“Help Indians Help Themselves”: The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons-Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša)

By P. Jane Hafen and Margaret Noodin

Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on the Yankton Sioux reservation in 1876 and went on to become one of the most influential American Indian writer/activists of the twentieth century. “Help Indians Help Themselves”: The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) is a critical collection of primary documents written by Bonnin who was principally known for the memoir of her boarding school experience, “Help Indians Help Themselves” expands the published work of Zitkala-Ša, adding insight to a life of writing and political activism on behalf of American Indians in the early twentieth century. Edited by P. Jane Hafen, “Help Indians Help Themselves” documents Bonnin’s passion for justice in Indian America and outlines the broad scope of her life’s work. In the American Indian Magazine, the publication of the Society of American Indians, and through her work for the National Council of American Indians, Bonnin developed her emphasis, as Hafen writes, on “resistance, tribal nationalism, land rights and call for civil rights.” “Help Indians Help Themselves” also brings to light Bonnin’s letters, speeches, and congressional testimony, which coincide with important developments of the relationship between American Indians and the U.S. federal government. Legislation such as the Citizenship Act of 1924, the Meriam Report of 1928, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 is reflected through the work collected in “Help Indians Help Themselves”. In these writings, in newsletters, and in voluminous correspondence—most of which have never before been published—Bonnin advocates tirelessly for “the Indian Cause.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682830536

P. Jane Hafen

P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo) is a Professor Emerita of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She serves as an advisory editor of Great Plains Quarterly, is a board member of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, and is an Associate Fellow at the Center for Great Plains Studies. She is a Frances C. Allen Fellow, D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, The Newberry Library, and was a founding Clan Mother of the Native American Literature Symposium. She edited Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems and The Sun Dance Opera by Zitkala-Ša, co-edited The Great Plains Reader, and is author of Reading Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine.

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Contents

List of illustrations

Foreword

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Biographical Sketches

Introduction

1926

1932

American Indian Magazine

Introduction

A Year’s Experience in Community Service Work Among the Ute Tribe of Indians

Chipeta, Widow of Chief Ouray

Editorial Comment

Indian Gifts to Civilized Man1

Editorial Comment1

America, Home of the Red Man1

The Coronation of Chief Powhatan Retold1

Letter to the Chiefs and Headmen of the Tribes

Secretary’s Report in Brief

Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment

An Indian Praying on the Hilltop

Address by Mrs. Gertrude Bonnin, Secretary-Treasurer

Articles and Speeches

Introduction

Side by Side (Earlham Speech)1

A Protest Against the Abolition of the Indian Dance

The Sherman Bulletin,1 April 4, 1917

The Menace of Peyote1

California Indian Trails and Prayer Trees

Lost Treaties of the California Indians (California Indian Herald 1923)

Heart to Heart Talk

The California Indians of Today

Americanize the First Americans1 1920

Our Sioux People

Oklahoma Indians

What It Means to Be an Indian Today1

Address before the Indian Rights Association

The Indian Side of the Question (Lake Mohonk Conference on the Indian. Mohonk Lake, New York. 35 (1930): 92–95)

Red Men Who Taught Pilgrims How to Exist: Guests on First Thanksgiving Day in 1621

