Charles Eastman (Ohíye S'a)
1858-1939 19th century
Silence as the first act of prayer, before any word.
Who was Charles Eastman (Ohíye S'a)?
Born in Minnesota and named Ohíye S'a, he grew up among the Dakota after the war of 1862, raised by his grandmother in the hunting life, then claimed by his converted father and put to school. He became a physician, trained at Dartmouth and Boston, and was at Pine Ridge in 1890: it was he who tended the survivors of Wounded Knee. He spent the rest of his life writing, in English, what prayer had been among his people before it was explained to them.
In their own words
Silence is the cornerstone of character.
Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone.
He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world […] whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas. He needs no lesser cathedral.
The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the Great Mystery that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted.