ABSTRACT

Zitkala-Sa is the pen name of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, the first Native American woman writer to publish her own life story without the mediation of a non-Indian editor or ghost writer. Her autobiographical essays appeared at the turn of the twentieth century in the highly visible and influential Atlantic Monthly, and their publication won her instant recognition among the literati of the Northeast. In “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” Zitkala-Sa describes how the missionary school experience attempted to strip Native children of their tribal cultures and replace them with knowledge of Christianity, literacy, and the English language. Zitkala-Sa tells a story designed to characterize the white missionaries which take place before Gertrude is old enough to be tempted to leave home with them. Significantly, the incident is set in the winter, a time of confinement and probably some deprivation; it is, she says, her only winter memory. The missionaries have given her a bag of glass marbles.