Tammy Nohr Kenyon

29 April 2004

Journal:  Cultural Bridges and Zitkala-Sa:  Illustrations of Loss and Survival…and Ambivalence?

 I.                    Introduction

When I began to formulate my ideas for research, I wanted to center my thoughts on the concept of “bridge people.”  I had studied this concept within the context of cultural anthropology, specifically, in a class taught by Dr. Christine Kovic at the University of Houston, Clear Lake.  In this context, “bridge people” are those individuals who “walk the fine line between cultures, with one foot in each” (Kovic).  These people are able to function effectively across two distinct cultural communities.  In course lecture, Dr. Kovic suggests components necessary for achieving this status.  One must “be open the knowledge of others, be flexible in thought, have respect for each culture, put in substantial time, have empathy, establish trust, and accept the norms of each culture and work within those norms” (Kovic).    Thus, this course of study focuses on the individual as an instrument of cultural communication.  Seeking to “tease out” this idea, I began to explore the life of Zitkala-Sa, wondering if she would fit into this particular notion of a bridge person.

II.                  Biographical Sketch of Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa, also known as Red Bird (the English translation of Zitkala-Sa), Gertrude Simmons, Gertrude Bonnin, and Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on Pine Ridge (Yankton) Reservation in South Dakota, 1876.  As a point of reference and/or identification, it is worthwhile to note that fourteen years later, the “nearly 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children [who] were massacred by the Seventh Cavalry of the United States at Wounded Knee Creek” (Liggett), were attempting to reach the perceived safety of the same Pine Ridge Reservation of Zitkala-Sa’s birth.  Zitkala-Sa thus passed through childhood and adolescence during the final chapter of the American Indian and United States wars, as the Battle/Massacre at Wounded Knee “is known as the event that ended the last of the Indian wars in America…[and] symbolizes, according to scholars…not only a culmination of a clash of cultures and the failures of governmental Indian policies, but also the end of the American frontier” (Liggett). 

            Zitkala-Sa was born Gertrude Simmons, the daughter of a full-blooded Yankton Sioux (Ellen Tate ‘I yohiwin Simmons) and a white man by the name of Felker, who deserted the family before Zitkala-Sa’s birth (Fisher ix).  She lived for eight years on the reservation before attending school at the White’s Manual Institute in Wabash, Indiana, an American (United States) mission run by Quakers.  At the mission she learned English, written and spoken, and began to learn European-American custom and religion.  From 1895-1897, Zitkala-Sa studied at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, “distinguishe[d] herself as an orator and poet, publishing essays and highly formal poems in the school’s newspaper and winning several debating honors” (Fisher xi).  This seems to mark the beginning of Zitkala-Sa’s ability to utilize the English language and the written tradition as an effective means of communicating across cultures. 

            In 1900, Zitkala-Sa began publishing her writings, largely autobiographical, in Atlantic Monthly.  She would later be published in Harper’s Magazine and Everybody’s Magazine.  Many of her autobiographical essays would later be assimilated into autobiographical fiction in American Indian Stories.  Zitkala-Sa also published a collection entitled Old Indian Legends, which attempts to put into writing, in English, some of the orally transmitted stories familiar and often revered among tribes of the Sioux Nation. 

            After her marriage to Raymond T. Bonnin, also a Sioux, in 1902, Zitkala-Sa moved to the Uintah and Ouray reservation in Utah.  An accomplished violinist (she had studied at the Boston Conservatory and represented the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as violin soloist in the Paris Exposition in 1900), Zitkala-Sa (using the name Gertrude Bonnin at the time) “collaborated quite intensely with William Hanson on the composition of “Sun Dance” (Fisher xiv).  “Sun Dance,” an opera, attempts to depict American Indians in an authentic, truthful, and sympathetic manner.  The opera enjoyed success (albeit brief), and was performed not only by the original company, but also by Brigham Young University and finally in New York.  Here Zitkala-Sa shows an attempt to convey, through music, the dignity of her people to audiences across cultures.  Perhaps incidentally, the course of this project overlapped her husband’s military service in World War I. 

