Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863 - 1953)

Elaine Goodale Eastman and Dora Read Goodale were American poets and sisters, who published their first poetry as children still living at home, and were included in Edmund Clarence Stedman's classic An American Anthology (1900). 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 Ohiyesa), a Santee Sioux who was the first Native American to graduate from medical school and become a physician. They lived with their growing family in the West for several years. Goodale collaborated with him extensively 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, publishing her last book of poetry in 1930, and a biography and last novel in 1935.