The English Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 6 (2014): 213-217
Article
Open Access
ISSN: 2348-3288
Zitkala-Sa: A Memoir of Native American Culture
Nouf Fahad Alashjaai*
Master of Arts in English student at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.
Department of Languages and Translation at Northern Borders University in Arar, Saudi Arabia.
*Corresponding author: Nouf Fahad Alashjaai; e-mail: [email protected]
Received: 29 October 2014
ABSTRACT
Accepted: 20 November 2014
Online: 28 November 2014
This paper argues that Zitkala-Sa's memoir, "Impression of an Indian Childhood," was written with a clear purpose
to convince Euro-American audience of the cultural identity of the Native American people that Sa's had left behind
her. It also argues that Sa has caused scholars to consider her own memoir not only her but also a memoir of Native
American culture because the unpleasant experiences she had after going with the white man and the traditional
tribal lifestyle that Sa recounted in her memoir were not unique to her experience, which made her memoir
transcend her own life and become a memoir of Native American culture. Sa showed that the Native Americans had
valuable culture.
Keywords: Zitkala-Sa's memoir, Native American
INTRODUCTION
In Zitkala-Sa's "Impression of an Indian Childhood," Sa
recounted having to choose whether or not to go to a
white man school. When Sa was eight, the missionaries
visited her mother's wigwam, and she recalled her
curiosity wanting to know more about them. Despite
her mother’s warning about white man's lies in offering
the education and better life to Native American
children, Sa wished that her mother would allow her go
to the Eastern land and try the red apples. In the first
part of American Indian Stories, "Impression of an
Indian Childhood," Sa recounted her most pleasant
experience in Dakota culture. However, soon after
leaving with the missionaries, Sa's tone started to
change and her curiosity and intense desire to see the
wonderful Eastern land started to be an unpleasant
experience. This paper argues that Zitkala-Sa's memoir,
"Impression of
an
Indian
Childhood,"
has
caused scholars to consider it not only her own memoir
but also a memoir of Native American culture because
the unpleasant experiences she had after going with the
white man and the traditional tribal lifestyle
that Sa recounted in her memoir were not unique to
her experience, which made her memoir transcend her
own life and become a memoir of Native American
culture. The paper also argues that Sa, as an adult,
inserted Biblical allusions from the white man's culture
into her Native American upbringing, which weakened
her reliability as an author of her own because the
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allusion was not an authentic image from her
childhood. In addition, the paper investigates how Sa
portrayed that the missionary school tried to remove
Native American culture from the children. Sa wanted
to convince her Euro-American audience that the
Native American culture was rich with customs, beliefs,
legends and crafting skills, which gave the Native
American culture as much value as the Euro-American
culture.
In order to prove that the white man's culture is not
better than Native American culture, Sa showed the
negative aspects of living in the Eastern
land. Sa portrayed her unpleasant experiences and her
suffering after she chose to go with the white man. At
first, Sa was excited to go with the white man, but as
soon as she left with them, her feelings changed and her
suffering started. Her curiosity and intense desire to
see the wonderful Eastern land increased as her
friend, Judéwin, was also going home with the
missionaries because she was seeking a better future
and better life. Sa's curiosity as a child pushed her to
look at the Eastern land as a land of red apples and iron
horses, but at the moment that she left her mother and
started to see her mother disappear while she left with
the white man her sadness started growing. However,
her first real suffering started when the nuns at the
school cut Sa's hair: "I cried aloud, shaking my head all
the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors
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Nouf Fahad Alashjaai / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(6): 213-217
against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my
thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. "
Sa never was the same after they cut her hair because
she lost her spirit and her cultural roots. Her mother
combed her hair and took care of her beauty before she
left with the white man. At the moment when the
woman cut Sa's hair, she realized that she was not able
to make a decision about how she looked:
Since the day I was taken from my mother I had
suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I
had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet.
And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In
my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came
to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as
my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of
many little animals driven by a herder.
