Zitkala-Ša/Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: a Biographical Sketch

Zitkala-Ša/Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: A Biographical Sketch

The letters, speeches, and unpublished writings in this volume present a por- trait of one of the most prominent American Indian writers and activists of the early twentieth century, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, better known as Zitkala- Ša. Born a member of the Sioux Nation on 22 February 1876, Gertrude was the daughter of Ellen Taté I Yóhin Win (Reaches for the Wind, or Every Wind) Sim- mons, a Yankton Sioux woman who settled on Yankton Reservation in present- day South Dakota during the mid-1870s.1 Gertrude’s father was an itinerant Frenchman named Felker, who had no presence in her life.2 Before or shortly after Gertrude’s birth, Taté I Yóhin Win dismissed Felker from the household for his rough treatment of David Simmons, her son from a previous marriage.3 One could say this distaste for violence was reflected in Yankton history. The Yankton Sioux had determined early on not to participate in armed conflict with whites, agreeing to give up 11.5 million acres for a mere 430,000-acre ter- ritory in 1858. Nonetheless, the tribe was not psychologically immune to the continuing territorial conflicts near their reserves.4

1 For early biographical information see Susan Rose Dominguez, “The Gertrude Bonnin Story: From Yankton Destiny to American History, 1904–1938” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State Univer- sity, 2005), 84; Cathy N. Davidson and Ada Norris, eds., introduction to American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), xiv–xv; A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, “Early Native American Women Authors: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Sarah Win- nemucca, S. Alice Callahan, E. Pauline Johnson, and Zitkala-Ša,” in Nineteenth-Century Amer- ican Women Writers: A Critical Reader, edited by Karen L. Kilcup (Malden: Blackwell, 1998), 99; Leon Speroff, Carlos Montezuma, md, A Yavapai American Hero: The Life and Times of an American Indian, 1866–1923 (Portland: Arnica, 2005), 206–207; and Deborah Sue Welch, “Zitkala-Ša: An American Indian Leader, 1876–1938” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wyoming, 1985), 5–8. 2 1900 Federal Census Indian Population Schedule for Greenwood, South Dakota, Wahehe Township, Charles Mix County, 315b. South Dakota State Archives, South Dakota State His- torical Society, Pierre. 3 Simmons to Montezuma, ca. June–July 1901, Papers of Carlos Montezuma, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison. Hereafter Montezuma Papers. 4 Patrice Hollrah, “‘We Must Be Masters of Our Circumstances’: Rhetorical Sovereignty and Political Resistance in the Life and Works of Zitkala-Ša,” in Old Lady Trill, the Victory Yell: The Power of Women in Native American Literature (New York: Routledge, 2004), 27–28.

The larger Sioux Nation, encompassing three main bands (Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota) and several sub-groups (the Mdewakantonwan, Sisitonwan, Wachpekute, Wachpetonwan, Yankton, Yanktonais, Tetons, Oglala, Brule, Min- niconjou, Oohenopa, Sihasapa, Hunkpapa, and Itazipčo), had long been strug- gling against white intrusion. By the mid-1800s, the easternmost Dakota had been driven out of forested lands surrounding the Mississippi, while the Da- kota, Nakota, and Lakota on the westerly plains faced mounting pressure.5 In 1866, Red Cloud (Oglala) and Tasunkakokipapi (Oglala) took up arms to end use of the Bozeman trail, which cut through the pristine bison-hunting grounds surrounding the Powder River in present-day Wyoming. With successful raids on Army forts, Red Cloud forced the u.s. government to broker peace. The sub- sequent Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) created the Great Sioux Reservation, and declared the Powder River and Black Hills free from further white encroach- ment, “so long as the buffalo may range thereon in numbers sufficient to justify the chase.” u.s. violations of the treaty, however, soon after sparked conflict. In 1874, an expedition headed by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer confirmed the presence of gold in the Black Hills, provoking an influx of white prospec- tors. Soon after, under threat of military action, the Lakota roaming outside the Great Sioux Reservation were ordered to return. Two leaders, Sitting Bull (Hunkpapa) and Crazy Horse (Oglala), refused. In the summer of 1876, Custer attacked their bands along with a group of Cheyenne, camped near the Lit- tle Big Horn River. The Lakota swiftly routed Custer’s Seventh Calvary, but this initial success was short-lived. In the resulting Great Sioux War of 1876/77, the u.s. Army prevailed; Crazy Horse was killed in captivity; and Sitting Bull fled for Canada (only to return in 1881).The remaining Lakota leaders reluctantly ceded the Black Hills and Powder River area.6 There was little choice. By that point, the millions of bison that had once scattered the plains had been decimated in a deliberate u.s. Army attempt to quell the Native populations.7 Herds that

5 See Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations (Malden, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 2–6; Barry M. Pritzker, A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 340. 6 See Paul H. Carlson, The Plains Indians (College Station: Texas a&m University Press, 1998), 142–57, 159–62; Jeffrey Olster, The Plains Sioux and u.s. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 77, 144; Thomas Powers, The Killingof CrazyHorse (NewYork:Knopf, 2010), 410–13; Pritzker, NativeAmericanEncyclopedia, 329–30. 7 Thomas Constantine Maroukis, Peyote and the Yankton Sioux: The Life and Times of Sam Necklace (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 21–23.