationist education model at Carlisle Indian Industrial School while critiquing its excesses, and in a 1945 article, she revisited the Ghost Dance movement and Wounded Knee Massacre, emphasizing contextual Native perspectives.[28] Her reform efforts persisted, prioritizing community-based education to counter the family disruptions of off-reservation boarding schools, a stance informed by her Dakota Territory experiences but tempered by evolving federal policies toward greater tribal autonomy.[7][3] Despite personal estrangement, she advocated for Bonno Hyessa's welfare in 1925 discussions with Henrietta, seeking paternal support amid ongoing financial strain.[5] These endeavors reflected her commitment to pragmatic Native advancement, though limited by her era's racial and gender constraints.[12]Collaborative and Individual Works
Joint Poetry Collections
The Goodale sisters, Elaine and Dora Read, produced three joint volumes of poetry during their adolescence, reflecting their immersion in the rural landscape of Sky Farm in the Berkshire Mountains. These works, characterized by observant depictions of nature, seasonal cycles, and wildflowers, garnered early acclaim for their precocity and were initially seeded in periodicals like St. Nicholas Magazine.[37] Their collaborative output ceased after 1880, coinciding with Elaine's departure for college and subsequent focus on educational and reform activities.[4] Apple-Blossoms: Verses of Two Children, published in 1878 by G.P. Putnam's Sons when Elaine was 15 and Dora 12, compiled poems evoking springtime blooms and childhood wonder on the family farm. The volume received positive notices for its fresh, unforced imagery drawn from direct observation of the local environment.[5][20] The following year, 1879, saw the release of In Berkshire with the Wildflowers, which expanded on botanical themes with verses cataloging regional flora and pastoral scenes, underscoring the sisters' affinity for the Berkshires' ecosystems. This collection highlighted their emerging botanical knowledge, later echoed in Dora's individual pursuits.[20][4] Their final joint effort, All Round the Year: Verses from Sky Farm (1880), incorporated thirty illustrated poems previously issued in pamphlet form, encompassing the full cycle of seasons through farm life vignettes. Published amid growing individual trajectories, it marked the culmination of their shared juvenile oeuvre, blending lyric simplicity with empirical detail from daily rural existence.[6][4]Elaine's Key Publications on Native Americans
Elaine Goodale Eastman's most prominent publication on Native Americans is her memoir Sister to the Sioux: The Memoirs of Elaine Goodale Eastman, 1885-1891, which recounts her experiences teaching and living among the Lakota Sioux on reservations in South Dakota during a period of rapid cultural upheaval following the decline of buffalo herds and increasing U.S. government oversight. Originally composed from journals and letters spanning her six years on the Great Sioux Reservation, the work details her efforts to establish day schools, her interactions with Lakota families, and observations of traditional practices amid assimilation pressures, including a summer spent traveling hundreds of miles by pony and living off the land in what the Sioux termed the "hungry season."[3] Edited and published posthumously in 1978 by the University of Nebraska Press, it highlights the tensions between her reformist ideals—rooted in promoting English education and domestic skills—and the Lakota's resistance to rapid change, providing firsthand accounts of events like the Ghost Dance movement's precursors.[38] In 1911, Eastman published Yellow Star: A Child's Story of Indian Life, an episodic narrative framed as the reminiscences of a Cheyenne girl orphaned during the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, drawing on historical events and her own fieldwork to depict tribal life, intertribal conflicts, and encounters with settlers.[39] The book serves as a counter-narrative to prevailing assimilationist views by emphasizing Native resilience and cultural continuity, though it incorporates Eastman's editorial perspective on themes of adaptation and loss, based on stories collected from survivors and her time among Plains tribes.[40] Intended for juvenile readers, it critiques U.S. Indian policy indirectly through vivid depictions of massacres and forced relocations, reflecting her advocacy for humane reforms while aligning with progressive-era romanticization of "vanishing" indigenous ways. Indian Legends Retold (1919), published by Little, Brown and Company, compiles and adapts folklore from various tribes, including Sioux and Cheyenne tales, illustrated by George Varian to preserve oral traditions Eastman gathered during her reservation work and travels.[41] The volume retells myths of creation, heroes, and moral lessons, aiming to document endangered narratives amid cultural erosion, though Eastman's selections and phrasing impose a literary structure influenced by her New England upbringing and reformist lens.