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 High Plains Chautauqua |
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The very first treaty with the American Indians of the Great Plains was the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. It was to allow for the peaceful passage of white settlers and gold seekers through “Indian country.” Subsequent treaties would have the American Indian Nations cede more and more land to the United States. This created greater and greater impact on the subsistence abilities of the indigenous peoples in the West. It would not take long before the great Indian Nations of the Great Plains were forced to adapt to a new world that did not allow them to hunt and live in their old ways. The great “civilizing machine” of the Euro-centric America would determine that the American Indians needed to assimilate to the new and forthcoming American policies and culture. In 1878, the Federal Government supported the creation of off-reservation education of Indians. At that time Zitkala-Sa’s brother was one of forty-nine students recruited from Dakota Territory to attend Hampton Normal School in Virginia. The life of Zitkala-Sa would follow suit. Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird) was born in 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was born in the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, or as the Dakota Sioux called it: “the Battle of the Greasy Grass.” History remembers it as the massacre of George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry. From this point on, her Lakota people would be compelled, coerced and threatened with annihilation in order to make them assimilate into the dominant white society. Playmates who had older brothers and sisters in the missionary schools of the East, probably talked about the trees in the East that grew red apples. When the missionaries came to her village, they enticed her and her playmates with promises that they could pick all the red apples they wanted if they would come with them back to their mission. She had never seen an apple tree and probably only tasted a few in her eight years of life. She would have been excited in thinking of the possibilities of picking apples. So at the age of eight years she was taken away to attend a Quaker Missionary school in Wabash, Indiana. She would not return to her people and home again until she was eleven years old. She struggled with her identity at this point and chose to return to the Santee Normal Training school at the Santee Agency in Nebraska. When she graduated, she attended two years of college in Earlham, Indiana, where she distinguished herself as a poet and orator. It was here that she picked up her interest in music and was able to study for a time at the Boston Conservatory of Music. She soon became very ill and had to leave her studies. She did not return home, however, because her mother would have told her that the White Man’s papers were not worth her health. With her pride keeping her from returning to her family, she went to teach at the Carlisle School for Indians in Pennsylvania in 1898. She was in her twenties and keenly aware that she represented her culture and people in everything she did. It was during this time that she wrote and published a book of children’s stories titled Old Indian Legends. This was a collection of fourteen stories from the oral traditions of her people. These stories contained such characters as the spider fairy Iktome, the camp eater Inya, Badger and Bear and many others. At this same time, she met Carlos Montezuma, the famous Yavapai physician and they began a brief courtship. Although they never married, their friendship would influence a nation of policy makers. It was Montezuma who had the idea of forming a national organization of professional American Indian men and it was Zitkala-Sa who said, “Why do you dare to leave us out?...Sometimes, as I ponder the preponderant actions of men – which are so tremendously out of proportion with the small results – I laugh.” (Peter Iverson, Carlos Montezuma, p. 37). Needless to say, the organization was formed and included women as members. This organization gave Zitkala-Sa the platform she needed to vent her anger at the oppressors of American Indian people. In 1902 she met and married her husband Captain Raymond Bonnin, a man of mixed blood Nakota and White ancestry who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The marriage changed her direction from that of a writer to a wife, mother and advocate for her people. The Bonnins moved to the Uintah and Ouray Reservations in Utah, where they lived for fourteen years. Zitkala-Sa worked as a teacher and advocate for services for the people on the reservation. Thus began her political career and her involvement in the Society of American Indians. In 1916 she and her husband moved to Washington D.C., and she became the Secretary for the Society of American Indians and developed friendships with influential policy makers. One particular friend of hers was John Collier, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. She worked with him to promote the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. She became the first American Indian woman to publish her autobiography, and she collaborated on an opera before her death in 1938. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
