Impressions of an Indian Childhood

The School Days of an Indian Girl

An Indian Teacher Among Indians

The Great Spirit

The Soft-Hearted Sioux

The Trial Path

A Warrior's Daughter

A Dream of Her Grandfather

The Widespread Enigma of Blue-Star Woman

America's Indian Problem

IKTOMI AND THE DUCKS

IKTOMI'S BLANKET

IKTOMI AND THE MUSKRAT

IKTOMI AND THE COYOTE

IKTOMI AND THE FAWN

THE BADGER AND THE BEAR

THE TREE-BOUND

SHOOTING OF THE RED EAGLE

IKTOMI AND THE TURTLE

DANCE IN A BUFFALO SKULL

THE TOAD AND THE BOY

IYA, THE CAMP-EATER

MANSTIN, THE RABBIT

THE WARLIKE SEVEN

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Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (February 22, 1876 - January 26, 1938), better known by her pen name, Zitkala-Sa (Lakota: pronounced zitkala-ŠA (sha), and translates to Red Bird), was a Native American writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She was born and raised on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota by her mother, Ellen Simmons, whose Yankton-Nakota name was Taté Iyòhiwin (Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind). Zitkala-Ša lived a traditional lifestyle until the age of eight when she left her reservation to attend Whites Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker mission school in Wabash, Indiana. She went on to study for a time at Earlham College in Indiana and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. A considerable talent, Bonnin co-composed the first American Indian grand opera, The Sun Dance (composed in romantic style based on Ute and Sioux themes), in 1913.

After working as a teacher at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, she moved to Boston and began publishing short stories and autobiographical vignettes. Her autobiographical writings were serialized in Atlantic Monthly from January to March of 1900 and, later, published in a collection called American Indian Stories in 1921. Her first book, Old Indian Legends, is a collection of folktales that she gathered during her visits home to the Yankton Reservation. Much of early scholarship on her life comes from American Indian Stories and, more recently, from Doreen Rappaport’s biography titled The Flight of Red Bird. For other reliable scholarship, see the work of P. Jane Hafen.

Her life has recently received more attention after the so-called “canon wars.” This new influx of scholarship from ethnic groups who have been largely excluded from the traditional American literary canon has brought attention to writers who told the other side of the American story. Thanks to scholars like Dexter Fisher, Agnes Picotte, Kristin Herzog, Doreen Rappaport, P. Jane Hafen, and Dan Littlefield, Zitkala-Sa’s voice has been returned to the public. A crater on Venus has been named in her honor.