            Throughout the following years, Zitkala-Sa seemed to focus her energies less on creative or aesthetic endeavors and more on political action.  She lived in Washington D.C. while serving as secretary of the Society of the American Indian and as editor of American Indian Magazine.  She used her position and influence to campaign (often lecturing across the country) for “Indian citizenship, employment of Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, equitable settlement of tribal land claims, and stabilization of laws relating to Indians” (Fisher xv).  She successfully petitioned the General Federation of Women’s Clubs to establish an Indian Welfare Committee in 1921.  In 1926 she founded the National Council of American Indians.  By her death in 1938, American Indians had been granted United States citizenship and members of the Indian Rights Association had been appointed to top positions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Arguably, these accomplishments were due, at least in part, to the tireless efforts of Zitkala-Sa.  She was buried in Arlington Cemetery (due to her husband’s war service) in 1938.

III.                Reflections, Questions, and Segues

At the onset of this project, I knew the prospect of working within the narrow definition I had set for a bridge person would be plagued with difficulties.  The bridge metaphor is widely used (and often quite effectively) to illustrate any person who provides information or makes a connection between any number of entities. In terms of bridging cultures, translators, ethnographers, politicians, advocates, lobbyists, orators, and writers can all be seen as types of bridge people.   In fact, the “bridge” need not be a person at all.  The literature a writer produces, for example, can become a bridge of its own, independent of the person who wrote it.  Yet the literature cannot perform that function without the writer, which presents an interesting conundrum:  to what extend is the life of the writer a reflection of the concepts his/her literature expresses? 

In the case of Zitkala-Sa, I found some interesting connections.  As I read through various biographies, I found that the “facts” of her life painted a misleading picture.  Read in this way (as I have outlined it above), her life could be construed as a success story of Euro-American style assimilation.  Zitkala-Sa leaves her home and becomes assimilated and educated by Euro-American institutions.    She seems to accept the dominant Euro-American superstructures of culture and government, while rejecting that group’s unfair treatment of the minority culture from which she came.  She then works within the parameters of the superstructure in an effort to effect positive change.  Her writing, however, tells quite another story.  Through her writing, the reader sees the events of Zitkala-Sa’s life as tumultuous and filled with ambivalence instead of a seamless transition of “natural” and “desirable” events.  Her very life reflects an individual struggle for survival in the face of loss, and, as such, mirrors a dominant aspect of the collective American Indian experience following the European invasion.  Perhaps she chooses to barter her own loss in exchange for some chance at survival, or at least a chance at voice, amidst a clash of cultures beyond her (or her people’s) making or control.  These elements, which come through in her writing, may separate her from other types of bridge people.  Finally, it is not her political activism, now a buried set of historical facts in library archives, for which she is remembered and known.  Her literature, her voice, remains. 

IV.               The Literature of Zitkala-Sa

The literary works of Zitkala-Sa are more prolific in terms of longevity than in terms of quantity.  The many essays she wrote for Harper’s and Atlantic Monthly were consolidated in 1921 into the autobiographical fiction American Indian Stories.  Old Indian Legends is her other published book, and is also collection of individual pieces.  One other work remains, a collection titled Dreams and Thunder:  Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera.  This is another collection of Zitkala-Sa’s thoughts, some reproduced from the other books, as well as the storyline of the opera.  Some of her essays, such as Why I am a Pagan, are still individually available, but they also surface in some form within the pages of American Indian Stories.  This collection of essays provides the reader with the best account of Zitkala-Sa’s impressions of her own life and of the world into which she was born.  The following examples are taken from American Indian Stories.

In Impressions of an Indian Childhood, the reader gets an account of young Zitkala-Sa’s life on the Indian reservation.   Elements of Sioux culture are presented in a matter-of-fact manner, by a young girl who knows very little of any other way of life.  The reader travels with Zitkala-Sa from tepee to tepee, asking others in the community to gather for storytelling and socializing later in the evening.  This reveals one defining element of Sioux culture (and of Zitkala-Sa’s early years):  oral tradition.  Gathered round a fire, the elders of the tribe recite legends and pass down the culture’s history and traditions.  The children internalize and emulate these traditions.  Zitkala-Sa writes, “I remember well how we [children] used to exchange our necklaces, beaded belts, and sometimes even our moccasins…We delighted in impersonating our mothers” (21). 

Through these traditions, Zitkala-Sa also learned another element of her culture, a deep feeling of respect.  This respect extends to all members of the tribe, even small children.  She recalls her young attempt to make coffee for a grandfather (as was the custom) over a heap of dead ashes.  She writes, “neither [my mother] nor the warrior, whom the law of our custom had compelled to partake of my insipid hospitality, said anything to embarrass me. They treated my best judgment, poor as it was, with the utmost respect” (28-29).  This respect also extends, at least equally, to nature.  In these early impressions, this is portrayed subtly, as a natural sense of oneness with the natural world.  Perhaps the best example is Zitkala-Sa’s retelling of her ramblings across an open prairie, running from cloud shadows.  In this and countless other ways, nature is presented as a living, interactive, and powerful aspect of human life.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that human life is one aspect of the all-encompassing natural world.  Thus, oral tradition and a certain tradition of respect are two of the countless notable aspects of rich Sioux culture. (In fact, one could consider the role of tradition itself as a vital part of Sioux culture.)

