First published in 1921, ‘American Indian Stories’ is a collection of childhood stories, allegorical fiction, and essays written by Zitkála-Šá, also known by her missionary and married names Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist.
It is distinctive for being perhaps the first literary work by a Native-American woman created without the mediation of a non-Native interpreter, or collaborator. Zitkála-Šá vividly articulates her disillusionment with the harshness of American-Indian boarding schools and the corruption of government institutions seemingly established to help Native peoples.
At the same time, Zitkála-Šá’s collection charts the progression of the authors’ alienation from her Dakota people that her colonial education inevitably fostered. It portrays one Dakota woman's spirited and successful efforts to resist the restrictions she felt in both reservation life and Euro-American assimilation.
