Gertrude Bonnin, or Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird, 1876–1938), was born at the Yankton Sioux Agency in South Dakota, where she lived with her mother and attended a bilingual agency school for two years before enrolling in White’s Manual Institute, a Quaker-run boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. After graduating from White’s Manual Institute she attended Earlham College from 1895 to 1897. While at Earlham she published poems and essays in the school paper, the Earlhamite. As a student at Earlham, Bonnin distinguished herself from her predominantly white peers. She excelled academically and delivered a prize-winning speech at a statewide oratorical contest. The Earlhamite reprinted an unabridged version of her speech, “Side by Side,” as did the Santee Agency school newspaper, the Word Carrier. Multiple articles about the event and Bonnin herself also appeared in the Earlhamite and in mainstream newspapers like the Indianapolis Journal and the Indianapolis News, which described her as “a cultivated young woman [whose] pronunciation was without trace of a tongue unfamiliar with English.” In all of this press coverage, Bonnin was represented as an exemplary educated Indian—civilized, English speaking, and articulate—an identity that she would later embrace and revise in her periodical writings.
Her success at Earlham College played a part in landing her a teaching position at Carlisle. Although most of the teachers at Carlisle were white missionaries, Bonnin’s impressive educational background and teaching experience caught the attention of Carlisle’s founder, Pratt. At Carlisle Bonnin taught and recruited Indian students. Her stint at Carlisle was brief; after eighteen months she resigned and went to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1899. One year later she traveled as a violin soloist with the Carlisle Indian School Band on their tour of the northeastern United States at the same time that her three autobiographical essays appeared in the Atlantic Monthly: “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” and “An Indian Teacher Among Indians.” An excerpt of her second autobiographical essay, “School Days of an Indian Girl,” is reprinted here.
After her autobiographical essays appeared in the Atlantic, she published two books: a collection of oral traditions in Old Indian Legends in 1901 and American Indian Stories in 1921. She also co-wrote an opera, The Sun Opera.
Whereas early in her literary career she engaged the national attention of a mostly white middle-class readership of the Atlantic and Harper’s, she later sought to reach a Native readership by publishing in the American Indian Magazine, the official organ of the Society of American Indians. This shift in audience and publishing context shaped Bonnin’s artistic and political choices in her periodical pieces. She became a contributing editor to the magazine in the October–December 1915 issue and assumed the editorship of the magazine in 1918 through the Winter 1919 issue. Her involvement with the SAI also ceased with her departure from the magazine. Yet she remained a devoted activist for Indian rights. In 1926 Bonnin and her husband, Raymond Bonnin, co-founded the National Council of American Indians, a pan-tribal organization with local chapters on numerous reservations. Bonnin was also an active member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
She also continued to publish in multiple forms. In 1921 she wrote a policy brochure, Americanize the First American: A Plan of Regeneration, in which she continued her project of promoting education and citizenship for Indians. She also wrote a series of pieces about the California Indians that were first published in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1922 and then reprinted in the California Indian Herald as well as in pamphlet form. As both author and activist, Bonnin remained committed to Indian reform until her death in 1938. (“Cheers for the Indian Maiden,” Earlhamite, March 1896, 187; Cox, “‘Yours for the Indian Cause,’” 181–90; Davidson and Norris, Introduction, American Indian Stories; Littlefield and Parins, Biobibliography: Supplement, 178; Peyer, American Indian Nonfiction, 303–5)
In the January number of the Atlantic Monthly, Zitkala-Ša (Miss Gertrude Simmons) dwelt with much simplicity upon the picturesque “Memories of an Indian Childhood.” In the magazine for February, she relates the impressions made by her school life.
Miss Simmons’ work has literary quality. She has a striking gift of characterization. Her satire is keen. She excels in giving what seems to be the genuine records of the mind of a child, uncolored by later knowledge and experience. We regret that she did not once call to mind the happier side of those long school days, or even hint at the friends who did so much to break down for her the barriers of language and custom, and to lead her from poverty and insignificance into the comparatively full and rich existence that she enjoys today.
