Charles Eastman Quotes
It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood.
Eastman, Charles A. The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911, p. 31.
Her husband had been assassinated. It is not uncommon that after a political assassination, the widow of the slain male politician, carries on the political legacy. But otherwise there are few female politicians in the Third World in general and the Middle East in particular. Arab and other cultures so severely restrict a woman’s mobility within the society that death of a husband or father seems to be the only vehicle whereby a woman enters politics.
Marcus Porcius Cato. This quotation has had two different interpretations over time. One was that women if they received equality of treatment and voting would have an advantage for they also had their traditional “feminine wiles” and their sexuality, hence would dominate men. The second was a also a warning but based on the fact that women were superior in many ways, and given an equal chance, would excel men. The later interpretation is argued by some who point to the 2011 American data that shows more females than males graduating from high school and college, and females outnumber males in medical, law and several other professional schools. With the exception of a few Roman men, most heeded Cato’s warning and never took a chance on female equality.
This observation has never been really taken seriously until the women’s movement stimulated historical and sociological studies to test such a hypothesis. More and more people are finding that Tocqueville may have been right on this point albeit still not a majority of scholarly opinion.
Charles Alexander Eastman was a Santee Dakota physician educated at Boston University, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. In the early 20th century, he was "one of the most prolific authors and speakers on Sioux ethnohistory and American Indian affairs."