National Council of American Indians

Introduction

CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS OF NATIONAL COUNCIL OF AMERICAN INDIANS

Indian Citizens

Letterhead

Colton Bill

INDIAN OIL BILL BULLETIN NO. 3

Indian Newsletter Number 2

NCAI Indian News Letter

Congressional Statements

Introduction

PEYOTE, 1918

INDIAN APPROPRIATION BILL 1919: PEYOTE

A DACOTAH ODE TO WASHINGTON BY MRS. BONNIN

PETITION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF AMERICAN INDIANS

OIL AND GAS LEASES ON INDIAN RESERVATIONS

SURVEY OF CONDITIONS OF THE INDIANS

SURVEY OF CONDITIONS OF INDIANS IN UNITED STATES, january 1928

THE MIDDLE RIO GRANDE CONSERVANCY DISTRICT

SENATE HEARINGS FOR THE SISSETON AND WAHPETON INDIANS

SURVEY OF CONDITIONS OF INDIANS IN UNITED STATES

CREATION OF INDIAN TRUST ESTATES, 1930

INCORPORATION OF THE KLAMATH INDIAN CORPORATION

SURVEY OF CONDITIONS OF THE INDIANS IN THE UNITED STATES, PART 11, 1931

SURVEY OF CONDITIONS OF INDIANS IN UNITED STATES, 1932

ADDITIONAL NAMES IN ROLL OF YANKTON SIOUX INDIANS, 1932

INTERIOR DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATION BILL, 1934

Notes

Bibliography and Suggested Readings

Index

List of illustrations

Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Bonnin wearing traditional Native American regalia / 5

Society of American Indians group / 26

Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Bonnin / 54

Raymond Bonnin in military uniform / 61

Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Bonnin on cover of Americanize the First American / 102

Circular charts: What we have and What we want / 108

Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Bonnin: President of the National Council of American Indians / 178

National Council of American Indians membership card with seal / 187

National Council of American Indians membership card without seal / 187

Members of NCAI around statue of Sitting Bull / 193

Letterhead for NCAI with member names / 196

Letterhead for NCAI with typewritten letter / 198

Letterhead for NCAI with buffalo outline / 200

Stone with seal of South Dakota / 246

Foreword

In 1918, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala-Ša, wrote: It is needful to thrash out the truth about Indian matters. Truth and justice are inseparable component parts of American ideals. As America has declared democracy abroad, so must we consistently practice it at home. A century has passed, and these words are no less true. Her eloquent declaration followed a conference of the Society of American Indians held in Pierre, South Dakota, near the end of World War I six years before Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans. While Zitkala-Ša may be most often anthologized and referenced for her autobiographical stories of boarding school years and the preservation of multi-tribal tales for children, the words we perhaps need to re-read the most are her urgent calls for universal justice and not the whims of individual greed.

Jane Hafen begins this collection with the story of Gertrude Bonnin at the end of her life, unsure how she would be remembered. If Gertrude had written only speeches, congressional statements, administrative treatises, and editorial essays, she might be known for her powerful rhetorical metaphors, knowledge of federal policy, defense of cultural pluralism, and critical social theories of equality. But she was also a woman with a story of survival and a love of music and the arts. She was an interdisciplinary humanist and radical activist at a time when this combination of traits was not easily recognized in a Yankton woman living among the Ute and working to organize national campaigns supporting the empowerment of American Indians. To have her social manifestos and legal opinions gathered in one place is an incredible gift to readers of indigenous legal and cultural history in the United States.

We find in these writings a voice of remarkable range. Gertrude Bonnin was capable of penning a prose poem for George Washington that slyly decolonizes the eagle motif and demands that the leaders of these United States perfect our relationships, man to man, nation to nation, with justice and mercy. She was also capable of authoring a stern critique of constitutional equality in the Petition of the National Council of American Indians that was submitted to the Senate of the United States of America to assert inter-tribal aspirations and demand that attention be paid to the mismanagement of Indian affairs. At a time when others were being put on trial for questioning the decisions of the federal government, Gertrude was carefully and consistently framing powerful arguments suggesting the need for the dissolution of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The polite strength of her voice upheld international standards of civility and political savvy that offer an education in diplomacy and remain globally applicable.

