American Indian Stories and Old Indian Legends

Zitkala-Sa was an important and influential Yankton Dakota Sioux writer, educator, and political activist. Born in 1876 on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, she spent her life working to bring the history and cultural concerns of Native Americans to the attention of the broader public. "e;American Indian Stories and Old Indian Legends"e; collects two of her more important publications that document and preserve the history of her people, as well as the pain caused by the policies of assimilation. "e;Old Indian Legends"e;, published in 1901 and early in her professional career, records for posterity and a wider American audience the stories and legends from various tribes that she remembered from her childhood. In "e;American Indian Stories"e;, published in 1921, Zitkala-Sa recounts her experience as a Native American child sent away to white boarding schools and forced to face the reality of cultural assimilation and submission. Part autobiography and part allegorical fiction, "e;American Indian Stories"e; explores the suffering experienced by Native Americans when they were forced to adapt to white American culture and made to abandon their traditional way of life. Zitkala-Sa's work endures as an eloquent, engaging, and important personal and historical account of a people whose story is often overlooked.