Journal Entry "The School Days of an Indian Girl"

Stephen Greene
English 48B
January , 2011
Journal #5  Zitkala

“I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one.   …The pony reached the top of the highest hill and began an even race on the level lands.  There was nothing moving within that great circular horizon of the Dakota prairies save the tall grasses, over which the wind blew and rolled off in long, shadowy waves”. (118, “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”)

“She has been described by one critic (Dexter Fischer) as "...always on the threshold of two worlds, but never fully entering either." It seems to me more that from a position in the white world that she created in the teeth of a world as hostile to intelligent women leaders as to Indians, she created changes and improvements in the Indian world to which she was born. Though she was a mixed-blood or half-breed, she did not have identity problems as to which world was hers”. (Native American Resources, http://www.kstrom.net/isk/mainmenu.html#mainmenutop)

            Zitkala is describing a time when she had returned to the plains that her Mother lived on.  She had gone east for schooling and was lamenting her isolation from both the whites and now the Indians.  Her brother then arrives on his pony from the East where he too has pursued a formal education.  He ties his pony to the post and Zitkala grabs it when he turns his back.  She ignores her brother’s calls and races it up into the hills onto a plateau and looks around at the plains below her.

            In Zitkala’s moments of feeling lost, she describes being between tall and short, between wild and tame.  This reminded me immediately of Du Bois’ idea of a double consciousness.  She feels like neither part of the Indian culture nor the white culture, although the truth is that she actually a part of both.  Born to her mother who raised her in the Native American way and formally educated by the whites to become an award-winning orator.  She seeks acceptance from both and a merging of the two rather than an abandonment of either side of her.  Du Bois describes rising above the veil of prejudice, not tearing it down.  Likewise, in a metaphorical sense, Zitkala does not run to either the East or the whites, or to her mother’s arms or her Native American heritage.  She races the pony upwards, alone, to a place not scrutinized, not judged, and insignificant in the vast expanse, above the plains.

            I think that her word choice is extremely fascinating, particularly in “… neither a wild Indian nor a tame one” and “…an even race on the level lands”.  I think that her use of wild and tame to describe herself and fellow Native Americans displays a terrible side affect of her schooling in the East.  When she speaks of an even race, she is speaking, of course, of her pony literally reaching the flats of a mesa or plateau as she races it into the distance and up the hills of the prairie.  Figuratively, this is an escape.  She is, at least for the moment, running away, running upwards, and fleeing the tangled sense of self she has from the conflicts between her Native American culture and her white education.  In this context, her word choice implies a longing or at least thought about the Indian race being even with others (namely the whites) and on level land.  I think that this image of her on the level plain looking down at only the shadows of the wind moving across the grass creates a strong metaphor for her people and their fading struggle to uphold their identities.