Thanks to Jane Hafen, we now have a record of Gertrude Bonnin’s lifetime campaign to help the Indians help themselves. As both insider and educated outsider, Bonnin navigated multicultural identity, inter-tribal politics, extreme colonial racism, and gender bias. The impact of the production is compounded by the fact that these works have been gathered over time by a scholar who continued her efforts. In the Introduction, Jane traces her interest in Gertrude’s work and shares how both of their family stories are entangled in the west among the Dakota, Ute, and Pueblo nations and through the center of federal policy in the early 1900s. Like Gertrude, Jane is a woman unafraid of change, who has organized people and pages to make the world a better place. That connection between subject and editor is one that suggests an ethical responsibility to engage in the world beyond scholarship not always found in the work of historians. Jane Hafen invites readers not only to read about indigenous and women’s history across time but also to work with indigenous women, to support their voices and listen to them in all eras.

Each reader will no doubt consider one given passage most memorable. As a poet, I find myself returning often to the words Gertrude Bonnin wrote in an editorial titled Protest Against the Abolition of the Indian Dance, written for the Word Carrier of Santee Normal Training School in 1902. It begins by animating the landscape and calling to mind a time beyond the present: "Almost within a stone’s throw from where I sit lies the great frozen Missouri. Like other reptiles, the low murmuring brown river sleeps through the winter season underneath its covering of blue

sheening ice."

Activating all physical senses, referencing the river as animate and imbued with agency, Bonnin’s description transcends the material world and asks when a rebirth of indigenous arts might begin.

Like our brown river, the soul of the present day Indian is sleeping under the icy crust of a transitional period. A whole race of strangers throng either side of the frozen river, each one tapping the creaking ice with his own particular weapon. While the Dreamer underneath moans in disturbed visions of Hope, these people draw up each his little pail, heavy with self-justification. But where is spring? The river dreams of springtime, when its rippling songs shall yet flood its rugged banks.

Where are the dreams of rivers? They are in the hearts of those who take time to articulate the potential of humanity, to demand more of society, to celebrate all races and respect all religions. This book reminds all readers of American, and American Indian, intellectual diversity. It is a testament to the clarity with which early leaders and intellectuals worked against colonial histories, industrial economies, and corruption of all kinds. Reading these nearly century-old perspectives is a sobering yet powerful experience. We are reminded to remain vigilant along the shore as centuries of rippling songs continue to thaw.

Margaret Noodin

Introduction

About eighteen months before her death at age 61, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Yankton Sioux, wrote the following in her diary:

Since [grandson] Joseph’s birth, Feb 6 1926 ten years have passed and I have done nothing at all in all these years! Just a fretful milling around in dense ignorance that’s all. —

There is no justification in permitting myself to be a source of care and worry to any one: — The question is — Then what?

Exhausted and sick, little did Gertrude know that her writings would seal her place in literature, history, and American Indian studies.

Having given herself the Lakota name, Zitkala-Ša, and writing of her boarding school experiences, Gertrude told the story of survival and resistance — survivance. Her stories were published in The Atlantic Monthly when she was in her twenties. Twenty years later they were collected in American Indian Stories. She continued to receive small royalties for the book until the end of her life. Today her stories are anthologized, taught, and analyzed as topics of literary and historical significance.

In addition to the publication of her major work, Gertrude participated in some of the major changes in American Indian events from 1902 until her death in 1938. She was deeply involved in the Society of American Indians (SAI), a pan-Indian group promoting Indian welfare. After its dissolution, she worked with General Federated Women’s Clubs to form an Indian Welfare Committee. She allied with the Indian Rights Association. In 1926 she and her husband, Raymond, organized the National Council of American Indians. In each of these endeavors, she found a powerful voice to fight for justice and for Indian rights.

Even if her reputation rested solely on her compelling boarding school stories, Bonnin would have laid a foundation for the emergence of indigenous literatures in the twentieth century. She was born on the plains of South Dakota; her life and her narratives span the transitions from her native tongue to compulsory English, from pre-literacy to reading and writing, from tipi living to log cabins, from traditional indigenous practices to Christianity and negotiating the interstitialities as evidenced in her famous essay, Why I Am a Pagan, also called The Great Spirit. Gertrude’s personal life had its own vicissitudes while playing out in progressive politics of American Indians in the United States of the early twentieth century. She was born the year of the Battle of the Greasy Grass and died just two years after the Wheeler-Howard/Indian Reorganization Act of the Roosevelt administration.

