A Warriors Daughter By Zitkala Sha

Mary Jane Fazekas

Prof. D. Mraovic-O’Hare

LIT315 – 20th Century American Literature

22 August 2017

7-2 Final Research Paper

The Life and Writings of Zitkala Sha

Zitkala Sha was one of the first Native American women writers to accurately depict and describe life on the American Indian reservation, with in-depth descriptions of the landscape, and a strong stance on mistreatment of the Native American heritage. Zitkala-Sha (Red Bird in Lakota aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was a talented and gifted writer and was born in South Dakota in 1876 to a Yankton Sioux mother and a white European American father. After being recruited by missionaries, she attended a boarding school run by the Quakers and went on to graduate from Earlham College in

Indiana on scholarship. This gave her the unique perspective of a Native American and an English-American in her writings. This was a time when access to higher education was limited for women. She was strikingly beautiful and had become an activist for Native Americans and women later in her life. Her writings are culturally significant as her work written in English for all Americans was among the first to accurately and richly describe the Native American way of life and typical attitudes.

Prior to her publishing these written works, much of the Native American stories were handed down through the oral tradition of storytelling around the camp fires. She feared that these stories would disappear as the white immigrants expanded westward. Much of her work was autobiographical in nature but she also published children’s stories, allegoric fiction, and select magazine articles. These stories are important to both cultures as they give us deep insight into the motivations of Native Americans as well as painting us a clear visualization of the American landscape in the early 1900s. Her work is far different than previously written by white men. Immigrant whites have different perceptions of the true Native American way of life. We all tend to classify the significant Native Americans as ‘men’ without regard to the women. Even the term “Indian” has been the subject of much controversy. Indians from Asia are not to be confused with the Native Americans who lived in this land prior to being discovered by Christopher Columbus and explored by so many. In the story “The Great Spirit”, Zitkala-Sha writes, “a ‘Christian’ pugilist commented upon a recent article of mine, grossly perverting the spirit of my pen”. Respect and religion are major themes to Native Americans and pass along tales from their ancestors. She described her years on the reservation in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” in an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900 like this:
I was a while little girl of seven. Loosely clad in a slip of brown buckskin, and light footed with a pair of soft moccasins on my feet, I was as free as the wind that blew my hair, and no less spirited than a bounding deer. These were my mother’s pride—my wild freedom and over flowing spirit.”

This passage is a prime example of some of the literary devices she used throughout her writings, and specifically here with the allusion of ‘free’ wind blowing her long hair and the imagery of a ‘bounding’ deer, giving deeper meaning with her detailed descriptions.
“The Trial Path” and “A Warrior’s Daughter” are two of her other important written works. In these two stories, she gives us a window into the lives of Native American Indians. “The Trial Path” begins with:
“It was an autumn night on the plain. The smoke-lapels of the cone-shaped tepee flapped gently in the breeze. From the low night sky, with its myriad fire points, a large bright star peeped in at the smoke-hole of the wigwam between its fluttering lapels, down upon two Dakotas talking in the dark. The mellow stream from the star above, a maid of twenty summers, on a bed of sweetgrass, drank in with her wakeful eyes. On the opposite side of the tepee, beyond the centre fireplace, the grandmother spread her rug. Though once she had lain down, the telling of a story has aroused her to a sitting posture."

Immediately, the rich imagery describes the setting and gives the reader insight on how Native Americans live, and the understanding that traditions that remain an important part of their daily lives.

The same can be said in “A Warriors Daughter” which also starts with a very telling sentence: “In the afternoon shadow of a large tepee, with red-painted smoke lapels, sat a warrior father with crossed shins. His head was so poised that his eye swept easily the vast level land to the eastern horizon line.” Here, again, she not only introduces us to a character but a sense of the rich culture and history of the Native American

heritage.
Through many descriptions of nature and the physical setting such as “the smoke-lapels of the cone-shaped tepee flapped gently in the breeze” she shows the culture as very nature-oriented. There are also a few traditions that are shown like in the grandmother’s story when it is decreed “let the father of the dead man choose the mode of torture or taking of life.” And even though the man is a killer, he still gets a chance to live as “if, having gone the entire distance, the man-killer gains the centre tepee still sitting on the pony’s back, his life is spared and pardon given.” Once the man-killer wins, he basically replaces the dead man. Another tradition described in “A Warrior’s Daughter” is “naught but an enemy’s scalp-lock, plucked fresh with your own hand, will buy Tusee for your wife.” This is obviously different from other regions where money often buys a wife.

