Basic Information

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, also known by her pen name Zitkála-Šá, was born as Gertrude Simmons February 22nd, 1876. She was born on the Yankton Reservation, at the time making up what was left of Sioux land, and what white Americans know as South Dakota. After getting an education at Quaker institutions, she would go on to write about her culture, indigenous languages, being alienated from her culture, and the problems American Indians faced. Her earlier literary works would be written under the Lakota name, Zitkála-Šá (Red Bird), while her later activism, political efforts, and work running organizations to help Indigenous American communities would be attributed to her married name (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 1).

Background Information

She was born in 1876, the same year that saw the significant Battle of Little BigHorn (Hafen, 2013, p. 199). Gold being found on Sioux land had prospectors breaking treaties with the Sioux, and sparked the Great Sioux War in 1876 – 1877, culminating in the United States obtaining more land. While this larger scale fighting didn’t impact her young life, she did find white aggression in her home life. Gertrude Bonnin was born on a Reservation and her mother, Ellen TatéIYóhinWin Simmons, was a Sioux woman. Bonnin’s father was a Frenchman who was kicked out of the family for abusing Ellen’s son “from a previous marriage” (Lewandowski, 2018, p.1). Bonnin’s main escape from stress on the reservation was to leave and attend White’s Manual Labor Institute, operated by Quakers in Indiana. There she learned to read and write English proficiently and studied music. Bonnin attended for three years, from 1884 – 1887, before deciding to return, being homesick and missing her family. She had unexpected difficulties after her return. Feeling too alienated from her family, she left again in 1890 to continue her studies (Lewandowski, 2018, pp. 1-4).

While she left to finish her education, Bonnin would have to drop out of school due to illness. Nevertheless, she got a job teaching at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an infamous school created to assimilate native children. Over time as she worked there, she grew to resent the methods of stripping culture from the children that attended and its harsh methods. Many of the children that attended didn’t survive. This period of her life would also mark when she began to use the Lakota name Zitkála-Šá (Lewandowski, 2018, pp. 4-7).

Shortly after getting engaged at the school to another Lakota Native, she left for Boston to continue her musical studies. A few months later her fiancé died of measles. The distance wasn’t entirely bad, as living in Boston allowed her to grow as an author. She began to publish articles and grew increasingly popular among intellectuals in Boston. Bonnin published works about her childhood, her education, and what it was like to teach. She also publicly criticized the Carlisle Indian School (Lewandowski, 2018, pp. 4-7). Reflecting on her time there, she remembered the schools as “nothing more than federal factories meant to refine … Indigenous children into the metaphorical lumber” needed in westward expansion (Taylor, 2021, p. 127).  Bonnin, even from her early works, was able to use her proficiency of English to appeal to her white audience and gain their understanding, getting strong emotional responses from the public. This would land her some criticism as some American Indian leaders would themselves be alienated from her writing (Wilkinson, 2013, pp. 34-36.). Specifically, she was able to appeal to her western audience by using “biblical references and appeals to basic rights” (Hafen, 2013, p. 199).  

After breaking off another engagement, Gertrude Bonnin published her first book, “Old Indian Legends,” in 1901. Shortly after, she married Raymond Telephause Bonnin, officially taking the last name Bonnin. They had a child and adopted another. Then her husband began to work for the Indian Bureau and moved to Utah, where Gertrude Bonnin became invested in the Catholic Church and eventually converted to Catholicism. She helped operate the Society of American Indians, or the SAI, (run by her ex-fiancé). She would use this experience to later form the National Council of American Indians (NCAI) and be able to use that power to influence legislators (Lewandowski, 2018, pp. 8-13).

Contributions to the First Wave

While a lot of other Indigenous activists and contemporaries of Bonnin put most of their efforts into policy reform and education, she preferred to work with communities in person. While she wrote about and criticized the federal government for its inability to take care of the struggling native people who needed assistance, she helped to run classes teaching elderly and in need Ute women how to sew and craft everyday items they could use (Hafen, 2013, pp. 199-201). Her work through SAI was purely out of dedication to her beliefs. Running the SAI as secretary through her own apartment in Washington D.C., she responded to piles of letters, mainly alone (Cahill, 2020, p. 190). At the age of 42, through her work, Gertrude Bonnin had become one of the most important members at SAI. As editor of the organization’s magazine, The American Indian Magazine, she was able to prioritize stories that she felt were the most important (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 10). 

Among these issues she prioritized granting natives US citizenship and banning peyote, a spineless cactus which saw a massive spike in use as a recreational drug and is strong enough to be considered a Schedule I substance. Bonnin was particularly adamant about banning peyote due to the spike in sexual abuse it caused within the communities that saw the highest use. She saw the drug’s use and spread as an extension of colonial abuse, and allowing the harm of Native women (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 10). Many members of the SAI didn’t feel the same way, as it was used in ceremonial practice in the Native American Church, where Native beliefs were mixed with Christianity. Despite its religious significance, Bonnin believed the drug was severely misunderstood and the church acted as a cover so the immoral acts caused by peyote could circumvent the law, literal and societal (Cahill, 2020, p. 185). 

