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

“The Soft-Hearted Sioux”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Soft-Hearted Sioux” Summary

The narrator of this short story is a young man visiting his Sioux parents and grandmother in their wigwam as they pass a pipe around. The grandmother notes that the narrator is “no longer a little boy” (63). She asks when he will find a bride, but he dismisses the question. His mother urges him to be active and become a good hunter. His father encourages him to become a great warrior. The narrator declines to smoke the pipe and leaves.

Nine years pass and the narrator does not become a warrior, hunter, or husband. Instead, he goes to mission school and adopts a Christian lifestyle following the “soft heart of Christ” (64). He returns to his village to preach Christianity. The narrator sees his now elderly and sick father and mother but does “not feel at home” (65). He feels it is useless to try converting his parents. The narrator later preaches to a group of Sioux who criticize him for rejecting his people and failing to help his sick father.

The narrator’s father becomes very ill and has no food to eat. The narrator prays for his father, but his father continues to reject Christianity. His mother warns the narrator that his father will starve to death if he does not bring him food to eat. The narrator attempts to hunt but fails to find food. The father insists that his son’s “soft heart” will lead him to starve (69). The narrator decides to steal from a neighboring cattle herd so that he can bring food to his father. A man catches him for stealing the cattle, but the narrator kills him and continues back home with the stolen meat.

When the narrator returns home, he discovers that his father is already dead. The next day the narrator turns himself in for committing the murder. He describes how he is haunted by his failures in prison. He notes that he will be put to death tomorrow for his crime and wonders if Jesus will grant him a pardon or if he will be eternally punished.

“The Soft-Hearted Sioux” Analysis

“The Soft-Hearted Sioux” moves American Indian Stories away from Zitkála-Šá’s autobiographical stories and essays toward a set of five fiction pieces that explore related themes. For instance, “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” explores a topic hinted at in the essay “The Great Spirit,” in which Zitkála-Šá describes a cousin trying to convince her to convert to Christianity. In “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” Zitkála-Šá attempts to explore the psychology of a character who did convert, unlike her, who remained steadfast in her belief in the Sioux Great Spirit.

The explorations of “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” imply that Christian dogma creates conflict within the Sioux community. The narrator returns to his ancestral village to preach Christianity and becomes “righteously mad with anger that the medicine-man” would “ensnare” the narrator’s sick father’s “soul” in an attempt to treat his illness (65). This anger and the pitting of one against the other signals the divisions that developed within American Indian communities after conversions to Christianity began. The “soft heart of Christ” that the narrator pursues is distinct from his parents’ hopes that he will become a warrior, signaling that the divisions touched on matters outside of spirituality as well.

The narrator feels his attempts to convert his family to Christianity are futile. Nevertheless, he feels pain at seeing his ill father dying and sorrow that he cannot provide food for his starving family. These challenges do not cause the narrator to renounce his faith in Christianity. Thus, he fails twice: once for becoming a missionary who cannot inspire conversions, and again for his inability to provide for his family. His decision to steal meat from a White man’s cattle herd precipitates from his desire to ease his family’s pain. The act buoys him to an extent, as “a strange warmth” fills his heart and a “swiftness” strikes his feet (69). However, the act is also shown to be tragic, as it leads him to kill the man who discovers his theft. The narrator violates the principles of the Christianity he espouses, which prohibits murder. The act proves to be as futile as his attempts to convert his tribe, since his father is dead by the time the narrator arrives home with the stolen food.

Zitkála-Šá’s story raises this tragic end to expose the extent of the damage that conversion caused among the Sioux. It also explores the narrator’s spiritual crisis as he awaits the gallows. He wonders whether “the loving Jesus” will pardon him and whether his “warrior father” will accept him in the afterlife (71). These musings paint the narrator as an individual tormented by the divide in his allegiances to his adopted Christian faith and to the family he was born into.