They treated her as a wooden puppet because they
were dressing her and shaping her as they
wanted. Sa's experience was similar to thousands
of other American Indian children who suffered from
the post-colonial impact of displacement. She was a
victim of the two cultures. The missionaries gave her a
new name, Gertrude Simmons. They made Sa the girl
that they wanted but not the girl that she wanted to
be. According to Dorothea M. Susag, the writer of
"Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin): A Power (full)
Literary Voice," Sa articulated her personal and tribal
experience to indict those who had victimized her and
her people (3). Sa showed that she and other Native
American children were victims of the white man's
culture. She portrayed how the white man mistreated
and victimized Native American children when they
went to the Eastern land.
Not only were Sa and other children victimized by the
white man, she and they had to also experience living
between the white man and Native American cultures
because they felt alienated by the both cultures. Her
Euro-American audience could read Sa's memoir as any
Native American child's memoir who had lived in the
those
two
cultures. As
a
child, Sa suffered
much because she wanted to go the Eastern land and
earn an education. Another Native American child
whose experience was similar to Sa's is Seepeetza in
Shirley Sterling's "My Name is Seepeetza."
Seepeetza was a girl of twelve years old, who lived in
Canada at the time where the law mandated that all
Native American children should be sent to white man
schools. Even though Seepeetza lived in Canada and
was two generations behind Sa, she experienced the
same type of suffering. Even though Seepeetza looked
like a white child with long light hair, the nuns cut off
her hair anyway. They treated her poorly, and as
many Native American children were given Anglo
names, the name they gave Seepeetza was Martha. In
"My Name is Seepeetza," Seepeetza tells how Nuns
punished Native American children if they spoke their
native languages. Nuns used the same techniques to
treat Native American children poorly in the United
Sates and in Canada. They changed the children real
names, they cut off their long hair, they push them to
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practice Christianity, and they also restricted them
from using English at schools. Sa's life and her suffering
are no different than Seepeetza's.
Along with the unpleasant experiences, Sa also
successfully showed how the Native American
traditional lifestyle consisted of three different levels:
a world full of legends, and a world rich with crafting
skills a world of perfect peace, and a world based on
cooperation
between
humankind
and
nature. First, Sa portrayed her native home as a type of
Eden before she left to go to the missionary
school. Sa described a type of common life for all
the Native American children, which is a world of
perfect peace and cooperation between humankind and
nature (Cutter 34). Sa represented Native American life
as Edenic because she was a child and her memory was
a child's memory. The way she remembered those
childhood experiences was more than likely unclear of
those experiences. For example, she recalled how her
mother went for water: "Here, morning, noon, and
evening, my mother came to draw water from the
muddy stream for our household use. Always, when my
mother started for the river, I stopped my play to run
along with her. She was only of medium height." She
talked to her mother, saying when she grew up like her
cousin, Warea-Ziwin, she would go like her to the river
for water instead of her mother. Her and her mother's
lives were like Warea-Ziwin and other Native
Americans because they went to the river for
water. However,
Sa did
not
understand
the
difficulties that her mother faced when she went for
water. The Edenic image was probably not the reality of
her life on the reservation. She did not write this to lie
but mentioned what she remembered. Another
example of Sa's idealistic memory of her childhood is
when Sa told how her mother dried fruits and packed
them to save and eat later on:
When mother had dried all the corn she wished, then
she sliced great pumpkins into thin rings; and these
she doubled and linked together into long chains. She
hung them on a pole that stretched between two
forked posts. The wind and sun soon thoroughly dried
the chains of pumpkin. Then she packed them away in
a case of thick and stiff buckskin. In the sun and wind
she also dried many wild fruits,--cherries, berries, and
plums. But chiefest among my early recollections of
autumn is that one of the corn drying and the ground
squirrel. (Sa)
Zitkala-Sa’s mother harvested corn, pumpkins, and wild
fruits, but Sa's mother was not the only Native
American woman who dried the fruits. In fact, the
image Sa portrayed demonstrates the traditional tribal
lifestyle and the traditional mother's activities.
They dried fruits to save and eat for the rest of the
year. However, Sa was not actually aware that her
mother had worked hard to get the fruit and the
vegetables she had died. Sa was a child and she did not
understand
the
responsibilities
her
mother
had. Instead, Sa showed her audience how she was
living in peace in her homeland and that her mother,
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Nouf Fahad Alashjaai / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(6): 213-217
like
many
traditional
Native
American
mothers, demonstrated the Edenic world and how
human and nature cooperated. This experience was not
unique to Sa, but it is one level of the traditional tribal
lifestyle, which made her memoir transcend her own
life in and become a memoir of Native American
culture.