We do not for a moment believe that “Zitkala-Ša” desires to injure the cause of her own people, whose titles to the blessings of enlightenment and civilization has so lately found general recognition, but we do feel that the home-sick pathos—nay, more, the underlying bitterness of her story will cause readers unfamiliar with Indian schools to form entirely wrong conclusions. Her pictures are not, perhaps, untrue in themselves, but, taken by themselves, they are sadly misleading. The following chapters will serve as examples.
The first day in the land of apples was a bitter cold one; for the snow still covered the ground, and the trees were bare. A large bell rang for breakfast, its loud metallic voice crashing through the belfry overhead and into our sensitive ears. The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. The constant clash of harsh noises, with an unknown tongue, made a bedlam within which I was securely tied. And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless.
A paleface woman, with white hair, came up after us. We were placed in a line of girls who were marching into the dining room. These were Indian girls, in stiff shows and closely clinging dresses. The small girls wore sleeved aprons and shingled hair. As I walked noiselessly in my moccasins, I felt like sinking to the floor, for my blanket had been stripped from my shoulders. I looked hard at the Indian girls, who seemed not to care that they were even more immodestly dressed than I, in their tightly fitting clothes. While we marched in, the boys entered at an opposite door. I watched for the three young braves who came in our party. I spied them in the rear ranks, looking as uncomfortable as I felt.
A small bell was tapped, and each of the pupils drew a chair from under the table. Supposing this act meant they were to be seated, I pulled out mine and at once slipped into it from one side. But when I turned my head, I saw that I was the only one seated, and all the rest at our table remained standing. Just as I began to rise, looking shyly around to see how chairs were to be used, a second bell was sounded. All were seated at last, and I had to crawl back into my chair again. I heard a man’s voice at one end of the hall, and I looked around to him. But all the others hung their heads over their plates. As I glanced at the long chain of tables, I caught the eyes of a paleface woman over me. Immediately I dropped my eyes, wondering why I was so keenly watched by the strange woman. The man ceased his mutterings, and then a third bell was tapped. Everyone picked up his knife and fork and began eating. I began crying instead, for by this time I was afraid to venture anything more.
But this eating by formula was not the hardest trial in that first day. Late in the morning, my friend Judewin gave me a terrible warning. Judewin knew a few words of English; and she had overheard the paleface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair. Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards.
We discussed our fate some moments, and when Judewin said, “we have to submit because they are strong,” I rebelled.
“No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!” I answered.
I watched my chance and when no one noticed I disappeared. I crept up the stairs as quietly as I could in my squeaking shoes—my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes. Along the hall I passed, without knowing whither I was going. Turning aside to an open door I found a large room with three white beds in it. The windows were covered with dark green curtains, which made the room very dim. Thankful that no one was there, I directed my steps toward the corner farthest from the door. On my hands and knees I crawled under the bed and cuddled myself in the dark corner.
From my hiding place I peered out, shuddering with fear whenever I heard footsteps near by. Though in the hall loud voices were calling my name, and I knew that even Judewin was searching for me, I did not open my mouth to answer. Then the steps were quickened and the voices became excited. The sounds came nearer and nearer. Women and girls entered the room. I held my breath and watched them open the closet doors and peep behind large trunks. Some one threw up the curtains and the room was filled with sudden light. What caused them to stoop and look under the bed I do not know. I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast to a chair.
I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother, I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward’s! In my anguish I mourned for my mother but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.
A loud-clamoring bell awakened us at half past six in the cold winter mornings. From happy dreams of Western rolling lands and unlassoed freedom, we tumbled out upon chilly bare floors back again into a paleface day. We had short time to jump into our shoes and clothes, and wet our eyes with icy water, before a small hand bell was vigorously rung for roll call.
There were too many drowsy children and too numerous orders for the day to waste a moment in any apology to nature for giving her children such a shock in the early morning. We rushed downstairs, bounding over two high steps at a time, to land in the assembly room.
A paleface woman, with a yellow-covered roll book open on her arm and a gnawed pencil in her hand, appeared at the door. Her small tired face was coldly lighted with a pair of large grey eyes.
She stood still in a halo of authority, while over the rim of her spectacles her eyes pried nervously about the room. Having glanced at her long list of names and called out the first one, she tossed up her chin and peered through the crystals of her spectacles to make sure of the answer, “Here.”
