Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1900-04-05
INDIAN GIRLS OWN STORY.
Pathetic Account by Zitkala-Sa Of Her
Own Civilization"

Zitkala-Sa, daughter of the Dakotas,
may yet fulfill the tentative prophecy
OF Marvia Dana, who, in a review of
! American fiction said: "a romance
Of the aborigines by one of their sur
vivors would be OF melancholy inter
est. There may yet come a
fitful fash from the decayed fires of
the red mans nation" The stories Of
Zitkala-Sa, in the last three numbers
of the Atlantic, have possessed much
more than melancholy interest, and
the fash from the decaying fires of her
ancestors is so bright and so well sus-
aimed that to call it ftful were wide
OF The truth. The third and last of
these interesting papers appears in the
March number of the Atlantic and de-
picts the varied feelings and the sharp
contrasts forced upon the Indian
teacher as she comes back to work
among her own people after being
years among the whites and at the
Indian training schools.
The first sketch gives the Indian
maiden's impressions of her childhood
In this, by the way she adds import
ant testimony to the statements made
by Charles f. Lummis, who, in My
Brothers Keeper, now running in the
Land of Sunshine, most scathingly
criticises the present government
methods of Indian education. In the
second sketch Zitkala-Sa describes her
experiences at an Indian school where
she was being prepared for teaching
Her description of her feelings as she
started for this new life is pathetic:
Soon we were being drawn rapidly
away by the white mans horses.
When | saw the lonely figure of my
mother vanish in the distance a sense
Of regret settled upon me- I felt sud
denly weak, as If T might fall limp to
the ground. | was in the hands of
strangers, whom my mother did not
fully trust. | no longer felt free to be
myself or to voice my own feelings.
The tears trickled down my cheeks
and | buried my face in the folds of
my blanket. Now the first step, part
ing me from my mother, was taken,
and all my belated tears awaited moth
ing. Having driven thirty miles to
the ferryboat, we crossed the Missouri
in the evening. Then riding again
few miles eastward, we stopped be-
fore a massive brick building I
looked at 1t in amazement, and with
vague misgiving, for in our village I
had never seen so large a house.
Trembling with fear and distrust of
the pale faces, my teeth chattering
from the chilly ride. I crept noislessly
in my soft moccasins along the narrow
hall, keeping very close to the bare
wall was frightened and bewildered
as the captured young of wild Great
ure."
Here Is point strongly touched by
Mr.. Lummis. He objects to the TAX
ing of the Indian children from their
mothers and fathers, herding them in
the Indian schools and then sending
them back to their tribes or villages
again at the end of their school course
only slightly in touch with white civ
ilization and almost wholly out of
sympathy with their own people.
And it is this coming back that Zit-
kala-Sa so graphically and touchingly
deals with in the present paper She
has come to the school near the re-
serve to teach the children of her own
people. In memory dwells never-to-
be-forgotten glimpses of the old, hap
nv % l.
memories from the contrasting medi-
um between then and now. Her quar-
tiers at the school she describes as
small carpeted room, with CHASTITY
walls and ceiling. The two windows,
both on the same side. were curtained
with heavy muslin yellowed with age.
A clean, white bed was in one corner
of the room, and opposite it was
square pine table covered with
black wooden blanket"
What world OF reproof in that
paragraph! CHASTITY walls and ceiling,
dull-colored curtains, one-sided view,
and a black tablecloth for an Indian
maiden whose earlier years had had
the horizon and sky of the prairies for
walls and ceiling, almost limitless view
in every direction and all the beauties
of nature for coloring, What sordid
surroundings for one to whose life
brilliant hues were as the breath of
the forest! Is 1t any wonder that she
exclaims: "A leaden weakness came
over me and l felt as II years of wear
mess lay like water-soaked logs upon
me-"
And the health of Zitkala-Sa began
to fail. Fortunately the inht ritance OF
a marvellous endurance enabled her to
bend without breaking, but fail she
did nevertheless, and the kind-hearted
superintendent OF the school noticing
this, knowing her nature and underlined
longings. said one day: II am going to
turn you loose to pasture" He was
sending her west to gather Indian pu-
pills for his school, and this was his
way of putting 1t; but to her 1t meant
more than this. 1t meant green fields.
sweeping prairies, trackless forests. her
mother.
How often she speaks OF the intense