Zitkala-Sa
Gertrude Kasebier, Zitkala Sa, Sioux Indian and activist, c. 1898. Gertrude Kasebier, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Zitkala-Sa
Gertrude Kasebier, Zitkala Sa, Sioux Indian and activist, c. 1898. Gertrude Kasebier, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
This video was created by the New-York Historical Society Teen Leaders in collaboration with the Untold project.
Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation. She spent her early childhood on the reservation with her mother, who was of Sioux Dakota heritage. Little is known about her father, who was Anglo-American.
When Zitkala-Sa was eight years old, missionaries from the White’s Manual Labor Institute in Indiana came to the Yankton reservation to recruit children for their boarding school. Zitkala-Sa’s older brother had recently returned from such a school, and her mother was hesitant to send her daughter away. Zitkala-Sa, however, was eager to go. For children who had never been off the reservation, the school sounded like a magical place. The missionaries told stories about riding trains and picking red apples in large fields. After debating the decision, Zitkala-Sa’s mother agreed to let her go. She did not want her daughter to leave and did not trust the white strangers, but she feared that the Dakota way of life was ending. There were no schools on the reservation, and she wanted her daughter to have an education.
According to her autobiography, as soon as Zitkala-Sa boarded the train, she regretted begging her mother to let her go. She was about to spend years away from everything she knew. She did not know English, and tribal languages were banned at the school. She would be forced to give up her Dakota culture for an “American” one.
Zitkala-Sa’s arrival at the school was traumatic. The children learned that everyone would get a haircut. In Dakota culture, the only people to get haircuts were cowards who had been captured by the enemy. Zitkala-Sa