Throughout Sa's memoir, she portrayed the Native
American traditional lifestyle as a world that was rich
with legends. Sa mentioned her listening to the legends
at night. Within the traditional tribal setting, elderly
people provided entertainment on long winter nights
for all ages, which gave her the knowledge and ability
to be the literary counterpart of the oral storytellers of
her
tribe (Fisher
229). Like
other
Dakota
children, Sa had been raised on legends. Evening after
evening, until she left her tribe to go to school in the
East, Sa listened to these legends. Many Native
American tribes formulated and expressed their sacred
beliefs in sayings and narratives, and Sa's tribe was no
exception. Sa described the legends in a whole chapter
of her memoir. In this chapter, Sa says:
As each in turn began to tell a legend, I pillowed my
head in my mother's lap; and lying flat upon my back, I
watched the stars as they peeped down upon me, one
by one. The increasing interest of the tale aroused me,
and I sat up eagerly listening for every word. The old
women made funny remarks, and laughed so heartily
that I could not help joining them.
Sa laid her head in her mother' lap while she paid
attention to the elderly people’s narratives, but she was
not the only child who listened to those legends. Also,
these legends were the oral arts that Sa talked about in
"The Legends" chapter of her memoir, using English to
empower Native American values in order to convince
her Euro-American audience that Native American
culture was just as valuable.
In addition to recounting the legends, Sa portrayed her
Native American traditional tribal lifestyle as a world
that was rich with crafting skills. She wrote a chapter
telling about beadwork since beadwork was an old
craft and was used for trade. Zitkala-Sa's designs were
not good enough to satisfy her mother
expectations: "My original designs were not always
symmetrical nor sufficiently characteristic, two faults
with which my mother had little patience" (Sa). Sa told
her audience how her mother taught her to do
beadwork while requiring her to finish any pattern she
started. As a result of Sa's lack of skill, her mother
trained her to focus first on simpler patterns. Then,
Sa told how difficult it was for her to learn:
It took many trials before I learned how to knot my
sinew thread on the point of my finger, as I saw her do.
Then the next difficulty was in keeping my thread
stiffly twisted, so that I could easily string my beads
upon it. My mother required of me original designs for
my lessons in beading. At first I frequently ensnared
many a sunny hour into working a long design. Soon I
learned from self-inflicted punishment to refrain from
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drawing complex patterns, for I had to finish whatever
I began. (Sa)
Knotting her sinew and twisting the thread was difficult
for Sa, but she kept trying and practicing the beadwork
craft. She passed through this experience of beadwork,
and after some practice, she was able to make unique
patterns and mix wonderful colors together. Even
though she spent a part of her memoir describing how
she learned to beadwork, this skill was not unique
to Sa only. It was a practice that many Native
Americans used. Sa recounted beadwork in her memoir
in order to show the value of Native American culture
in order to convince her Euro-American audience of the
value of Native American culture.
Based on the three different levels of the traditional
tribal lifestyles in Sa's memoir, and according to
Dorothea M. Susag, who argues that Zitkala-Sa's
autobiographical essays reveal a powerful feminine and
ethnic voice when read against her two cultural
influences, Sa's audience realized that her memoir
demonstrates the way her native heritage of spiritual
power and storytelling overcome forces that would
suppress
the
feminine
Native
American
voice. Sa articulated her personal and tribal experience
to show that it was the white man who had victimized
her people (6). The English language became the tool
for articulating the tension she experienced throughout
her life between her heritage with its imperative of
tradition
and
the
inevitable
pressure
of
acculturation. The first part of her memoir
demonstrates that Sa wanted to show to her EuroAmerican audience that she was a Dakota woman and
not a mixed-blood because she powerfully described
how her traditional tribal lifestyles look in order to
portray a feminine Dakota heritage. Throughout her
memoir, Sa emphasized the traditional tribal lifestyles
because she was proud that she was a Yankton Dakota
and loved this part of her heritage. Beadwork was one
of the Native American values, and by mentioning this
valuable heritage Sa showed her Euro-American
audience her authenticity that attached her to Native
American culture as a part of her tribe.
