Early Indigenous LiteraturesMain MenuThe Child Who Would be Sovereign: Settler Colonial Frustrations and the Figure of the Child in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin's American Indian StoriesBy: Kai ChaseIllicit Relations: The Challenges and Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Relationssoumya rachel shailendraLegibility and Ambivalence in 19th Century Indigenous Women's WritingAn exhibit on E. Pauline Johnson and Sarah Winnemucca by Emma CohenLyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettesby Kira TuckerMarriage and Empire in 19th Century Native American Women's Literatureby Angad SinghNot-not blood quantum: the Dawes Act and ambivalent Indigeneityby Yasmin YoonReading Indigenous Authorial Presence in 18th- and 19th-century ParatextsTitle Page for Isabel Griffith-Gorgati's ExhibitResistance on and off the Page: A Collaborative Conversation between Black and Indigenous Literary ContributorsFeaturing James Printer, Katherine Garret, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant (17th-18th Century Early Print Culture Participants)- By Lauren JohnsonSpiritual Armies, Resurrected Bones, and “Boundless” Continents: How Indigenous Activists in Early New England Reconfigured Puritan Millennialist NarrativesFeaturing texts of Samson Occom, William Apess, and the Wampanoag Bible. By Surya MilnerSovereignty or Removal: The Conflicting Indigenous Policies of 1835 in the Continental United StatesJulia GilmanWhat Does Water Do For Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes Region?Featuring Heid E. Erdrich, Simon Pokagon, Black Hawk, and Simon Kofe by Sarah Nisenson(Re)introducing Black Hawk and The Life (1833)BHR 1-IntroYasmin Yoonf7f231e474bf43796f973cd0ee560919050f7427Lydia Abedeen321b94302eca10e499769fd0179e64cd33bc4cd5Kira Tuckeracf97d948460e98cd439646cc2db7ae17c5ebd9dsarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616aKai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeSoumya Shailendra86c246fcc4aea83787381bffd2b839885bef5096Bennett Herson-Roeserc8289125445a56c819045a0091daf0402b3e0875Surya Milner077f837f3d662fd5ef9055f8258e5c47bb11f714Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522Lauren Johnson98dac03e7c9c1ad41e1c0a8583704e55802f98baAngad Singhd2b8d1d68ec374981c9e99b7cb400803bc678231Emma Cohen146e757b9fc3b3b416edecbf79592e8d743d4ba1Charlotte Goddu2d4c020870148128c7824ece179e04cffe180d95Isabel Griffith-Gorgati985a05928a67a856791fffac3dbba8acc85f6f37
Old Indian Legends Inside Art
1media/Old Indian Legends (inside page)_thumb.jpeg2022-12-09T13:57:42-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae416961Zitkala-Ša, Old Indian Legends. Boston and London: The Athenaeum Press, 1902. held in Newberry Library. Picture taken by Kai Chase on Nov 15 2022. plain2022-12-09T13:57:43-08:00Kai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514ae
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1media/Zitkala-Sa signature.jpeg2022-12-10T12:06:31-08:00Paratextual Reception of Bonnin's Work53Authorial Context for Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)gallery2023-06-12T12:14:26-07:00Few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)
Zitkala-Ša as a historical figure inhabits a complexity which cannot be but scratched at here. Born the year of the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, she tied herself in kinship to Sitting Bull--a fact that media took literally as they characterized her as a descendant despite the difference in tribal contexts (Davidson and Norriss xiv). She balanced cultural political ties as a Yankton Dakota woman who until age 8 grew up on the reservation before missionaries recruited her to White's Indiana Manual Labor institute. From there, she went on to Earlham College and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston as well as advocated around the US for Indigenous rights, eventually becoming the co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926. She is characterized as a writer, musician, educator, and activist among other things. Bonnin's own history as an activist and writer are largely misunderstood on the basis of how complicated she is of a figure. Nor was she unaware of this, as someone who thought critically about the ways in which non-Natives lumped Indigenous peoples together, the constraints and benefits of citizenship, the failed promises of assimilation, the contradictions of the Women's movement, and the tricky terrains of Washington (Davidson and Norris xi-xv).
Bonnin's major works, Old Indian Legends (1901) and American Indian Stories (1921) as well as her scholarship, speeches, and other works were published in both popular and prestigious venues (Davidson and Norris xii). Old Indian Legends was originally intended for school children and was first published in textbooks for (white) children in mostly Eastern states, while American Indian Stories was published story-by-story in the Atlantic Monthly. The production of her first work underlines how Indigenous stories were packaged and marketed for consumption as their histories were conceptualized as disappearing. Notable in this is how white children are imagined to be the inheritors of these "Old Indian Legends" even as the work and Zitkala-Ša herself refused such easy consumption (a fact that we will look at in depth in American Indian Stories). The continued resonances of widespread availability are evident in American Indian Stories as well, since archival collections at the Newberry Library feature an early page dedicated to the success of Old Indian Legends while also calling for the integration of these texts into "every home"