"More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material"

Eastman exposes a rift between professed piety and the lived ethic of those who colonized his people. The men he observed spoke eloquently about salvation, charity, and heaven, yet their daily choices prioritized land, goods, and power. Such inconsistency is not a minor flaw but a structural hypocrisy: spirituality becomes rhetoric, a moral costume that legitimizes conquest while dulling the conscience of the conqueror.

Coming from a Dakota worldview in which the sacred is embedded in relationships with people, land, and community, he measures faith by conduct. Words alone carry little weight; integrity requires harmony between belief and behavior. When those who claimed Christian devotion pursued profit above justice, they revealed the true object of their worship. The dissonance undermined trust and turned sermons into instruments of control rather than pathways to mutual understanding.

The observation also functions as a diagnosis of colonial society. Religious language offered a veneer of virtue to policies that dispossessed Indigenous nations, extracted resources, and enforced assimilation. Spiritual talk became a currency of respectability, while material accumulation remained the operative goal. This is not merely personal hypocrisy but an ethic of instrumentalization, using the sacred to sanctify the marketplace, the mission to mask the seizure.

There is a psychological dimension as well: a form of self-deception that confuses speaking about the good with doing the good. The more piety is performed, the easier it becomes to overlook the harm embedded in one’s pursuits. Eastman’s critique thus targets both the individual conscience and the cultural system that rewards performative virtue.

His words continue to resonate wherever moral ideals are brandished to justify material aims, when corporations advertise ethics while exploiting labor, or leaders invoke values while hoarding power. The implied remedy is simple and demanding: let conduct bear the weight of creed, and let spiritual claims be tested by how they honor life, land, and the dignity of others.