Monday, December 28, 2009

Eastman

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858–1939), a great North American Indian, also known as Ohiyesa, was a prolific writer and articulate spokesman who worked tirelessly for the cause of justice for the Indian people.

The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith. We of the twentieth century know better! We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and one goal. We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and the barbarian, is after all the same God.
—Charles Alexander Eastman, "The Soul of the Indian"


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