As Gertrude made these transitions, she wrote with a strong voice. Some positions she held steadfastly; others she modified, moderated, or dug in deeper. For example, she privileged traditional Sioux beliefs in Why I Am a Pagan. Yet she was baptized Catholic, participated in other religions, declared herself a Christian before Congress, consulted with a priest in her later years, pleaded with the Great Spirit, and had a Mormon funeral.

Among the ideals Gertrude consistently advocated were numerous form of resistance to the power of colonialism, whether it be through the civilizing/Christianizing boarding schools or via the federal policies of the United States government. Along with the members of the Society of American Indians, she advocated for the abolition of the Indian Bureau (Bureau of Indian Affairs). She argued against corruption among Indian reservation agents. In an apparent paradox, she argued for individual responsibility while also urging communal tribal rights; she used biblical rhetoric and appealed to the Christian conscience while persuading against tribal injustice. She admitted but did not focus on her mixed blood quantum yet argued against enrolling new mixed bloods as citizens of the Yankton Nation.

Along with her husband, Gertrude recognized that Indians were subject to graft. Together, they demanded just compensation for leases, land, and grazing rights, going back to original treaty rights. They denounced peyote in the controversies at the end of the 1910s. They campaigned for citizenship. They were the face of the National Council of American Indians and ran the organization until its influence faded. After the Wheeler-Howard Act, they prepared legal strategies for tribes filing in the Court of Claims.

Yet, injustices persisted. Even with citizenship, with the major policy changes accompanying the Wheeler-Howard Act, tribes still struggled to determine their own legal, economic, and civil rights. Perhaps that is why Gertrude viewed her efforts as having been for naught.

Eighty years after Gertrude wrote her lament, scholars affirm that her work did have an impact on general policy and specific tribes. The Society of American Indians reignited Gertrude’s persuasive writing as seen in her articles, poetry, and editorials. The peyote battle was one the Bonnins would not win with the establishment of the Native American Church, but it gave them exposure to the legislative process. Gertrude’s writing and speech-making set the stage for the organization of the National Council. The ten years that Gertrude reflected on in her later writings did set a stage for legislative action. Regarding the National Council of American Indians, the Indian Rights Association, and the American Indian Association, Elmer Rusco suggests:

There is no evidence that any of these Indian groups played a meaningful role in the formulation of national Indian policy from 1920 up to the Indian New Deal. The most effective congressional lobbying by Indians was accomplished by Indian leaders and Indian or other attorneys or lobbyists speaking for Indian governments who advocated or opposed specific bills affecting one or a few reservations or Native American societies.¹

Clearly the Bonnins and their congressional testimonies fall in the latter category. Nevertheless, the personal relationships the Bonnins had, even if strained at times, with John Collier (Commissioner, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1933–1945), other players in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and elected officials helped shape the direction of the policy changes in the Bonnins’ lifetimes.

The evidence of Gertrude’s influences rests in her own voice, in the documents that she wrote. These documents have been available in varied sources, some accessible and some requiring major archival research. This is the first collection to include speeches, articles, editorials, and congressional testimonies. Although the authorship is not known, biographical sketches from 1926 and 1932 outline the Bonnins’ backgrounds, giving tribal and lineage information not published elsewhere. As is the case for many self-stories, the Bonnins shaped the way they wanted their lives to be presented. Gertrude’s award-winning speech Side by Side, given as a young student in 1896, introduces her distinctive voice that argues for social justice for Indians.