Relentlessly her pencil black-marked our daily records if we were not present to respond to our names, and no chum of ours had done it successfully for us. No matter if a dull headache or the painful cough of a slow consumption had delayed the absentee, there was only time enough to mark the tardiness. It was next to impossible to leave the iron routine after the civilizing machine had once begun its day’s buzzing; and it was inbred in me to suffer in silence rather than to appeal to the ears of one whose open eyes could not see my pain, I have many times trudged in the day’s harness heavy-footed, like a dumb, sick brute.
I grew bitter, and censured the woman for cruel neglect of our physical ills. I despised the pencils that moved automatically, and the one teaspoon which dealt out from a large bottle, healing to a row of variously ailing Indian children. I blamed the hard-working, well-meaning, ignorant woman who was inculcating in our hearts her superstitious ideas. Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman. Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial.
The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored sea-shell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.1
Zitkala-Ša writes us the following in explanation of her articles in the Atlantic Monthly:
I give outright the varying moods of my own evolution; those growing pains which knew not reason while active. To stir up views and earnest comparison of theories was one of the ways in which I hoped it would work a benefit to my people. No one can dispute my own impressions and bitterness! Perhaps a reason may be assigned to them—that I have left to my friends to do.2
There are two sides to every picture.
Zitkala-Ša, whom we know so well at Carlisle, she having been for a time a teacher with us, has made a very readable story in presenting her views on the Indian Dance, and it is a story that wins sympathizing hearts.
She is a Dakota herself, college educated and of considerable travel, and gives a native touch to the narrative that is extremely fascinating, and from her own point of view it may be true to life, but that the savage dance is the greatest possible hindrance to Indian progress is attested by others of her own race, with as much experience and education as Zitkala-Ša can claim; that however is the other side of the picture.
There is a natural way to put an end to such injurious customs.
In the early days of Carlisle it was of nightly occurrence for the crude adult natives to gather in some lonely spot and spend hours in weird song with tom-tom accompaniment.
Those old boys were never told to put away the tom-tom and to stop singing Indian songs but when the band instruments were provided, one of the oldest and most non-progressive of that first party took to the tuba, and it was not long before he could play “In the Sweet by-and-by,” and he enjoyed it more than the tom-tom.
As fast as other music and entertainment gained a foothold the tom-tom and weird song were voluntarily dropped.
If amusements or pastimes of a higher order were tactfully introduced to the Indians on the reservation they would not be slow to take them up, and the old order of things would disappear.
The silly Merry-go-round is as demoralizing in character as any Indian dance could well be, and the writer has seen them patronized by Indians of all ages whole families of whom would travel miles across the plains to pay out their money to ride by the hour on the hobbyhorses erected on a prominent bluff where the whistle and steam of the little puffing engine could be seen and heard as far as eye and ear could distinguish.
No dances were carried on when the Merry-go-round was in operation.
Then why would not entertainment of a more elevating character do even a better work toward detracting from the unwholesome dance?
But let Zitkala-Ša in the land of the Dakotas paint her vivid picture in her own choice words, which were published in the Boston Evening Transcript last January and [have] since been copied and commented upon by several papers.
Almost within a stone’s throw from where I sit lies the great frozen Missouri. Like other reptiles, the low murmuring brown river sleeps through the winter season underneath its covering of blue sheening ice.
A man carrying a pail in one hand and an axe in the other, trudges along a narrow footpath leading to the river. Close beside the frozen stream he stands a moment motionless as if deliberating within himself. Then, leaving his pail upon the ground, he walks cautiously out upon the glass surface of the river. Fearless of the huge sleeper underneath, he swings his axe like one accustomed to the use of his weapon. Soon with the handle as a lever he pries up a round cake of ice. Hereupon great moans and yawnings creak up from some unfathomable sleep and reverberate along the quiet river bottom. The sleeping river is disturbed by the mortal’s tapping upon its crusty mantle; and—restless—turns, perchance, in its bed, gently sighing in its long winter sleep.
The man stoops over the black hole he has made in that pearly river-sheet and draws up a heavy pail. Apparently satisfied, he turns away into the narrow path by which he came. Unconscious is he of the river’s dream, which he may have disturbed; forgetful, too, of the murmuring water-songs he has not released through his tiny tapping! The man’s small power is great enough to gain for him his small desire, a pail of winter-buried water!
