American Indian Stories

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1921

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“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 Concerning Blue-Star Woman”

“America’s Indian Problem”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

“An Indian Teacher Among Indians”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“An Indian Teacher Among Indians” Summary

In “An Indian Teacher Among Indians” Zitkála-Šá reflects on her experience teaching in an Indian school after leaving college. The section “My First Day” describes how she was ill when she first arrived at the school. She notes the school’s sparse look and recalls meeting the school director. He calls her “the little Indian girl,” leaving Zitkála-Šá feeling even more exhausted (48).

The section “A Trip Westward” discusses the school’s decision to have Zitkála-Šá go west to “gather Indian pupils for the school” (49). The train journey tires her, but she uses the trip as an excuse to visit her family. Zitkála-Šá asks her mother why she doesn’t modernize her house, but she is also shocked to learn that her brother Dawée’s job as a government clerk was taken away from him and given to a White man. Her mother counters her anger by cautioning Zitkála-Šá not to put faith in anything other than their culture’s Great Spirit, but Zitkála-Šá rejects her beliefs.

In “My Mother’s Curse upon White Settlers” Zitkála-Šá discusses the impact of White settlers moving near her family’s reservation. Her mother warns her to “beware of the paleface” due to the history of injustice and hypocrisy that accompanies White settlers (53). The section closes as Zitkála-Šá watches her mother fling out her arm to set a curse on the nearby settlers.

In the final section, “Retrospection,” Zitkála-Šá reconsiders her decision to leave the reservation and teach in an Indian school. She lists a series of indignations she witnesses, such as her people being denied the health care given to Whites. She comes to feel the entire Indian school system is a lie to make “white visitors” feel “they were educating the children of the red man” (56). She then resigns from her teaching job.

“An Indian Teacher Among Indians” Analysis

“An Indian Teacher Among Indians” forms the third part in a series of autobiographical sketches tracking Zitkála-Šá’s development from a child on the Sioux reservation to an independent adult woman. These sketches chart the freedom of her youth, her decision to attend mission school, the crushing of the dream the mission school represented, her entrance into a teaching career despite her misgivings about the Indian school system, and her decision to leave the system entirely.

Zitkála-Šá makes clear that even after returning to an Indian school as a teacher, she continues to face discrimination. The director of the school she works for calls her a “little Indian girl” and says he will “turn [her] loose to pasture,” undermining her skills, education, and dignity as a woman (48-49). Zitkála-Šá includes details like these to imply some of the failures of the practice of assimilation. She suggests that if she faces discrimination even after accepting the practice of assimilation by working at an Indian school, then assimilation has failed at its own stated goals of introducing American Indians into White culture. This insight deepens her critique of the practice of assimilation.

A visit home provides an impetus for Zitkála-Šá to fully reject assimilation and her career as a teacher, even more than the discrimination she faced. In Zitkála-Šá’s childhood her mother warned her about the “paleface” who is responsible for the death of Zitkála-Šá’s sister and uncle, and who is a “hypocrite […] giv[ing] a holy baptism of firewater” and “gloat[ing] upon the sufferings of the Indian race” (54-55). This return visit home allows Zitkála-Šá to see the faults in the practice of assimilation and in the way the US government handles American Indian affairs. These faults affect her own home when her brother is removed from his position as a government clerk on the reservation and replaced by a White man. As a result, the problem no longer seems abstract and distant. Zitkála-Šá finds the motivation to resign from her teaching position, to see the missionaries’ ostensibly charitable actions as actually harmful, and to seek an outlet for her “long-pent consciousness” by working on behalf of Indian affairs (56).