author
Mary H. (Mary Henderson) Eastman
1818–1887
Known for vivid writing about Native American life on the nineteenth-century frontier, this American author also left behind work that reflects the deep contradictions of her era. Her books drew on years spent at Fort Snelling and remain tied to both firsthand observation and the politics of her time.
2 Audiobooks
Aunt Phillis's Cabin; Or, Southern Life As It Is
by Mary H. (Mary Henderson) Eastman
Dahcotah: Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling
by Mary H. (Mary Henderson) Eastman
About the author
Born in Warrenton, Virginia, in 1818, she grew up in a military family and later married army officer and artist Seth Eastman. In the 1840s she lived with him at Fort Snelling, where her close exposure to Dakota life, language, and stories shaped some of her best-known writing.
She became known for books about Native American life, including Dahcotah; or, Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling, as well as other historical and fictional works. Modern reference sources note that, alongside this frontier writing, she also defended slavery in Aunt Phillis's Cabin, which makes her legacy a complicated one.
Today she is remembered as a nineteenth-century writer whose work combined personal experience, storytelling, and the attitudes of her time. Readers often come to her for her frontier perspective, while also reading her with an awareness of the historical limits and biases in her work.