During most of the years Gertrude spent in Utah (1902–1916), she did not publish her writings, despite collecting and writing traditional stories. She did participate in the writing of an opera. These have been recovered and were published in 2001 in Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and The Sun Dance Opera by Zitkala-Ša.² Her return to public writing occurred in American Indian Magazine, the publication of the Society of American Indians (SAI). After being elected secretary of the SAI, Gertrude moved with Raymond to Washington, DC, and she took over editorship of the journal. They became familiar with others, Indian and non-Indian, who were working for Indian rights. Also, under the auspices of the SAI, Gertrude testified before Congress against peyote.

After the collapse of the SAI, Gertrude was a circuit speaker for organizations, primarily the General Federated Women’s Clubs and the Indian Rights Association. She toured California and published several pieces in the California Indian Herald. She traveled to Oklahoma and contributed to Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians, published by the Indian Rights Association.

In 1926, she and Raymond organized the National Council of American Indians (NCAI). At first it seemed to have a thriving membership of many tribes. Eventually, however, its numbers dwindled. One of the most important facets of the NCAI was that it gave Gertrude a platform and authority to testify before Congress. In the background, Raymond as secretary/treasurer prepared legal documents for tribes. At that time Congressional resolutions were the only means to resolve certain tribal problems. So while the Bonnins were concerned with general issues regarding social justice for Indians, they were also testifying about specific tribal resolutions and financial compensations.

The purpose of this collection is not to overly interpret Gertrude Bonnin’s voice but to offer her own words in context. She was a powerful woman who could not see the future impact of her lifelong work for Indian peoples; although she is remembered first for her personal narratives, she was a journalist, diarist, and prolific administrative writer. Much work remains to be done on this period of Indian history. She worked closely with her husband, Raymond Bonnin, but he has been an enigma. Archival work shows that he also was determined in his own work. His efforts with the Utes and his contacts with other tribes would provide rich sources for this period of change in American Indian issues.

I have spent a long time studying, teaching, speaking, and writing about Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. My initial interest was sparked when I was a graduate student at Brigham Young University (BYU) and encountered The Sun Dance Opera, co-written by Gertrude Bonnin with William Hanson. When I had the opportunity to study at the Newberry Library with a Frances C. Allen Fellowship, I needed a project topic about a historical Indian. I chose further study of Zitkala-Ša, Gertrude Bonnin. That project led back to the BYU archives where I found boxes stuffed with unsorted documents. Researchers will now find a detailed register of documents in the Gertrude Bonnin and Raymond Bonnin Collection, but not all the documents are the same as those I first encountered. The current collection has much more material by Raymond Bonnin. I am very grateful to the late David Whittaker, current librarian John Murphy, and Cindy Brightenberg for their generous help in accessing the collection.

In addition to speaking engagements about Gertrude Simmons Bonnin in academic settings, from American universities to those in Helsinki and Leiden, I was invited to less formal gatherings. I have spoken about her at the Clark County Library, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the American Association of University Women. On the last occasion, I spoke in the Opera House, a former beet-sugar factory in St. George, Utah. I was costumed in my academic attire, a business suit. I wore tasteful Indian jewelry to please my aesthetic sense and as an assertion of my own Indian identity. In these presentations, I had two objectives. One was to inform the audience about Gertrude as a powerful voice in early twentieth-century Indian history. The second objective was to help the audience understand about social issues that are still pertinent to indigenous peoples today. As I was speaking to this audience of educated, mature white women, I felt Gertrude trying to convince people to understand about Indians. I believed then, as I believe now — and I think Gertrude also believed — that telling one’s story is part of the educative process. Overcoming racism occurs on personal levels of engagement.

