Sioux writer and activist Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938) was born in the year of the infamous Battle of Little Big Horn--her people's last victory over the invasion forces that would soon force them onto reservations, on one of which she grew up under a regime of forced assimilation. Her writing career blossomed early, with stories published in the Atlantic Monthly when she was in her early twenties. She could have been a mere exotic, but she found a way to capture the interest of non-Indian readers, who preferred the romanticized noble savage to the often-sad reality of Indian life, and to give voice to her threatened culture. Her work, surprisingly, seems undated, perhaps because, unfortunately, the situation of Indian people has changed so little. This first comprehensive collection of her work, consisting of a significant sequence of mythic tales as well as memoirs and poetry, reveals Zitkala-Sa as a crusading, spiritually aware woman. Patricia Monaghan
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