Other editions of book American Indian Stories

American Indian Stories details the hardships encountered by Zitkala-Ša and other Native Americans in the missionary and manual labour schools designed to "civilize" them. The autobiographical details contrast her early life on the Yankton Indian Reservation and her time as a student at White's Manual Labour Institute and Earlham College. The collection includes legends and stories from Sioux oral tradition, along with an essay titled America's Indian Problem, which advocates rights for Native Americans and calls for a greater understanding of Native American cultures. American Indian Stories offers a unique view into a society that is often overlooked though that society still persists to this day.

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.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Based on the life of the author and members of her tribe, these stories provide a revealing glimpse into the world of the Dakota-Sioux at the turn of the last century. “There is no great; there is no small; in the mind that causeth all." Zitkala-Sa The audiobook is divided into two volumes. Volume One is based on the experiences of the author, and describes a young girl growing up in a changing environment. Volume Two consists of revealing stories about other members of her tribe. About the Author: Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) was a beautiful Dakota-Sioux Indian. She was a member of the Woman's National Foundation, League of American Pen-Women, and the Washington Salon. Through lectures and stories such as “Old Indian Legends” and “Americanize The First American,” she tried to make the public aware of Dakota-Sioux Indians, their culture and their plight.

At the age of seven, Zitkala-Sa describes herself as 'wild' and 'as free as the wind that blew her hair'. Recounting a conversation with her mother on one of their return trips from the river, Zitkala-Sa told her that when she is older like her 17-year-old cousin Warca-Ziwin, she will come and get water for her. Zitkala-Sa's mother responded, "If the paleface does not take away from us the river we drink".

American Indian Stories This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING!