Reading Response: Zitkala-Sa; The School Days of an Indian Girl

LINK: Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938)

Native American Rights Activist

Reading Response: The School Days of an Indian Girl

I am drawn to writing a response to this piece in American Literature due to my own paternal Sioux Indian heritage.  As I think about other readings during the times after the Civil War, I can't help but see that the European settlers who encroached upon the Indian territory manipulated the Indians into a relationship that soon became one that took away their rights and into being treated as inferior beings after the genocide of their Native American relatives. So, taking over, the federal government then impressed  laws and policies upon Native American people.  One of which sanctioned the removal of small Indian children away from their homes and families forcing Indians to assimilate into European cultures. I wonder, how did that make sense.

Since efforts to integrate European settlers into Native American culture failed, the federal government sought to eradicate Native American cultures and traditions as a part of their invasion of their territory.  I can only imagine the horrifying frustrations of the young Zitkala-Sa after being shipped away from home and finding out that the stories she was told about journey East were far from the reality of her experiences of being sent away to a boarding school.  She originally had been excited about the journey thinking it would be a pleasure to go to a place referred to as: "Red Apple Country."  From the very beginning of the trip on the train, she saw that it would not be a pleasurable journey.  From the unfamiliar faces staring and pointing at her for making fun of her shoes, it only grew more troublesome from then on. She refers to this Christian missionaries as 'palefaces', as their skin was so much paler than she had ever seen before.  Having never seen these people before, whom seemed odd to her, who now have charge over her was deeply troubling for a small child to face so abruptly.  To add insult to injury, the dissappointment of the arrival to the school in the land of Red Apples with freezing temperatures and snow seemed unbearable.

Assimmilating to the culture of the palefaces felt like a prison of which she could not escape.  Everything to her foreign, from the language, to the waking to the schrill of a ringing bell, to the clamouring noise of hard shoes upon wood floors running about, to seeing more Indian girls that were clothed in 'mmodest' clothing.  The traditions of the palefaces were also unknown to her.  In the dining room, she did not know that  she had to wait to be seated and wait to begin eating all by waiting for the sound of each bell. With all of these foreign traditional rules, she was afraid make a move for fear of being scrutinized and glared at.

When she found out about the rule that her hair would need to be cut, she was outraged.  In her heritage, her hair had great symbolism.  If an Indian had cut hair, it meant they were unskilled warriors, mourners or cowards.  This was something she vowed to fight for.  She was so determined to keep her hair that she tried to sneak away and hide hoping to escape the treachery of having 'shingled hair'.

Her tormenting experience seems to never end.  Strict rules for playing in the snow seemed odd to her and her friends.  Terrible stories about the white man's devil and supersticious ideas made her grow bitter towards this idea of assimmilating into this culture of the Christian missionaries.  The experience of boarding school changed who Zitkala-Sa was before she ever went there.  She seemed to keep the memories of all the chaos at the forefront of her mind.  It was something she could not shake or explain her feelings about them to people like her brother and her mother.  She was a person they did not understand upon her return to the Western country for the summer.

When she finished boarding school, I was suprised to learn that Zitkala-Sa chose to stay East to attend a college there.  I thought surely she would go back West to be close to her family.  However, I can understand after having been away for a time now, and being able to understand that she had grown up, she wanted to make something of herself and receive an education to help many people like her.  I admire her for her tenacity and the fact that she could rise above such tormenting circumstances as a young child and become the activist that she did for her fellow Native American people.