American Indian Stories

Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) (Dakota: pronounced zitkála-sa, which translates to "Red Bird"), also known by the missionary-given name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Sioux (Yankton Dakota) writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her youthful struggles with identity and pulls between the majority culture and her Native American heritage. Her later books in English were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white readership. Working with American William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Sa wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera, (1913), the first American Indian opera. (It was composed in romantic style based on Sioux and Ute themes.) She was a co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926 to lobby for rights to United States citizenship and civil rights. Zitkala-Sa served as its president until her death in 1938. Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was raised by her mother, Ellen Simmons, whose Dakota name was Taté Iyòhiwin (Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind). Her father was a European-American man named Felker, who abandoned the family while Zitkala-Sa was very young. For her first eight years, Zitkala-Sa lived on the reservation. She later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1884, when Zitkala-Sa was eight, missionaries came to the Yankton Reservation. They recruited several of the Yankton children, including Zitkala-Sa, taking them for education to the White's Manual Labor Institute, a boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. This training school was founded by Quaker Josiah White for the education of "poor children, white, colored, and Indian," with the goal of helping them advance in society. Zitkala-Sa attended the school for three years until 1887. She later wrote about this period in her work, The School Days of an Indian Girl." She described both the deep misery of having her heritage stripped away, when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and cut her traditionally long hair, and the contrasting joy of learning to read and write, and to play the violin. In 1887 Zitkala-Sa returned to the Yankton Reservation to live with her mother. She spent three years there. She was dismayed to realize that, while she still longed for the native Sioux traditions, she no longer fully belonged to them. In addition, she thought that many on the reservation were conforming to the dominant white culture. In 1891, wanting more education, Zitkala-Sa decided at age fifteen to return to White's Manual Labor Institute. She planned to gain more through education than becoming a house-keeper, as the school anticipated girls would do. She studied piano and violin, and started to teach music at White's when the teacher resigned. In 1895 Zitkala-Sa was awarded her first diploma. She gave a speech on women's inequality, which received high praise from the local paper.