American Indian Stories

Zitkala-sa, renamed Gertrude Simmons by Catholic missionaries, was one of the first Sioux women to write the stories and traditions of her people. The first set of stories in this collection is autobiographical. Zitkala-sa describes living in her mother's wigwam on the Yankton Reservation at the edge of the Missouri River where she is "as free as the wind that blew my hair, and no less spirited than a bounding deer."
The second half of the book contains stories based on her family's tradition of oral history.