Author Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863-1953) exerted significant influence on late nineteenth-century Native American education. Born into a literary and reform-minded New England family, she began teaching at the Hampton Institute’s Indian Department, then moved to the Dakota Territories to better understand her students’ lives. There she opened a day school on a Sioux reservation and eventually became Supervisor of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. 

Working in the post–Civil War climate that sought to “civilize” formerly enslaved and Native peoples through schooling, Eastman opposed sending Native children to distant boarding schools, instead promoting reservation education as a means of assimilating and strengthening entire communities. She believed that adaptation to white society was necessary for Native survival.  

Published in 1911, Yellow Star: A Story of East and West follows Stella—also known as Yellow Star—a Lakota girl orphaned during the Wounded Knee Massacre and taken to a New England village to be raised. The novel traces her struggle to reconcile the expectations of white American society while trying to maintain her Indigenous identity. It explores tensions between assimilation and cultural survival, culminating in Yellow Star’s return west to teach children in her own community—a trajectory that reflects the education work of Eastman. The book was illustrated by Angel De Cora and her husband, William “Lone Star” Dietz. 

Yellow Star and other works illustrated by De Cora are currently on view in the Peggy H. Woolard Howard Pyle Galleries through August 23 as part of Living Indigenous, as well as online. 

Rachael DiEleuterio 
Librarian and Archivist

Plan your Del Art visit today to see Yellow Star: A Story of East and West, currently on view. www.delart.org.