So Gertrude’s story morphed into my own story. Her papers ended up at BYU because Ernest L. Wilkinson, president, became the executor of the Bonnin estate. John Collier, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, did not allow Raymond Bonnin to be the attorney of record for the Consolidated Ute tribes in the Land Claims courts set up under the Wheeler-Howard Act. Raymond was required to contract with a law firm to represent the tribes. As R. Warren Metcalf summarizes:

At the time, neither [Ernest L.] Wilkinson nor anyone else in the firm had any special expertise within the field of Indian law. Nonetheless, Wilkinson met regularly with Bonnin throughout the first half of 1935 and then...continued working with Bonnin on the case as a partner in the new Washington firm of Moyle and Wilkinson. Little did he know then that the Ute litigation would prove to be the most profitable case in a long and successful career in Indian law. Eventually, Wilkinson’s law firm came to represent more Indian tribes than any other firm in the United States.³

The Big Ute Case, as it would come to be known, would be a landmark case in federal Indian policy and law. Its settlement allowed Wilkinson to be BYU president for thirteen years without salary.⁴

When the Ute claims were finally settled, Wilkinson administered the Bonnins’ financial share, representing 12,000 hours of legal work, to their grandchildren. However, he maintained control of the funds by appointing and directing their trustee lawyer. That money quickly dwindled. Wilkinson also arranged for a senior administrator at BYU to purchase Raymond’s second wife’s share. That buyout produced a seven-fold return.

While I was at the National Archives researching the Bonnins’ Utah connections, I also looked at the documents of the disposition of the Utah Case. What I learned is that upon receiving the award from the Land Claims Commission, the Confederated Utes were required by the federal government to furnish a plan for using the monies. The Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes in Colorado chose young educated Indian men to help with adult education: Joe Sando (Jemez Pueblo), who went on to become a noted historian; Robert Bennett (Oneida), who became the first Indian Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the twentieth century; and my father, John Rainer (Taos Pueblo).⁵

My research about Gertrude Bonnin finally explained why I was born in southern Colorado among the Ute Mountain Utes. Additionally, my father’s life intersected with those of John Collier and Charles Burke,⁶ people Gertrude worked with (and against).

When my father was taken to boarding school, he was thirteen. He spoke Tiwa and Spanish but could not read or write. School also interfered with his religious training. He recounted:

Taos had a custom or practice of initiating young boys and training them for manhood for eighteen months. This particular year a boy named Henry Lujan and I were selected by our kiva to take the training. Mr. Marks [our teacher] refused to let us be taken out of school for the eighteen-month training period. He tried to negotiate with the Taos Council, but the council failed to agree that we should remain in school. The religious leaders and kiva members had already, many months earlier, prepared for the training and not going on with it was unthinkable.⁷

Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Charles H. Burke, crusaded against traditional religions. He personally rebuked the Taos Council and told them their practices at the Blue Lake were ‘half animal’ because of their pagan religion.⁸ John Collier volunteered to vouch for the safety and morality of the religious practices and accompanied my father back to the Pueblo. About halfway to the Blue Lake, the presence of a non-Indian began to feel inappropriate, and Collier was sent back to the village. Nevertheless, his report softened the criticism of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. John Collier and my father would remain lifelong friends, despite political differences later when Collier became the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

As I have studied the life and writings of Gertrude Bonnin, I found a spirited and determined woman. She was driven by her passion for justice and her commitment to her Yankton background. The choices she made reflect the paradoxes we American Indians continue to face. She was wrenched from her traditions by the assimilating boarding school experience, yet she sent her only child to a Catholic school in Nauvoo, Illinois. She performed in public arenas and pandered to sentimental, colonial images while demanding legal rights and national sovereignties for Indians. She resisted Colonel Richard Henry Pratt’s model of assimilation but joined with him in the campaign against peyote and in advocating the power of

education.

Gertrude chooses survival, even at the price of melodrama and mainstream education and religion. Amazingly, she never forgot the essence of herself while demanding the freedom to act within her changing environment: Give [the first Americans] freedom to do their own thinking; to exercise their judgement; to hold open forums for the expression of their thought, and finally permit them to manage their own personal business (Americanize the First American: A Plan of Regeneration).

