Zitkala-S̈a, 1876-1938

Zitkala-S̈a (Zitkála-Šá, Lakota for Red Bird), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (her English and married names), was a Lakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist.

Born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton reservation in South Dakota, she was raised by a single mother. At eight years old she was taken by Quaker missionaries to White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana, in spite of her mother's disapproval. The missionaries' stories about riding trains and picking red apples in large fields appealed to children who had never been off the reservation. Zitkala-S̈a’s mother did not want her daughter to leave and did not trust the white strangers, but feared that the Dakota way of life was ending. She wanted her daughter to have an education but the reservation did not have any schools.

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