Overall, her impressions of childhood reflect a happy girl living in a respectful (and respect-worthy) society.  Yet even in these early stories, the presence of the “white man” (or “paleface”) and a sense of loss can be felt.  The tribe, after all, is already sequestered on a reservation.  Although this is not portrayed in an overtly negative light, Zitkala-Sa is too young to remember life in any other way.  Coffee, which represents the presence of the white man, has become ingrained in Sioux tradition.  Perhaps the voice of Zitkala-Sa’s mother best reflects the sense of loss and anxiety.  She accuses the paleface of “defraud[ing] us of our land [and]…forc[ing] us away” (10).  On that journey, her mother asserts, both her brother and daughter (Zitkala-Sa’s uncle and sister) died.  Loss is an early and intimate experience in Sioux life, and may be seen, in a certain light, as an integral aspect of Sioux culture, though an aspect imposed through the actions of others.  Zitkala-Sa’s mother worries that the paleface will take away the river from which they drink, expressing the sentiment that more indignity and loss is yet to come.  

Yet her mother reluctantly allows Zitkala-Sa to go east for an education in the white man’s world.  Expressing a moving inner struggle, she speaks: 

My daughter, though she does not understand what it all means, is anxious to go.  She will need an education when she is grown, for then there will be fewer real Dakotas, and many more palefaces.  This tearing her away, so young, from her mother is necessary, if I would have her an educated woman.  The palefaces, who owe us a large debt for stolen lands, have begun to pay a tardy justice in offering some education to our children.  But I know my daughter must suffer keenly in this experiment.  Go, tell them that they may take my little daughter, and that the Great Spirit shall not fail to reward them according to their hearts (44).  

            Ambivalence, loss, and survival resonate from this mother’s heartfelt words.  In light of the loss already felt by her people, and the near guarantee of more loss to come, a mother chooses, with mixed feelings and heavy heart, to send her daughter into the very hands that cause the loss.  Yet with survival in mind, no alternative seems to exist.  Attempts to ward off the white man have failed, with catastrophic consequences.  Survival now seems possible only through negotiation within the white man’s world, in a voice that the white man is able to recognize and understand.  Zitkala-Sa must be torn from her mother’s side (and from her culture) in order to survive. 

            Through her experiences at the white man’s school, Zitkala-Sa loses her innocence as well as her cultural identity.  In exchange for these precious “commodities,” she gains the power of written language, particularly so in that it is the language of Euro-Americans, giving her a voice the dominant culture can hear.  Early on Zitkala-Sa is disillusioned by the half-truths and outright lies she was told to entice her to “the land of red apples” (47).  She gains the knowledge of hypocrisy between the word and deed of the white man, however well intended, of which her mother had spoken.  She suffers great personal indignities when strangers stare and point, her long hair is callously cut, and her small body tossed into the air by strangers.  She learns of Euro-American disregard for her, her culture, and her religion.  She also learns to read, write, and speak English.  She learns that the dominant Euro-American culture need not compromise its points-of-view, but finds her own point-of-view continually challenged.  

            These themes of loss, survival, and ambivalence would continue to plague Zitkala-Sa throughout her life.  She returns to the reservation after three years to find herself “hang[ing] in the heart of chaos…neither a wild Indian nor a tame one” (69).  Instead of walking with one foot in each culture, her words are those of one who walks an invisible line in no-man’s land.  Yet she seems to reflect some of her mother’s painful wisdom with her decision to return to the East.  Although “wishing [she] had gone West, to be nourished by [her] mother’s love,” she continues her “slow attempt to learn the white man’s ways” determined to learn “the magic design which promised the white man’s respect” (69).  As her life continues, she becomes increasingly able to exist in her ambivalent place in the world, if not to relish it. 

Through her writing, she discovers her power.  American Indian Stories provides an account of Indian boarding schools that counters the written accounts of missionaries.  “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” illustrates the plight of one group of American Indians, educated in the mission, unable to function wholly in either world.  Her writing thus becomes a sort of “conscience” for American history.  Further, her writings assist in preserving and bearing witness to her cultural heritage.  Her efforts in learning the “white man’s ways” allowed her to move within Euro-American society, and to effect some degree of positive change for her fellow American Indians, Sioux as well as other tribes and nations.  Yet these choices, her voice, were born out of deep personal and cultural loss and a desire to see both survive, however altered. 

