Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)
b. 1876 D. 1938

The stories collected in Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories , published in 1921, were originally published serially, in 1900. In these essays, she writes the narrative of her life, from her early years with her mother and relatives and elders on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota, to her years as a student at White’s Manual Institution in Wabash, Indiana, to her years as a teacher of “Indians,” at Carlisle.

We have read other autobiographical narratives this semester, and I hope you will consider the ways in which Zitkala-Sa’s autobiography employs some strategies similar to those of other authors, authors who have sought to tell their story (and in many ways their American story, with all of the concomitant political implications) within the parameters of normative American autobiography. However, as we have seen (and think about who might do the following), many authors resists the formal attributes of American autobiography, as represented by individual likes Henry Adams or Benjamin Franklin. Look at the first passages of Zitkala-Sa’s first autobiographical account:

“A wigwam of weather-stained canvas stood at the base of some irregularly ascending hills. A footpath wound its way gently down the sloping land till it reached the broad river bottom; creeping through the long swamp grasses that bent over it on either side, it came out on the edge of the Missouri” (1794).

Here, for comparison’s sake, is the first passage of Ben Franklin’s autobiography (which is a letter to his son):

“I have ever had the pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of my ancestors. You may remember the enquiries I made among the remains of my relations when you were with me in England and the journey I undertook for that purpose. Imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life – many of which you are yet unacquainted with – and expecting a week’s uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write them for you. Besides, there are some other inducements that excite me to this undertaking. From the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and in which I passed my earliest years, I have raised myself to a state of affluence and some degree of celebrity in the world” (Autobiography, 16).

Aside from the obvious differences of style, and era (Franklin wrote his account beginning in 1771, and Bonnin wrote hers beginning in 1899), please describe some of the critical differences between the beginnings of the two accounts. What can we learn about the circumstances of the authors just on the basis of these first passages? What can we learn about the cultural assumptions that surround their texts?

Recall our class discussion of Zitkala-Sa’s use of the term “wild.” Locate the word in the first several paragraphs of her essay “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Where else in the essays of hers that you read in your Norton do you see her using this term? How does she subvert white expectations of “wild” and “wildness” via her usage? What value does she ascribe to wildness? Does this depend on context? Specifically, how does her “wildness” change in meaning once she is living at White’s Manual Institution?

How does Zitkala-Sa’s essay “read” – what I mean is, is it “simple,” “complex,” or, perhaps, multivalent? What are the multiple valences of her text?