Comparing Zitkala's From The Deep Woods To Civilization
1163 Words5 Pages
Marisa Paris
Professor Woidat
English 336
29 September 2015
Two-faced
While Zitkala-Ša’s American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings and Charles Eastman’s From the Deep Woods to Civilization both provide insight into the way of life of a Sioux Indian, these two texts also assist in educating the white about an unfamiliar culture. Eastman’s autobiography functions as a thread of hope, in an effort to stitch together two vastly diverse cultures. On the other hand, the symbolism in Zitkala-Ša’s short fiction tugs at that thread and rips apart any sense of unity between the two cultures, ultimately claiming that American identity and citizenship are superior. Instead of syncretism, or the blending of two cultures, the Sioux suffer more…show more content… An apple is white on the inside while being red on the outside, so although the Sioux may be “red” on the outside, America wants them to be “white” on the inside. The Sioux are influenced to believe that the stripping of their identities with the replacement of the ideology of America is the key to assimilation, that this is the only way to be “stirred” into the famous American “melting pot.” In Eastman’s From the Deep Woods to Civilization, Eastman recounts this experience, “my brother got me a suit of clothes, and had someone cut my hair, which was already over my ears, as it had not been touched since the year before. I felt like a wild goose with its wings clipped” (26). Eastman felt like a piece of him was actually missing, like something that was supposed to be there, wasn’t. On the same hand, Zitkala-Ša’s “The Indian’s Awakening” highlights just how devastating the process of cutting a Sioux’s hair was. The first three lines of the poem read, “I snatch at my eagle plumes and long hair/A hand cut my hair; my robes did deplete/ Left heart all unchanged; the work incomplete” (164). Furthermore, the first three lines of the second stanza are as follows: “My light has grown dim, and black the abyss/That yawns at my feet. No bordering shore;/ No bottom e’er found by hopes sunk before” (164). The Sioux…show more content… Lucky for them, some did. Despite the Americans taking, taking, and taking even more, the Indians were giving back. In his piece titled, “The Indian’s Gifts to the Nation,” Eastman rattles off a handful of names who’s “genius military tactics and strategy has been admitted again and again by those who have fought him” (18). Some of these include, “King Philip of the Wampanoags; Pontiac the great Ottawa; and Cornplanter of the Senecas, in the eighteenth century” (18). Perhaps, though, the most recognizable of these Indians are Pocahontas and Sacajawea. In the end, Pocahontas basically saved the first Virginia colony from destruction due to her undying love for John Smith, the heart and the brain of the colony (21). Now, Sacajawea, the young Indian mother who was a guide for Lewis and Clark, was living in captivity, but according to Indian usage this would not affect her social standing. Regardless of where she fell, or where she didn’t, on the hierarchy, Sacajawea was of priceless assistance to the explorers, a true heroine (22). These two women traveled across the ends of the earth for people who most likely wouldn’t do the same for them. They didn’t only travel with time, but through time- through decades, through generations, through history. Their body was a book, each part a new page, and time was fingers flipping through