Here I should have stopped writing had not the man I saw retracing safely his footsteps returned—in fancy—possessed with a strange malady. Under some wild conceit regarding the force of his pigmy hammer stroke, he labors now to awaken the sleeping old river in mid-winter. Vainly he hacks at the edge of acres of ice, while Nature seems to humor the whim by allowing so much as a square inch of the crystal to be broken.
Like our brown river, the soul of the Present Day Indian is sleeping under the icy crust of a transitional period. A whole race of strangers throngs either side of the frozen river, each one tapping the creaking ice with his own particular weapon. While the Dreamer underneath moans in disturbed visions of Hope, these people draw up each his little pail, heavy with self-justification. But where is Spring? The river dreams of springtime, when its rippling songs shall yet flood its rugged banks.
Though I love best to think the river shall in due season rush forth from its icy bondage, I am strongly drawn by an irresistible spirit to wander along the brink. A mist gathers over my sight and the celebrated art galleries of a modern city lure my notice. The geniuses of a cultured nation portray in chiseled stone figures of grace and strength in marvelous imitation of God’s own subtle works. Then the inner light, burning and underneath the eyelids, dispels the darkness limiting the art ground, and there within the extended walls are the bronzed figures of Indian dancers. Aye, they are greater than the marble tribe, for they are the original works of the Supreme Artist.
As I passed by a man hacking river ice, I heard him hiss—“Immodest; the Indians’ nudity in the dance is shockingly immodest!”
“Why! Does he not wear a dress of paint and loin cloth?” I would have asked; but a silence sealed my lips, and I thought: “False modesty would dress the Indian, not for protection from the winter weather, but to put overalls on the soul’s improper earthly garment. I wonder how much it would abash God if, for this man’s distorted sense, a dress were put on all the marble figures in art museums. It were more plausible—it seems to a looker-on—to build an annex to the “Infirmary for Ill-Humored People” where folk suffering from false sense of pride and of modesty may be properly nursed.
Again a voice speaks, “This dance of the Indian is a relic of barbarism. It must be stopped!” Then hack! hack! hack!–the little man beats the crystal ice. Before he hangs a mist-tapestry. Woven in wonderful living threads is a picture of a brilliantly lighted hall with mirrored walls. Over its polished floor glide whirling couples in pretty rhythm to orchestral music. The daintiness and exquisite web-cloth of the low-necked, sleeveless evening gowns must be so from the imperative need to distract the mind from the steel frames in which fair bodies are painfully corseted. It may be gauze-covered barbarism, for history does tell of the barbaric Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. It may be a martyrdom to some ancient superstition which centuries of civilization and Christianization have not wholly eradicated from the yellow-haired and blue-eyed races.
I do not know what special step might be considered most barbaric. In truth, I would not like to say any graceful movement of the human figure in rhythm to music was ever barbaric. Unless the little man intends to put an end to dances the world over, I fail to see the necessity of checking the Indian dance. If learned scientists advise and occasional relaxation of work or daily routine with such ardor that even the inmates of insane asylums are allowed to dance their dances then the same logic should hold good elsewhere. The law at least, should not be partial. If it is right for the insane and idiot to dance, the Indian (who is classed with them) should have the same privilege. The old illiterate Indians, with a past irrevocably dead and no future, have but a few sunny hours between them and the grave.
And this last amusement, their dance, surely is not begrudged them. The young Indian who has been taught to read English has his choice of amusements, and need not attend the old-time one. He might spend a profitable winter evening in a library, if such a provision had not been misplaced among the “castles in Spain.” Unfortunately for him, there is not even a bookstore where he might buy his reading matter; and because of the inconvenient place from which I get my writing supply, I myself have at times seriously contemplated writing upon the butcher’s brown wrapping-paper. But time and opportunity are within the reach of the Indian youth. With these he may yet make some “vigorous self-recovery” against odd circumstances. It is not so with the old Indian. The fathers and mothers of our tribe have not such weapons against their adversity. They are old and (I have heard them say of themselves) worthless; but what American would shuffle off an old parent as he would an old garment from the body?
At this moment I turn abruptly away, from the voices along the river brink wishing the river-hackers might first conspire with nature. Here a pony is ready, and soon a gallop over the level lands shall restore to me the sweet sense that God has allotted a place in his vast universe for each of his creatures, both great and small—just as they are.3