Acknowledgments

Along the journey of my study of the works of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, I have met many who were generous with the work and their ideas. I visited Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and received the kind help of Barbara Landis, chronicler of the Carlisle Industrial Training School. Through my association with the Native American Literature Symposium, I met a number of people whose work with Zitkala-Ša was encouraging and helpful, especially Ruth Spack, Kathleen Washburn, Julianne Newmark, and Katy Evans. Katy’s work with The Sun Dance Opera led to outstanding performances by Navajo siblings Sarah Singer and John Singer, with commentary by Meg Singer. My fellow Clan Mothers and Brothers from the Symposium have been receptive of my presentations and have been very supportive: LeAnne Howe, Ginny Carney, Gordon Henry, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Jodi Byrd, Jill Doerfler, Denise Cummings, and Margaret Noodin. Patrice Hollrah was my travelling companion on research trips and has offered invaluable insights. Gwen Westerman and her husband, Glenn Wasicuna, generously contributed their language and cultural expertise.

In 2003, I was a Lannan Institute Fellow in a seminar called American Indian Politics before World War Two, hosted by the D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, the Newberry Library, under the direction of Fred Hoxie. Ron Carpenter and Cari Carpenter were also working with the writings of Zitkala-Ša. I appreciated their ideas, along with the conversations with Jeff Shepherd, Tony Clark, Malea Powell, Matt Kreitzer, Amelia Katanski, Brenda Child, and especially the late Michael Tsosie.

In 2011, Chad Allen hosted and organized a centennial celebration of the Society of American Indians. I was honored to be part of that celebration and to speak about Gertrude. My thanks to supportive friends there: Chad, Susan Bernardin, Lisa Tatonetti, Beth Piatote, Monique Mojica, Joy Harjo, and Phil Deloria. The subsequent 2013 publication that discussed the Society of American Indians was a combined issue of Studies in American Literatures (25.2) and American Indian Quarterly (37.3).

The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies invited me to give the Anna Naegle Redd lecture about Zitkala-Ša. Thanks to Brian Cannon, director. Greg Wright invited me to speak at the Convocation Series at Snow College. Paige Conley invited me to be part of her dissertation committee. Thanks to her and Kimberly Blaeser.

The Department of English and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, have been generous in their travel support. I also had the help of graduate assistant DeNara Hill and graduate student Jesse Cook.

Thanks to John Wunder and Susan Miller for their encouragement. Speaking about Zitkala-Ša at the University of Nebraska also led to association with Fran Kaye, James Cox, Domino Perez, and Daniel Justice. Colin Calloway answered questions about early American Indian organizations. I have been encouraged in this project by the late Kay Sands, LaVonne Brown Ruoff, Susan Power Sr., Stacy Burton, Joanne Goodwin, Julia Lee, Michelle St. John, and Myla Vincenti-Carpio.

I owe an immense debt to my family: Dr. Jeff Hafen, my husband, and our children, Arthur, Clark, Jessie, and Sam, who were all assistant researchers. Thanks also to my Taos family for their interest and their perspectives.

Help

Indians

Help

Themselves

Biographical Sketches

Introduction

The author or authors of these unpublished biographical sketches are unknown; however, these summaries are a more full accounting of the lives of Gertrude and Raymond Bonnin than provided in other contemporary sources. The intimate personal information suggests that the Bonnins cooperated with the writer(s). The subsequent documents in this collection, accounts of the Bonnins’ careers as Indian advocates, represent their activities and work to reclaim civil rights. As with many personal writings, what is excluded is also significant. In the second sketch, for example, there is no mention of the Bonnins’ son, Ohiya (1903–1939). Neither is Gertrude’s American Indian Stories , her 1921 collection of the magazine articles, mentioned. Also missing are acknowledgements of relationships with other Indians, apart from a slight mention of the Society of American Indians.

