Zitkala-Sa and Sarah Winnemucca are notable representatives of Native Americans who made a great contribution to the advocacy of their people’s rights and culture. Winnemucca is famous as a female activist who aspired to defend Indian interests. Zitkala-Sa is also perceived as a considerable woman in the history of Native American culture and its protection. Below, the historical artifacts provided by the mentioned two authors – their autobiographies – will be discussed to identify their features – both apparent and veiled.
To begin, the obvious feature of the autobiographies is that they depict the harsh conditions under which Native Americans existed through the lens of the authors’ experience. Winnemucca came from the Paiute tribe living in the modern states of Nevada, Oregon, and California; her family belonged to the clan of chiefs. The first whites appeared on the land of the Paiutes just in the year of her birth. Winnemucca’s grandfather, who went down in history as Truckee, tried to establish friendly relations with them, but all his efforts were in vain.
Despite this, in general, a sad experience of the first communication with whites, Winnemucca was able to overcome this barrier, getting to know the world of whites better with the help of her grandfather Captain Truckee (Winnemucca). She learned to speak fluent English and Spanish and later converted to Christianity, receiving the English name Sarah. Following Truckee’s dying orders, her parents sent her and their other children to school in San Jose, but the children did not study there very much, as other white children and their parents were opposed to the children of ‘savages,’ and they were sent home.
Winnemucca’s return to his family coincided with tragic events for the Paiute, expressed in confrontation with whites and the resettlement of Indians on the reservation. She and her brother constantly have to maneuver between two hostile camps, acting as intermediaries. Even American officers often turn to her for help in negotiating. But from 1868 to 1871, hostilities began again in the lands of the Indians, and Sarah Winnemucca was officially appointed as a translator for the American army (Winnemucca). After the Paiute were also placed on the reservation, Sarah continues her role as a mediator between whites and Indians, working as a translator for Indian affairs agent Sam Parrish.
Sarah Winnemucca’s fate is completely ambiguous – there were both ups and downs. Many times, she acted in making decisions with reason, although her heart was on the side of those against whom she opposed. It is not surprising that some of her actions have found such a response in the hearts of the inhabitants of New England. In general, it might be suggested that she was a person who, in many ways, was ahead of her time. She was able to rise above the circumstances, accept the new conditions, and begin to act according to the rules of the white man.
Zitkala-Sa was a musician, writer, and educator from the Dakota tribe, whose history is very revealing. Her European name was Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, but she became famous under her Indian name Zitkala-Sa. Her mother was a Native American woman, and her father was white, who left the family before the birth of the daughter. Then her mother married again to a white man named Simmons. She was brought up according to Indian traditions until missionaries came to the reservation and offered the Indians to take their culture for further training in missionary schools. Gertrude’s mother was against it; however, the girl insisted that they let her go to study.
She later recalled how difficult it was for her in school (American Masters PBS). The missionaries were very stern, they forbade her to speak her mother tongue, and various offenses severely punished the disciples. For Gertrude, who did not understand English at all, the first days were the most serious test. After three years at school, she returned home to the reservation but suddenly found that the reserve life was completely alien to her. It seems reasonable to stress that Zitkala-Sa’s characteristic theme is the discomfort that a Native American experiences when he or she gets the whites’ education and gets adapted to their culture.
It should be noted that both the above authors use language as a tool to depict the significance of their people. Winnemucca describes herself, as well as her father and grandfather, as noble savages. She provides the expressions of the grandfather that align with Euroamericans’ perception of Native Americans’ way of speaking English. When the grandfather expresses in his mother tongue, the syntactic structures are grammatically correct, clear, and coherent.
In his speech about the white brother’s house in Sacramento to the relatives, his sentences are volume but still easy to follow (Winnemucca). Nevertheless, when the grandfather starts speaking English, his speech might be described as unclear and stereotypical or even childish. It may be assumed that Winnemucca utilizes this contrast between significant mother tongue and unadvanced English due to the following. This simplicity of the English language seems to emphasize the fact that the grandfather is ready to welcome the white brothers, as well as to adapt to their cultural peculiarities. His naive use of English stresses that he wants to be kind to them. Hence, the author appeals to this trick to cause sympathy for Native Americans.
Then, Zitkala-Sa also tends to use speeches to depict her people; however, she adheres to another approach. The most notable of Native Americans in her autobiography is her mother. The latter speaks merely in her mother tongue, which is a crucial difference from the method of Winnemucca. The mother’s language is flawless, precise, and contains many complex grammatical constructions.
For instance, while discussing a white man, she applies noticeably refined expressions, avoiding unnecessary repetition. She uses “ailing” instead of “sick,” as well as formulations that are not typical for people without a good educational background – “driven us hither,” for example (Zitkala-Sa). These make the readers perceive the mother as an intelligent and noble person. The aim here seems to be the same as Winnemucca’s – to make Euroamericans sympathy Native Americans; however, Zitkala-Sa’s emphasis is on respect for her people and their intelligence.
To conclude, this analysis was carried out on the material of the fate of individual representatives of the Indian society, who played a significant role and were a kind of elite in both cultures. But in our case, it was important to understand not the numerical or percentage composition of the participants in this dialogue but to identify specific tendencies taking place in Indian society.
Although the participation in the cultural exchange of thousands of other women has remained unnoticed, unrecorded, every year, through the efforts of many researchers, more and more new names become known, which undoubtedly expand our understanding of what was happening on the American frontier and the role of women in the process of forming a contemporary society and new national culture.
Works Cited
“Zitkála-Šá: Trailblazing American Indian Composer | Unladylike2020 | American Masters | PBS.” YouTube, by American Masters PBS. 2020. Web.
Winnemucca, Sarah Hopkins. Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. Edited by Horace Mann, Cupples, Upham & Co, 1883. Penn Libraries. Web.
Zitkala-Sa. American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings. Hayworth Publishing House, 1921. Penn Libraries. Web.