In addition to portraying the traditional lifestyle, Sa
also inserted Biblical allusions throughout her
memoir. According to Martha J. Cutter, the writer of
"Zitkala-Sa’s Autobiographical Writings: The Problems
of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity,"
Sa searched to empower her memoir by using the white
man's language and by including the red apple allusion,
which weakened her reliability as an author of her own
memoir because the allusion was not an authentic
image from her childhood. Even though Sa could
construct a coherent identity through the English
language when English itself left her without place, Sa
wanted to strengthen the history of Native Americans
by recounting most of their customs, beliefs, and skills
in her memoir. According to Roy Pascal, the author of
"Design and Truth in Autobiography," Sa "imposes a
pattern on a life, constructs out of it a coherent story"
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(9). By using the red apple allusion, Sa manufactured
values. She borrowed the Biblical allusions from the
white man's culture and inserted it in her memoir,
which is a drawback in her memoir because it
weakened her memoir's reliability according to Pascal
and Cutter. She intentionally wanted to empower her
memoir in order to empower the Native American
traditional
lifestyle. Sa also
connected her
own
experience to the Biblical fall, which displays her
ingenuity of use but also the loss of integrity.
Additionally, Sa's use of the red apples was intentional.
While the red apples looked exciting, they were
forbidden and symbolized temptation. In "The Big Red
Apples" chapter, Sa described the Eastern land as a
place where "the nice red apples are for those who pick
them" and the white man told Zitkala-Sa that if she
would go with them, she "will have a ride on the iron
horse." The missionaries symbolize the tree of
knowledge. Sa's joining the missionaries symbolizes
Eve's sin of eating the forbidden fruits. In fact, Sa was
curious and anxious to see the Eastern land, but she did
not realize the consequences of her departure:
I had arrived in the wonderful land of rosy skies, but I
was not happy, as I had thought I should be. My long
travel and the bewildering sights had exhausted me. I
fell asleep, heaving deep, tired sobs. My tears were left
to dry themselves in streaks, because neither my aunt
nor my mother was near to wipe them away.
Sa acknowledged that even though the Eastern land
was wonderful and beautiful, she reminisced about
how lost and lonely she felt. By so doing, she placed
herself as Eve and showed how her sin brought her
sadness. On the first day Sa attended school, she
realized that nothing would be as easy as she had
thought. Even though her education later fed her the
forbidden fruits, Sa recounted her suffering in the
missionary school and how they mistreated her. Sa
portrayed how that the land of red apples was the land
of the white man, who promised many things to the
Native American children, but once the children had
arrived, everything was taken away. Sa used the red
apple allusion, and her use weakened her reliability as
the author of her own memoir.
Further weakening her memoir, Sa told that her mother
did not want her to eat the red apples, which made
some scholars claim that she granted her mother the
status of God. According to Catherine Kunce, the author
of "Fire of Eden: Zitkala-Sa's Bitter Apple," ZitkalaSa reimagined the story of the Garden of Eden and
placed her mother in the same position as God, her
brother as Adam, and herself as Eve. Sa's mother
did not want her daughter to eat the red apples but
gave Sa the choice whether to eat or not. Sa made her
memoir transcend her own life in order to become a
memoir of Native American culture because the Biblical
allusions that she used were not only her and her
brother’s case but also were the case of other Native
American children. Sa and her brother, as well as the
other Native American children who had left their
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tribes, represent the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
the Garden of Eden. Kunce claims Sa believed that God
is a Native American woman because Sa granted her
mother the status of God (76). In fact, Sa's mother as
any mother who teaches her children how to behave
told Sa: "Wait a moment before you invite any one. If
other plans are being discussed, do not interfere, but go
elsewhere" (Sa). Sa paused to listen to her mother's
command, and she was an obedient child.
Furthermore, Adam and Eve broke the divine
commandment and ate from the forbidden fruit.
