╟PAR@ ` ÅTEXT ` üEastman, Mary Henderson1818╨1887writerBorn in 1818 in Warrenton, Virginia, Mary Henderson was a granddaughter of Commodore Thomas Truxtun, a hero of the naval war with France. In June 1835 she married Lieutenant Seth Eastman, an army officer then on the faculty at West Point. In 1841 she accompanied him to Minnesota Territory, where Captain Eastman took command of Fort Snelling. The opportunity thus afforded Eastman of closely observing and learning to know the Mdewkanton Sioux of the region bore fruit in 1849 in her Dahcotah; or, Life and Legends of the Sioux around Fort Snelling, which was later said, on little real evidence, to have influenced Henry Wadsworth Longfellow╒s ╥Song of Hiawatha.╙ In that year the Eastmans moved to Washington, D.C. In 1852 Eastman published Aunt Phillis╒s Cabin; or, Southern Life as It Is, a hastily composed answer to Uncle Tom╒s Cabin in which she stoutly defended the South and the institution of slavery. The book brought her considerable fame. A series of tales published in the periodical press was collected in The Romance of Indian Life, 1853, which was followed by The American Aboriginal Portfolio, 1853, and Chicora and Other Regions of the Conquerors and the Conquered, 1854 (republished in 1855 as The American Annual: Illustrative of the Early History of North America), all of which were illustrated by her husband. Her writings on Native Americans, although often sentimental and to some extent shaped by commonplace prejudices, had the invaluable advantage of being drawn from first-hand knowledge; unlike many writers in the field, Eastman had taken the time to learn the language of her subjects. From 1855 to 1867 she and her husband were much apart as his duties took him from place to place while she and her children remained mainly in Washington, D.C. During that time she wrote little: Fashionable Life, a collection of conventional and sentimental stories, 1856, Jennie Wade at Gettysburg, a long verse narrative, 1864, and a few magazine articles. In 1879, four years after her husband╒s death, she published Easter Angels, a verse work. She died in Washington, D.C., on February 24, 1887. styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ " 5¬ * !I !I T !I ■ 5¬ !I !I I !I h !I y !I 1 !I K !I i !I è !I û !I ╙ !I ≥ !I 9 !I M !I ] !I ¢ !I ┤ !I / !I < !I link `
