[2] who previously had a Native American wife named Wakháŋ Inážiŋ Wiŋ (Stands Sacred), the fifteen-year-old daughter of Cloud Man, a Santee Dakota chief of French and Mdewakanton descent[6] and was therefore the grandfather of notable physician, writer, and reformer Charles Alexander Eastman.

In addition to their literary collaboration, she also helped her husband sell his paintings and secure a project with Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

[5] After the Eastmans left Fort Snelling, they lived in Washington, D.C., where she worked to defend Southern slaveholding society before changing her position on slavery and becoming a Unionist.

[13] Eastman's accounts included observation on notable personages such as the Indian orator Shah-co-pee, who was cited for his eloquence when addressing his people.

[5] In the years of tension before the American Civil War, many writers published novels that addressed each side of the slavery issue.

Shortly before the war, in 1852, Eastman entered the literary "lists" and wrote the bestselling Aunt Phillis's Cabin; Or, Southern Life As It Is.

Defending slaveholders, she responded as a Southern planter to Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery work Uncle Tom's Cabin.