V.                 Connections and Conclusions    

Zitkala-Sa would never move with total ease in Euro-American society.  She would continue to spurn Euro-American stereotypes and prejudices about her people throughout her life.  She wrote essays such as Why I am a Pagan, which expresses her preference for “excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard” (803) to the dogma and superstition of the palefaced missionary.   On the other hand, neither would she ever return wholly to her early way of life on the reservation, instead spending many years of her adult life living in Washington D.C. or working on reservations in the capacity of advocate.   Her relationship with her mother became strained as viewpoints grew farther apart.  Moreover, reservation life itself was in a tenuous transition during Zitkala-Sa’s adult life, the boarders shrinking as white settlers crept closer, and Euro-American tradition continuing to seep in, log cabins replacing tepees, traditional dances and worship outlawed, and on and on. 

            In terms of my original blueprint of one type of bridge person, I still wonder if Zitkala-Sa “fits.”  It is difficult to determine the extent to which she respects Euro-American culture.  She may, instead, be resigned to its existence and determined to work for the best outcome given the circumstances.  The points outlined above seem to indicate that sort of ambivalence, at least some degree.  I also think that ambivalence may be something of an inherent byproduct of “walking in two worlds.”  Even in an amicable situation, traveling between distinct cultures, distinct views of truth and reality, might always leave one with mixed feelings and an ultimate sense of loneliness or isolation. 

            The experience of loss and the struggle for survival is widely recognized in the experiences of American Indian cultures.  Ambivalence, however, is not always so easily recognized.  Yet I think the life and writings of Zitkala-Sa suggest that ambivalence may well be a byproduct of these experiences, at least during her lifetime.  Faced with the choice between assimilation and resistance, American Indians, on the whole, seem to choose resistance.  While some individuals do assimilate, many prefer to remain on reservations and out of dominant society.  But when dominant society is ubiquitous, total resistance is impossible.  Some concessions or compromises have to be made, which may lead to a feeling of ambivalence.  The choice to resist on the terms of the dominant group may be seen as little or no choice at all.  If this theory holds, it reflects a link between American Indians and the so-called “ambivalent minority,” Mexican-Americans. 

            Although it can be argued (with much accuracy) that the early Spanish and later Mexican settlers originally displaced American Indians in much the same manner as white Euro-Americans, Mexican-Americans ultimately found themselves in a situation quite similar to that of the American Indians.  Although history has revealed different choices and outcomes between the two groups of people, some similarities remain.  A sense of ambivalence hallmarks the collective experience of Mexican-Americans.  Although outside the scope of this paper, much of the literature of Mexican-Americans reflects these similarities.  Many figures have walked the fine line between cultures, and are often left with a sense of mixed feelings.  A comparison of these works to that of Zitkala-Sa might reveal more similarities, although I’m sure it would also reveal many profound differences. 

            For me, the ultimate bridge revealed in this journal is literature.  The power of the written word to touch people beyond the immediate reach of the author is immense.  Zitkala-Sa saw this power, and the sacrifices she made in order to command the written word are a testament to her belief in its power.  As stated earlier, the worthy political actions of Zitkala-Sa may be long forgotten.  Her words, however, are still alive, and as a twenty-first century mind takes them in, the bridge continues to strengthen, and, for just a moment, two worlds are drawn a bit closer together.

Works Cited

Fisher, Dexter.  Foreword.  American Indian Stories.  By Zitkala-Sa.  Lincoln:  U. of Nebraska Press, 1979.  v-xx.

Hoefel, Roseanne.  “Zitkala-Sa:  A Biography.”  The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women’s Writings.  Ed.  Glynis Carr.  Online.  Internet.  Posted Winter 1999.  http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/ZS/rh.html

Liggett, Lorie.  The Wounded Knee Massacre.  1998.  http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/woundedknee/WKIntro.html

Kovic, Christine.  Anthropology 3131:  Contemporary Cultural Anthropology.  5 February 2003.   

Zitkala-Sa.  American Indian Stories.  Lincoln:  U. of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Zitkala-Sa.  “Why I am a Pagan.”  Atlantic Monthly 90 (1902):  801-803.  Available Online.  http://www.wyllie.lib.virginia.edu