JEANNE EDER Jeanne Eder was born and raised on the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Reservation in Poplar, Montana. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in American History from Carroll College, a private Catholic College in Helena, Montana and her Master of Arts Degree in American History from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. In the year 2000, she was awarded her Ph.D. in American History and Public History from Washington State University. Eder is a member of the National Indian Education Association, American Indian and Higher Education Consortium, the history honor society Phi Alpha Theta, and the American Council of History Teachers. She has created Powwows and Native American workshops for children, and at the University of Alaska Anchorage she helped to develop new curriculum as Director of the Alaska Native Studies Program from 2001 – 2005. After receiving tenure, she moved to the Department of History at UAA to teach full time. She has published two children’s books, The Makah and The Dakota Sioux. Most recently she co-authored American Indian Education: a History, with Dr. Jon Reyhner of Northern Arizona University. She has also published several articles on the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Eder began performing Chautauqua style characters in 1978, while teaching at the University of North Dakota. Her first character was Waheenee, Buffalo Bird Woman, and this was created for the North Dakota Committee for Humanities and their new Chautauqua program. She currently portrays the characters Waheenee, Zitkala-Sa, and Sacagawea. She enjoys making history come alive through these characters and more specifically, she enjoys teaching people about the lives of these women. Using stories from various tribes, she weaves stories into the discussion of their lives and the traumas that they suffered in order to adapt to the tide of non-Indians sweeping through their lands in the 19th and early 20th century. Audiences have been enthralled with this method of depiction of Native American women and their lives and they are interesting in hearing how they became a legendary part of America’s epic story and the discovery of the west. Eder has been happily married to Stan Vlahovich, a forester for the State of Alaska, for twenty-five years. They have a daughter and son-in-law, Kim and Joel Albea and two grandsons ages six and nine. Our daughter and her family live in Sheridan, Wyoming. When she is not lecturing in the classroom on American History, she likes to conduct workshops for children on Native American Stories, dances, games, dream catchers and toys. She also has created traditional dance outfits for her grandsons. She looks forward to retirement so that she may continue her writing on Native American history and her beadwork. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bataille, Gretchen M. American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Edmunds, R. David. The New Warriors: Native American Leaders Since 1900. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Fisher, Dexter. “Zitkala-Sa: The Evolution of a Writer.” American Indian Quarterly. 5 (1979): pages 229 -238. Hafen, P. Jane. Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems and the Sun Dance Opera. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Kilcup, Karen L. Native American Women’s Writing c. 1800 – 1924: An Anthology. Oxford; Malden, Massachusetts:Blackwell Publishers, 2000. McLaughlin, Marie L. Myths and Legends of the Sioux. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. McGinnis, Mark W. Lakota & Dakota Animal Wisdom Stories. Chamberlain, South Dakota: TIPI Press, St. Joseph’s Indian School, 1994. Picotte, Agnes M., and P. Jane Hafen. Iktome and the Ducks and Other Sioux Stories. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Rappaport, Doreen. The Flight of Red Bird: the life of Zitkala-Sa. New York: Dial Books, 1997. Zitkala-Sa. Old Indian Legends. New York: Ginn and Company, 1901. _________. “An Indian Teacher Among Indians.” Atlantic Monthly. 85 (March, 1900): pages 381 – 386. _________. “Impressions of an Indian Childhood.” Atlantic Monthly. 85 (January, 1900): pages 34 – 47. _________. “School Days of an Indian Girl.” Atlantic Monthly. 85 (February, 1900): pages 185 – 194. _________. “Soft Hearted Sioux.” Harpers. 102 (March, 1901): pages 505 – 508. _________. “Trial Path: An Indian Romance.” Harpers. 103 (October, 1901): pages 741- 744. _________. “Warrior’s Daughter.” Everybody’s 6 (April, 1902): pages 801 – 803. _________. “Why I Am A Pagan.” Atlantic Monthly. 90 (1902): pages 801 – 803. Internet Sites “Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, (Zitkala Sha, Red-Bird) Army Spouse.” Arlington National Cemetery web site: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/gsbonnin.htm. [Accessed 14 February 2008]. “Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1875 – 1938). Native American Rhymes. Rhodes Educational Publications, 2005. http://nativeamericanrhymes.com/women/bonnin.htm. [Accessed 14 February 2008]. Spack, Ruth. “Dis/Engagement: Zitkala-Sa’s Letters to Carlos Montezuma, 1901-1902.” MELUS The Journal for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 26.1 (2001): 173-204. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-77049939.html. [Accessed 14 February, 2008] Related Links Washington State University Library: Zitkala-Sa. This site has a listing of her essays and stories as well as books and articles about her. |
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