CharlesAlexander Eastman, an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of thegreat divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote eleven books attemptingto reconcile the two cultures. Although he was a convert to Christianity,Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian’srelation to his existence and to the natural world.

These sixessays on the Indian’s spiritual beliefs and cultural habits, told in verypersonal terms and coupled with seven folk tales, illuminate the high ethicsand morality of a culture that few people know about.

The six essays are: “The Great Mystery,”“The Family Altar,” “Ceremonial and Symbolic Worship,” “Barbarism and the MoralCode,” “The Unwritten Scriptures,” and “On the Borderland of Spirits.”

The seven Native American tales are: “TheBuffalo and the Field Mouse,” “The Frogs and the Crane,” “The Falcon and theDuck,” “The Raccoon and the Bee Tree,” “The Comrades,” “The Runaways,” and “TheMagic Arrows.”