[42] This work complements her collaborative efforts with husband Charles Eastman on similar anthologies like Wigwam Evenings (1909), but stands as her independent contribution to ethnological literature, prioritizing accessibility over strict anthropological fidelity.[15] Eastman's publications also include periodical articles in outlets like The Century Magazine and reports for Indian reform organizations, such as those on Hampton Institute's Native student programs, where she advocated for vocational training and critiqued federal boarding school abuses based on her 1880s inspections.[27] These pieces, often unsigned or under pseudonyms, influenced policy discussions in the Women's National Indian Association but received less attention than her books, reflecting her shift toward personal narratives over sustained journalism after the 1890s.[43] Overall, her oeuvre underscores a paternalistic yet empirically grounded perspective, derived from direct immersion rather than abstract theory, though later critiques note its alignment with era-specific biases favoring cultural uplift over sovereignty.[3]Legacy and Assessments
Contributions to Education and Literature
The Goodale sisters made notable contributions to literature through their early collaborative poetry volumes, which emphasized themes of nature, rural New England life, and childhood observation. Their first joint collection, Apple-Blossoms: Verses of Two Children, published in 1878 when Elaine was 15 and Dora 12, featured simple, naturalistic poems that captured the intimacy of farm and seasonal cycles, earning praise for their unadorned authenticity.[44] Subsequent works, such as In Berkshire with the Wildflowers (1879), extended this focus to botanical imagery and regional landscapes, establishing them as precocious voices in American nature poetry.[45] Elaine continued producing poetry and prose, including Yellow Star (1911), a narrative blending personal reflection with advocacy for Native American preservation amid assimilation pressures, and Indian Legends Retold (1919? wait, actually from [web:46] it's retold legends), which adapted Sioux oral traditions into written form to document cultural heritage.[35] [46] Dora's later solo efforts, particularly Mountain Dooryards (1946), shifted to Appalachian vernacular poetry, portraying rural dialects and folkways drawn from her teaching experiences in Kentucky and Tennessee.[6] In education, Elaine Goodale Eastman played a pioneering role in Native American schooling during the late 19th century, advocating for localized day schools over distant boarding institutions to mitigate cultural disruption. After brief teaching at Hampton Institute starting in October 1883, she established a model day school at White River Camp near Lower Brule Agency in late 1886, operating it until summer 1889 with an emphasis on practical skills like sewing, cooking, and carpentry integrated into community-based learning.[27] Appointed Superintendent of Indian Education for the Sioux in early 1890, she oversaw 50 reservation day schools from March to November that year, conducting teacher institutes and traveling 2,400 miles to implement reforms, including parental involvement and industrial training tailored to reservation life; she presented these approaches at the 1886 Lake Mohonk Conference.[27] Dora Read Goodale contributed through classroom instruction, teaching art and English in Connecticut after her early literary career, and later serving a year at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Kentucky starting in 1913, where her poetry drew from observed Appalachian student life to highlight regional educational challenges.[6] Their combined efforts bridged literary expression with pedagogical practice, influencing perceptions of rural and indigenous education in an era of rapid cultural transition.[28]Controversies in Native American Reform Efforts
Elaine Goodale Eastman's advocacy for day schools on Native American reservations, rather than off-reservation boarding institutions, represented a divergence from dominant federal policies of the late 19th century, which prioritized total separation of children from their families to enforce cultural transformation. Appointed supervisor of education for Sioux agencies in South Dakota and North Dakota in 1890, she inspected over 50 day schools, emphasizing instruction in English, basic literacy, arithmetic, and vocational skills like farming and sewing to promote self-sufficiency and integration into broader American society.[27][7] At the 1886 Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, she argued that day schools preserved family cohesion while advancing "civilization," contrasting with boarding schools' documented practices of physical punishment, forced hair-cutting, and suppression of Native languages.