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

Symbols & Motifs

Apples

Apples are mentioned several times in the autobiographical sections of American Indian Stories, always in connection with the education in mission schools. For the young Zitkála-Šá, apples are not simply something sweet and delicious but a symbol of the world beyond her reservation, which she had never seen. One day, her friend Judéwin returns from a mission school and tells her “of the great tree where grew red, red apples; and how we could reach out our hands and pick all the red apples we could eat” (23). The apples suggest that the world beyond the reservation is a land of plenty, filled with wondrous delights. The interpreter for the visitors from the mission school assures Zitkála-Šá, “[y]es, little girl, the nice red apples are for those who pick them” (23). These delights fascinate Zitkála-Šá, and she begs her mother to allow her to attend mission school. After her mother agrees, Zitkála-Šá dreams of the apples, even characterizing the East where the mission school is as the “Red Apple Country” (26).

However, the apples turn out to be nonexistent. At the mission school, Zitkála-Šá finds no apples. More broadly, she learns that the world outside the reservation is not a wondrous land of plenty. She notes that her “first day in the land of apples was a bitter-cold one; for the snow still covered the ground, and the trees were bare,” encapsulating how her dream was replaced by a reality that was its polar opposite, emotionally and physically cold and barren (29). Very quickly, Zitkála-Šá realizes how unhappy she is at the mission school.

In this way, the apples symbolize the falsehoods that the Sioux were told by the missionaries and other outsiders. The apple as a symbol of lies encapsulate Zitkála-Šá’s mother’s warning that “the white men’s […] words are sweet, but, my child, their deeds are bitter” (22). The sweet apples the missionaries speak of are only empty words; the reality is something Zitkála-Šá finds bitter and ultimately rejects.

Wind

Zitkála-Šá frequently mentions wind in reference to openness. In particular, wind symbolizes an inner spirit of freedom in contrast to outside forces attempting to control and limit her spirit. Zitkála-Šá remarks that in her youth, she “was as free as the wind that blew [her] hair, and no less spirited than a bounding deer” (4). On the plains and among the people of her reservation, she feels unconstrained and experiences the openness of nature. Similarly, in “The Great Spirit,” her piece on Sioux spirituality, Zitkála-Šá mentions wild prairie flowers that calm her soul “nodding in the breeze” (58). The wind’s free movement corresponds to the state of Zitkála-Šá’s mind when she is growing up on the Sioux reservation and when she is at home among her people and their traditions.

Even when Zitkála-Šá attempts an education at a mission school and later a career teaching in one, the wind symbolizes how her roots pull at her, creating a yearning for freedom. When she recalls painful memories of times at the mission school, including a time another student died because the school did not provide her with adequate medical care, Zitkála-Šá turns to a metaphor of wind. Regarding the memories, she muses, “Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record” (38). The wind is connected to her roots, which urge her to remember the experiences that ran counter to her identity.

Similarly, when she recalls returning home from the Indian school to visit family, she notes how a “strong wind blew against [her] cheeks and fluttered [her] sleeves” as she sat atop her brother’s pony (39). In that moment, when she surveys the “great circular horizon of the Dakota prairies,” she notes the wind as a way of recalling the freedom she felt as a youth before leaving the reservation (39). This reminder of freedom comes when she is struggling with feeling like she no longer fits in on the reservation while also feeling uncomfortable with life in the mission schools. The wind’s symbolic presence in that moment foreshadows her decision to return to the Sioux and work as an advocate for them.

Fire

Fire symbolizes two aspects of American Indian Stories. First, it is deeply connected to ideas of home and traditions like storytelling. Second, fire represents conflict between the members of the Sioux reservation and those encroaching on it from the outside. In the autobiographical sections of the book, Zitkála-Šá writes reverently of her mother building a “fire in the shadow of [their] wigwam,” cooking and making coffee at the home hearth (6). Likewise, she recalls stories being “told by the camp fire” (9). Similarly, fire is connected to home and storytelling in the collection’s fiction stories. The narrator of “The Trial Path,” for instance, recalls her grandmother’s voice “float[ing] through the darkness within the tepee, over the cold ashes heaped on the center fire,” as she tells stories (72-73). Fire as associated with these traditions creates a sense of closeness and connection that befits its warmth.

However, fire in American Indian Stories also has an entirely different set of associations connected to changes and challenges affecting the Sioux. When Zitkála-Šá returns home from her job teaching at a mission school, her mother points to lights on the hillsides surrounding the Sioux reservation and tells her, “That is a white man’s lodge where you see the burning fire” (53). This fire symbolizes the encroachment of White settlers upon the Sioux’s remaining land, an indication of the way American Indians have been more broadly marginalized and mistreated. In “The Great Spirit,” when Zitkála-Šá’s cousin urges her to convert to Christianity, he tells her, “Think upon these things, my cousin, and choose now to avoid the after-doom of hell fire!” (60). His stern warnings mention fire as a reference to the Christian conception of hell, but the reference also connects to the symbolic use of fire in American Indian Stories by alluding to forced attempts to convert American Indians.

In the fiction sections of American Indian Stories, fire is also connected to changes and challenges facing the Sioux. When two men claiming to be her nephews approach Blue-Star Woman and offer to secure her rights to land, she hesitates to agree to their terms, which she sees as questionable. They counter, saying, “aunt, you know very well that prairie fire is met with a back-fire” (98). The mention of fire takes on a menacing tone here, foreshadowing that the men’s plan is unjust. Later in the story, Chief High Flier is wrongfully arrested for alleged arson when all he did was burn a letter he had intended to mail to a “prominent American woman” on behalf of his tribe before changing his mind (101). In cases like these, fire symbolizes how American Indian affairs have been mishandled, leading to destruction and injustice.