EASTMAN, Mrs. Elaine Goodale, poet, born in a country home called "Sky Farm," near South Egremont, Mass., 9th October, 1863. Her mother, Mrs. D. H. R. Goodale, educated her and her sister Dora at home Elaine at twelve years of age was a good Greek and Latin scholar, reading most of the classics with ease, and she was also familiar with French and German. She was a precocious child and never went to school, and in her isolated mountain home she grew to maturity, after astonishing the world with her poetical productions, written in the short-frock and mud-pie years of her youth. In 1878 Elaine published in conjunction with her eleven-year-old sister, Dora, a book of poems entitled "Apple Blossoms." A second volume, entitled "In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers," soon followed, and the fame of the Goodale sisters spread throughout the English-speaking world. Their father, Henry Sterling Goodale, an experimental farmer, was devoted to poetry and literature, a good mathematician, a clever poet and a failure as a farmer. Financial reverses came to the family, and Elaine and her sister made an attempt to save the homestead by their literary work. In 1881 Elaine was attracted to the cause of the Indians, through some of the Indian students from the Carlisle and Hampton Institutes in Pennsylvania, who were spending the summer in the study of farming in the Berkshire Hills. She took a position as teacher in the Carlisle school, where she taught successfully. In 1885 she went with Senator Dawes on a trip through the Indian reservations, where she made a close study of the condition of the Indians. She then became a government teacher in White Pine Camp, on the Lower Brule" Indian Agency, in Dakota. In 1890 she was appointed superintendent of all the Indian
ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN.
schools in South Dakota, having her station in the Fine Ridge Agency. In that year she became acquainted with Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blood Sioux Indian, known among the Indians as "Tawa Kanhdiota." or "Many Thunders." and became his wife, 18th June, 1891. in New York City. Dr. Eastman is a graduate of Dartmouth College. He is a man of marked intellectual power, and is engaged in the practice of medicine among his people. Mrs. Eastman is now living in the government house on the Pine Ridge Agency, devoting herself to her family and to the welfare of the wards of the nation. During several years past she has published little or nothing of importance.