[27][12] Despite these reforms mitigating some familial disruptions—evidenced by her reports of improved attendance and reduced truancy—critics, including later historians, have faulted the underlying assimilationist framework for imposing Euro-American norms that eroded traditional Sioux practices, such as communal child-rearing and oral storytelling. The curriculum's focus on Christianity and individualized property ownership clashed with tribal collectivism, fostering dependency on federal aid amid land losses from the Dawes Act of 1887, which she supported as enabling farm allotments.[47] Her tenure overlapped with the Ghost Dance revival, which she and other reformers viewed as regressive, contributing to heightened tensions culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890, where over 250 Lakota were killed; Eastman provided medical aid post-massacre but aligned with policies discouraging such spiritual movements as barriers to progress.[28] Eastman's paternalistic approach, as a 27-year-old unmarried white woman wielding authority over Dakota and Lakota educators, drew contemporary skepticism from agency officials accustomed to male oversight, though she documented exposing corruption like falsified enrollment rolls.[27] In later decades, her opposition to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934—championed by Commissioner John Collier for restoring tribal sovereignty—highlighted persistent tensions, as she decried it for hindering individual advancement and reviving "tribalism" over assimilation.[47] This stance, rooted in empirical observations of reservation poverty, contrasted with emerging Native-led calls for cultural autonomy, underscoring broader debates in reform circles where her husband's evolving preference for hybrid Sioux-American identity amplified familial and ideological rifts.[48][12] Modern assessments, often from postcolonial perspectives, critique such efforts as complicit in settler colonialism, though contemporaries like the Women's National Indian Association praised her for practical gains in literacy rates, which rose from near-zero to over 20% in supervised schools by 1891.[28]Modern Re-evaluations and Cultural Impact
In recent decades, scholars have reassessed Elaine Goodale Eastman's literary output, positioning her as a figure bridging 19th-century romanticism and early 20th-century modernism through her transnational and intercultural themes. Her extensive body of work, including poetry and prose informed by Native American experiences, has been reevaluated for its experimental elements, such as fragmented narratives and cultural hybridity, challenging earlier dismissals of her as a minor Victorian poet.[49] This shift reflects broader academic interest in overlooked women writers who engaged with border-crossing identities, though her assimilationist undertones remain points of contention in postcolonial critiques.[49] Eastman's 1911 novel Yellow Star, a Kafir-language folk tale adapted for young readers, has garnered renewed attention as a counter-narrative to dominant assimilationist histories, emphasizing on-reservation education and Indigenous agency through its protagonist's journey. Literary analyses highlight how the text critiques off-reservation boarding schools—later condemned for cultural erasure—while advocating localized learning rooted in community ties, aligning partially with modern Indigenous educational sovereignty movements.[35] However, biopolitical readings critique its temporal framing of Native girlhood as a site of progressive reform, arguing it inadvertently reinforces settler timelines of "civilization" over Indigenous temporalities.[50] Her collaborative role with husband Charles Eastman in editing and promoting Native-authored texts has been credited with early contributions to American Indian literary canons, fostering visibility for Sioux voices during a period of intense cultural suppression post-Wounded Knee (1890). Modern biographies portray their interracial marriage—celebrated in 1891 media as a symbol of reformist harmony but strained by racial and gender tensions—as emblematic of era-specific limits on cross-cultural alliances, with Eastman's post-separation independence underscoring unfulfilled feminist ideals within Protestant reform circles.[31] [12] Culturally, Eastman's advocacy for day schools on reservations influenced federal policy debates in the 1880s–1890s, prefiguring 20th-century shifts away from coercive boarding systems, though her methods faced retrospective criticism for prioritizing English literacy over cultural preservation.[27] The Goodale sisters' joint poetry collections, blending nature themes with reformist ethics, have seen limited revival in ecofeminist studies, but Elaine's solo efforts dominate discussions of their enduring, if niche, impact on American environmental and Indigenous literatures.[28] Academic biases toward framing 19th-century reformers through lenses of inherent paternalism often undervalue her empirical observations of reservation conditions, as documented in her 1880s reports to Congress.[51]References
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Woman_of_the_Century/Dora_Read_Goodale
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Woman_of_the_Century/Elaine_Goodale_Eastman