Gertrude Bonnin eventually left SAI when a “pro-peyote faction gained control” of the organization (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 11). She believed that the drug impaired restraint and gave way to sex outside of marriage and abuse, some of these beliefs stemming from her conversion to Catholicism. Around half of the upper Ute people started to use it regularly at its height in popularity. It was particularly worrying as the man responsible for introducing peyote to the area, and causing the spike in usage, Samuel Lone Bear, would scam Utes into buying from him. It had a similar damaging effect as alcoholism, Bonnin believed (Lewandowski, 2021, pp. 6, 13, 28-30). In her earliest example of anti-peyote writing, she published a short story in which an elder woman is easily taken advantage of and stolen from since her addiction to peyote was so severe (Hafen, 2013, p. 202).

Some of her most noticeable work was her investigations into native sexual abuse. Over the course of three years, she had been hired to investigate and work alongside two white men to look into these crimes by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (Cahill, 2020, p. 246). Her findings would help her to publish the famous pamphlet, Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes (OPRI). The pamphlet covers how Samuel Lone Bear was allowed to live with two young teenage sisters, getting one of which (who was thirteen years old) pregnant. Elsewhere, he also imprisoned and impregnated a different teenaged girl, and while he was arrested, he was quickly let go. The pamphlet also covers how white men would essentially steal land from native women. Young women who owned vast amounts of expensive land, like eighteen-year-old Millie Neharkey, were abducted and sexually abused over the course of several days. At the end she was forced to sell her lands to them for “a mere fraction of their worth” (Lewandowski, 2021, pp. 9-8, 12,17). 

This kind of violent sexual assault, especially in order to obtain land, was a revitalization of colonialism at its most brutal. Despite the shocking information Bonnin brought to light with her reporting within OPRI, it did not convince government officials, who were mainly men, to enact change or install protections for Native women. (Lewandowski, 2021, p. 18).

If America means to befriend oppressed peoples of the world, particularly those of our own continent, we, the Sioux nation, ask to be remembered. We seek justice, not charity.

— Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Bonnin) (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 197)

Analysis and Conclusion

One of the most interesting aspects of Getrude Simmons Bonnin’s writing was how paradoxical it could be. She received both criticism and praise for it (Wilkinson, 2013, p. 35). She made references to the Bible to illustrate her points and advocate for natural rights, even in her early works before she converted to Catholicism. There are obvious differences when comparing her article, “Why I Am a Pagan,” and her extremely catholic writings, but she always advocated for Native beliefs and culture. She also supported Western ideals and standards and this increased with time, and her conversion. (Hafen, 2013, pp. 202, 204). In her twenties, she was starkly critical of Christianity and missionaries, but advocated for Western education. Then over twenty years later, some of her closest confidants were Catholic priests (Lewandowski, 2018, pp. 8-9). She openly opposed sex outside of marriage and other conservative ideas, which bring some negative attitudes toward her work today (Lewandowski, 2021, p. 6).

With all of that said, the work she did accomplish couldn’t have been done without her. The SAI and NCAI wouldn’t have been able to operate without her, and American Indians were given tangible power when conversing with legislators. She brought to light the abuse Indigenous women suffered, criticized boarding schools, fought against drug abuse, and actively helped to preserve Native culture. Near the end of her life, SAI and NCAI ceased operations, largely in part due to her lack of involvement. She was poor, and at the time, didn’t have much recognition to her name. She died on January 26th, 1938, due to heart and kidney issues. Shortly before she wrote, “I am extremely nervous—restless within—smothering sense—of things, about puts me out. There is no use in trying to explain—even this much—as no one understands—or cares.” Her work had gained new appreciation within recent years, helping to preserve her legacy considering a large portion of her efforts were forgotten shortly after her death (Lewandowski, 2018, p. 13).

References

Cahill, C. (2020). Recasting the Vote. The University of North Carolina Press. 

Hafen, P. J. (2013). “Help Indians help themselves”: Gertrude Bonnin, the SAI, and the NCAI. The American Indian Quarterly, 37(3), 199+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A341455518/AONE?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=75037e2e 

(Image) Keiley, J. (1898). Zitkála-Šá [Photograph]. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_S_NPG.79.26

Lewandowski. (2018). Zitkala-Sa : letters, speeches, and unpublished writings, 1898-1929. Brill.https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/kjtuig/CP71369123000001451

Lewandowski. (2021). Gertrude Bonnin on Sexual Morality. English Studies at NBU, 7(1), 5–20. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.1.1

Taylor, M. P. (2021). Conational Networks: Reconstituting Indigenous Solidarity through the Works of Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin. Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association [NAIS], 8(2), 127. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A674226225/AONE?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=9dc22678 

Wilkinson. (2013). Gertrude Bonnin’s Rhetorical Strategies of Silence. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 25(3), 33–56. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.25.3.0033