Page 7 - 10 at 10: The Surprising Childhoods of Ten Remarkable People

Zitkála-Šá Zitkála-Šá is born.
1876
1876
Zitkála-Šá is born.

1876–19381876–1938

As a young girl, Zitkála-Šá spent her time leaping and bounding
over rolling hills and past the rising smoke of her home on the Age 8 Age 8
reservation in Yankton, South Dakota. When she stopped, the Attends Attends
scene stopped. When she jumped, it jumped. No matter how White’s Indiana White’s Indiana
fast she ran, she was a part of the land. Manual Labor Manual Labor
When she was eight years old, Quaker missionaries visited InstituteInstitute
to recruit Native children to the White’s Indiana Manual Labor
Institute in Wabash, Indiana. At first, she was excited to go.
The white people promised to take her away on an “iron
horse” (a train) to lands where she could eat “big red apples”
and learn to read and write.
Her mother warned her, “Their words are sweet, but, my
child, their deeds are bitter.” Her mother had good reason to be
distrusting. Years earlier, gold had been discovered in the Black
Hills of the Dakota Territory and prospectors took over lands
belonging to Dakota, Lakota, and Northern Arapaho people.
Missionaries
Missionaries
During that same time period, US leaders such as President
cut off her hair.
Ulysses S. Grant encouraged killing bison as a way to eliminate cut off her hair.
Native Americans because they were dependent on the animals
for meat, clothing, and utensils. And Indigenous people were
also being coerced into signing treaties, forced onto reservations,
and required to adopt farming instead of hunting and gathering. Age 11Age 11
By the time missionaries arrived to take Zitkála-Šá away, Returns to the Returns to the
the landscape where thirty million bison had roamed had Yankton Reservation Yankton Reservation
been reduced to herds of just five hundred and the Yankton but feels like she but feels like she
Western Dakota people had been forced to leave their has lost her culturehas lost her culture
ancestral lands as protectors of the Pipestone Quarry.
Her mother’s warning proved correct. When she arrived at
her new school, all the apple trees had died.
And so Zitkála-Šá began her new life with new clothing,
a new language, and a new name—Gertrude. She would

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