Sha wrote “The School Days of an Indian Girl” in which descriptions of the missionaries working to ‘educate’ the children were in reality meant to flush out and eliminate the native culture in favor of the new ‘pale-face English’ culture. Her description of being “under a sky of rosy apples we dreamt of roaming as freely and happily as we chased the cloud shadows” evokes a broad horizon in the American west where there were few official laws.

The details of a young girl’s ‘tightly-braided hair curving over both brown ears’, of her ‘snuggly moccasined feet’, and of a woman ‘clad in beaded deerskin’ in “A Warrior’s Daughter” we are given a strong sense of how people dressed and looked. From the passages of “The Trial Path”, the terms of ‘the smoke hole of the wigwam’, ‘father smoking from a long-stemmed pipe’, and ‘the creature already bound on the spirit trail’ we are given glimpses of the way of daily life of Native Americans. These stories are important to both cultures as they give us deep insight into the motivations of Native Americans as well as painting us a clear visualization of the American landscape in the early 1900s. Respect and religion are major themes to Native Americans and pass along tales from their ancestors.
In ‘A Warriors Daughter” we see a lot of Native American language integrated with the text and following with supporting justification, such as in this line: “Hähob!" exclaimed the mother, with a rising inflection, implying by the expletive that her child's buoyant spirit be not weighted with a denial.”
We are given an authentic glimpse into the daily life of Native Americans. In “An Indian Teacher Among Indians”, Sha writes, “crossing a ravine thicketed with low shrubs and plum bushes”, we get a feel for the nature and the natural open land that they inhabited. Wigwams, teepees and buildings with open windows paint a vivid picture of the undeveloped west. Sha often wrote about the discrimination of Native Americans and misinterpretation of the culture. as most of her writing occurred after expansion into the west, as most of her writings were centered around bridging the gap between her Native American culture and the new found English-American way of life.
Zitkala Sha’s imagery on the other hand, reflects the mentality and beliefs of Native Americans. She often uses nature and natural description in her works. “A girl of 20 summers” and “flies on swift wing over many winter snows” are just a few examples. The culture is depicted well through the storytelling about warriors, their traditional ways of dealing with betrayal (Trial Path), or the strength that a woman could have, as Tusee in A Warrior’s Daughter. Zitkala Sha had has an interesting way of showing the importance of the Native culture that was being ravaged at the time-- the stories traditions are strong and important to the people in her writing.

These stories were radical to many white American immigrants, but these works allowed the public to see and feel the harsh realities of one culture taking over another.

For as much good as the spreading of a new culture intended, the Native American culture suffered immeasurably. Her authentic writing is very much focused around the joining of practical and symbolic objects in Native American culture. Many Native Americans were uneducated and poor and placed more value in intrinsic qualities. She tells stories of struggle and triumph, but through the eyes of a Native American which more completely value symbolic and spiritual goals. As she personally witnessed what the whites has done to the Dakota people, she wrote in reflection, “few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.” Zitkala Sha made it one of her life goals to educate others about this imbalance between the two cultures sharing a common land. For too long prior, many of the images and stories of Native Americans were written by white men, lacking an unauthentic view into true Native American daily life and oftentimes written with disregard of Native American

heritage.

WORKS CITED:
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Fisher, Dexter. Zitkala-Sa: The Evolution of a Writer, Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Hoefel, Roseanne. Zitkala-Sa: A Biography. The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings Ed. Glynis Carr, Web, Posted: Winter 1999. www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/ZS/rh.html, accessed July 16, 2017

Regier, Willis. Masterpieces of American Indian Literature. New York, University of Nebraska, 2005.

Sha, Zitkala, American Indian Stories. Washington: Hayworth Publishing 1921, UPenn Digital Library, A Celebration of Women Writers Web, accessed July 21, 2017.

Unk, Early Native American Literature: Zitkala-sa, nativeamericanwriters.com, n.d., Web, accessed July 17, 2017