ABSTRACT
Zitkala-Ša (Lakota for “Red Bird”) was born Gertrude Simmons on February 22, 1876, the child of a Yankton-Nakota mother from the Yankton Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, and a white father.1 Her birth occurred during the period historians refer to as the Sioux War for the Black Hills, or Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s War of 1876-77, which includes the well-known Battle of Little Bighorn (Greasy Grass) on June 25, 1876. The people generally referred to as the “Sioux” prefer to call themselves Lakota, Nakota, or Dakota, and they speak three eponymous dialects of the Siouan language. The Yankton originally used Nakota, but many adopted the Dakota dialect in the mid-1800s when they split from the Dakota and moved from a region east of the Mississippi in what is currently Minnesota to the prairies in the region that is now southeast South Dakota (Strom). During her childhood Zitkala-Ša would have learned her mother’s dialect Nakota, perhaps would have become familiar with the Dakota dialect from her exposure to the Yankton groups, and would have understood Lakota well enough to choose a pen name in that dialect (Picotte xi). Her facility with language would prove to be one of her greatest strengths throughout her life.