Similarly, Sa and her brother also did not heed the
advice of their mother and chose to go for the Eastern
land and eat the red apples. In her fallen state, ZitkalaSa cannot reconnect with her tribe as Eve could not
connect with the angels in paradise (Kunce 77). In
fact, Sa used the Biblical allusion in order to show that
the traditional Native American mothers did not want
their children to eat the red apples, the forbidden
fruit. Sa in fact imposed the Biblical allusion to
empower her memoir in order to convince her EuroAmerican audience of Native American values. By
imposing these Biblical allusions, Sa increased the value
of Native American culture, but by granting her mother
the status of God, Sa weakened her reliability as an
author. Even though Sa granted her mother the status
of God, this does not mean Sa believed that God is a
Native American woman.
In addition to portraying the traditional lifestyle and
inserting the Biblical allusions, as an educated and
bicultural person, Sa knew about the Indian Removal
Act of 1830, which caused the relocation of Native
American nations from the southeastern parts of the
United States Oklahoma, and Missouri (Brown
302). The term "Trails of Tears" was given to the period
of ten years in which over 70,000 Native American had
to give up their homes and move to certain areas
assigned to tribes in Oklahoma and Missouri. However,
the white man forced them to move to other
reservations eventually. On their way to their new
lands, many Native American died because of disease
and the harsh living conditions. The tribes had to walk
all day long and had little rest. All this was in order to
free more land for the white man. Sa knew this Indian
Removal Act caused a dark period of American history
because the white man treated Native Americans
harshly and removed them from their homeland. The
practice of removing Native American actually began
with Jefferson’s administration and subsequent
administrations continued the policy of relocating
Native Americans until the 20th century. These events
in Native American history may have been one of the
reasons that pushed Sa to make her memoir
the memoir of Native American culture. She wanted to
convince Euro-Americans of the Native American's
value. Sa successfully showed that even though Native
Americans did not have the civilization that the white
man had Native American culture was still rich with
customs, beliefs, legends, and crafting that showed
Native American culture was as valuable as EuroAmerican culture. She showed her Euro-American
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Nouf Fahad Alashjaai / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(6): 213-217
audience the value of the practices and narratives that
made the history of America significant. These
values are now the heritage of America. While the
missionary school is a cultural removal of Native
American values, the Trail of Tears was a physical
removal of Native Americans.
CONCLUSION
Zitkala-Sa wrote to revise the dominant white
assessment of tribal culture. She intended to compare
Native American and white man cultures, and through
the comparison, she showed the cruelty of the white
man towards the Native Americans. She also wrote
with a clear purpose to convince her Euro-American
audience of the cultural identity of the Native American
people that she had left behind her. In order to
convince the white man of Native American value, Sa
used the Biblical allusions of the white man's culture to
empower her memoir, but her memoir exemplifies the
condition of a Native American writer caught between
two cultures. Her memoir never overshadowed that the
source of her inspiration was in the traditional tribal
culture of the Sioux. She showed how Native Americans
reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land
and changing the life of Native American. Her memoir
suggests that Native Americans were not savages and
that they had a normal lifestyle before the white man
came in and changed everything. She showed how the
people shared the legends for fun and to perpetuate
beliefs. The Native Americans had values based on
nature. Through her writing, Zitkala-Sa expressed her
pleasant experiences in Dakota culture and unpleasant
experiences with the white man. Even though Sa chose
to go with the white man, Sa succeed in showing that
the white man victimized her and other children. While
she had the opportunity to go back and live with her
family and her tribe, she chose to leave them and study.
When she graduated, she continued to live with the
white man because she wanted to teach instead to live
with her tribe again. In addition, Sa wanted to
empower her memoir by inserting Biblical allusions,
but this actually weakened her reliability. By imposing
the Biblical allusions, Sa's memoir causes her reader to
question whether it is a memoir or not. Focusing on the
negative aspects of the white man's culture while
focusing on the positives aspects of Native American
culture also caused her to lose reliability as an author.
She also did not address the fact that she was half white
and half Native American. This evidence causes her
reader to question the authenticity of her work and
whether or not it can be considered her memoir instead
of a memoir of the conflict between Native American
culture and the white man's culture.
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