Old Indian Legends is a collection of traditional Sioux folklore, retold by Zitkala-Sa to preserve and share the oral traditions of her people. Through a series of vivid and engaging tales, the work captures the spiritual beliefs, moral lessons, and cultural values of the Lakota and Dakota Sioux. Zitkala-Sa balances the storytelling tradition with literary refinement, offering narratives that reflect the struggles, wisdom, and humor embed...

"American Indian Stories" is a collection of autobiographical and fictional works that provide a compelling insight into Zitkala-Sa's life and experiences as a Native American woman living in both Native communities and white-dominated societies. The book was first published in 1921.The collection includes several poignant essays and short stories that address various aspects of Native American life, culture, and the challenges faced by Native individuals during her time. Zitkala-Sa's writ...

Zitkala-Sa was a 19th century Sioux author and activist. Old Indian Legends is a collection of Native American tales you compiled during trips to various reservations.

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 sweet-grass, drank in with her wakeful eyes. On the opposite side of the tepee, beyond the centre fireplace, the grandm...

IKTOMI is a spider fairy. He wears brown deerskin leggins with long soft fringes on either side, and tiny beaded moccasins on his feet. His long black hair is parted in the middle and wrapped with red, red bands. Each round braid hangs over a small brown ear and falls forward over his shoulders. He even paints his funny face with red and yellow, and draws big black rings around his eyes. He wears a deerskin jacket, with bright colored beads sewed tightly on it. Iktomi dresses like a real D...

Old Indian Legends is a collection of Dakota legends, retold by the 19th and early 20th-century Dakota author Zitkála-Šá. The collection was compiled in 1901 when Zitkála-Šá returned to her birthplace in the Yankton reservation to take care of her mother, after she had spent several years in the assimilationist Indian residential school system, both as a student and as an educator. While taking care of her mother, she gathered traditional tales from Dakota storytellers which were ...

Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa is a collection of traditional Native American stories from the Sioux tribe, presented through the voice of the author, who was a Sioux writer, educator, and activist. Zitkala-Sa retells these myths and legends with great reverence and insight, preserving the cultural heritage and oral storytelling traditions of her people. The stories explore themes of nature, spirituality, heroism, and the interplay between humans and the natural world, offering readers a...

A fascinating collection of autobiographical tales by Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, better known by her pen name of Zitkala-Sa. Read of her time on the Yankton Reservation, and her years of hardship in boarding schools set up to ‘civilise’ the Native American children.

First published in 1921, ‘American Indian Stories’ is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fiction, and essays written by Zitkála-Šá, also known by her missionary and married names Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. It is distinctive for being perhaps the first literary work by a Native-American woman created without the mediation of a non-Native interpreter, or collaborator. Zitkála-Šá vividly art...

A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to preserve her culture—with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for WhereasBright and carefree, Zitkála-Šá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservatio...

American Indian Stories is the second story collection by Dakota author Zitkála-Šá . In contrast to her earlier collection Old Indian Legends , which is a collection of traditional Dakota legends, American Indian Stories is a collection of stories about contemporary Dakota life. Many center on the interactions and conflicts between Dakota and settler society, especially the challenges posed by the assimilationist Indian residential school system. The first few stories (through "Why I Am a ...

American Indian Stories is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fictions and essays written by Sioux writer and activist Zitkala-Ša.American Indian Stories details the hardships encountered by Zitkala-Ša and other Native Americans in the missionary and manual labour schools designed to "civilize" them. The autobiographical details contrast her early life on the Yankton Indian Reservation and her time as a student at White's Manual Labour Institute and Earlham College....