American Indian Stories
- Downloads
- Under 100
- First published
- 1921
- Pages
- 131
Listen to American Indian Stories Audiobook Free
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Impressions of an Indian Childhood
37:13 -
The School Days of an Indian Girl
49:13 -
An Indian Teacher Among Indians
21:50 -
The Great Spirit
8:35 -
The Soft-Hearted Sioux
19:37 -
The Trial Path
12:08 -
A Warrior's Daughter
17:57 -
A Dream of Her Grandfather
6:28 -
The Widespread Enigma of Blue-Star Woman
28:02 -
America's Indian Problem
12:48
American Indian Stories (1921) is a public domain work.
The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.
About this book
Zitkala-Sa gathered autobiography, essay, and retold legend into a single volume that speaks plainly about the cost of assimilation. Drawing on her childhood on the Yankton Reservation and her wrenching years at a missionary boarding school, she describes being taken from her mother, stripped of her language, and taught to feel shame for who she was. Alongside these memories she sets down Sioux stories and pointed essays on the treatment of Native people. Written in the language of the schools that tried to erase her, the collection turns personal grief into clear-eyed protest, and stands among the earliest Native American works published without a white editor's mediation.
From the opening pages
A wigwam of weather-stained canvas stood at the base of some irregularly ascending hills. A footpath wound its way gently down the sloping land till it reached the broad river bottom; creeping through the long swamp grasses that bent over it on either side, it came out on the edge of the Missouri.
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. Often she was sad and silent, at which times her full arched lips were compressed into hard and bitter lines, and shadows fell under her black eyes. Then I clung to her hand and begged to know what made the tears fall.
"Hush; my little daughter must never talk about my tears"; and smiling through them, she patted my head and said, "Now let me see how fast you can run today." Whereupon I tore away at my highest possible speed, with my long black hair blowing in the breeze.
I was a wild little girl of seven. Loosely clad in a slip of brown buckskin, and light-footed with a pair of soft moccasins on my feet, I was as free as the wind that blew my hair, and no less spirited than a bounding deer. These were my mother's pride,—my wild freedom and overflowing spirits. She taught me no fear save that of intruding myself upon others.
Having gone many paces ahead I stopped, panting for breath, and laughing with glee as my mother watched my every movement. I was not wholly conscious of myself, but was more keenly alive to the fire within. It was as if I were the activity, and my hands and feet were only experiments for my spirit to work upon.
Contents
About the author
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Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
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Book facts
- Author
- Zitkala-Sa
- First published
- 1921
- Reading time
- About 2 hours
- Pages
- 131
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Memoir
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook