American Indian Stories

About this book

Zitkala-Sa, a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) woman, tells of her happy early childhood with her mother on the reservation, and then of the day missionaries persuaded her, at eight, to go east to a boarding school in Indiana, where her long hair was cut off against her will and she was forced to give up her language and customs. She describes her years as a student and as a teacher at another Indian school, torn between two worlds, and adds stories drawn from Dakota life and an essay on why she chose the old religion of her people.

Context and significance

Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a writer, musician and campaigner for Native American rights, and she co-wrote the first American opera based on Native American music. The book, published in 1921, collects pieces that first appeared in leading magazines. For the frontier as white novelists imagined it, compare The Last of the Mohicans.

About the author