The narrative would seem to indicate that the Bonnins worked alone, but they do mention, without naming them, the participants in the National Council of American Indians. While the volume of correspondence shows they knew many people, they are unique in creating a sustained archive during the period between the end of the Society of American Indians and post-World War II. Charles Eastman (Santee Dakota, 1858–1939) finished publishing in 1918. Luther Standing Bear (Lakota, 1868–1939) continued to publish, notably recounting the ethnography of the Sioux. However, his topics and manner of presentation were significantly different from the work of the Bonnins. Another contemporary Yankton Dakota writer was Ella Deloria (1889–1971). Her ethnographic writings are similar to Gertrude Bonnin’s early Old Indian Legends but with a trained anthropologist’s perspective. Deloria’s fiction has only more recently been recovered and published. Ruth Heflin observes that these writers not only helped redefine what being Indian meant at the turn of the century, but also helped begin and strengthen the still evolving concept of what being an Indian writer means.¹ However, Gertrude Bonnin alone transitioned into activism and political writing through this period, thus rendering her work and her voice in a unique position.

These documents assert that Gertrude is the granddaughter of the famous Hunkpapa warrior Sitting Bull. The logistics of his life and hers make that claim impossible. Yet, in newspapers articles and her obituary, the relationship is reiterated and Gertrude did not deny it. Culturally, Grandfather can be an honorific term, rather than a literal relationship. The second piece suggests that Sitting Bull was her grandfather through intermarriage.

Note: Most of the subsequent excerpts are taken directly from source material, so spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure will not necessarily follow a consistent or orthodox style.

1926

Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird) also quite well known as Mrs. Gertrude Bonnin was born in 1876 — the year when there was great strife between the United States Army and the Sioux Indian people culminating in the Battle of the Little Big Horn where General Custer and entire command were wiped out by the Sioux under their able leader and Chief Sitting Bull, who was her grandfather.

Twenty-four years later she became a teacher in the famous Carlisle Indian School¹ in Pennsylvania after having been educated in schools in Indiana and attending Earlham College at Richmond, Indiana. Concurrently with her teaching at Carlisle she wrote short stories for the Atlantic Monthly, Hapers [sic] Monthly, and Everybody’s Magazine which articles she criticized and ridiculed the manner and methods of the Indian Bureau in administrating the affairs of the Indians generally. The official in charge of the Carlisle Indian School was none other than the well known Captain (later General) R. H. Pratt of the United States Army, who took exceptions to the criticisms and became very hostile toward the young Indian girl to the extent that she resigned to continue her writings.

Years later during the late World War Zitkala-Sa came to live in Washington while her husband Captain R. T. Bonnin was away on duty in the United States Army, and while in Washington she again met the then General R. H. Pratt who had been dismissed from his position as Superintendent of the old Carlisle Indian School. He apologized to her for having differed with her in the past and said you were right then and I was wrong. He had been put out of the Service by the very system machine under which the Indians have been suffering all these years and against which Zitkala-Sa has never ceased to wage battle. [Gen. Pratt waged war on the Indian Bureau even to the time of his death (hand-written note).]

In 1902 She [sic] married R. T. Bonnin, a Yankton Sioux Indian whose Indian name is Ikmu-hoksina or Panther Boy. In that same year they went to Utah where they resided among the Ute Indians for fifteen years. One son was born to them whose Indian name is Ohiya who now resides among the Sioux Indians on the Rosebud in South Dakota.

In 1913 an organization was formed by a number of leading, educated Indians and their white friends. The organization was called The Society of American Indians with Headquarters in Washington, D. C. Membership was not limited to persons of Indian blood and therefore many white persons became members. In 1915 a convention of the Society was held in Lawrence, Kansas and Zitkala-Sa was elected as Secretary of the organization. She served in that capacity up till December 1919. The organization had been getting out a magazine styled a Quarterly, up till she took office and soon thereafter she caused it to be changed to a magazine under the name of The American Indian Magazine. Although the President of the Organization was technically called the Editor of the magazine Mrs. Bonnin as Secretary of the Organization prepared the entire set-up and merely presented it in gally [sic] proof to the Editor just before it went to print. Throughout the life of the Magazine she saw to it that there was always material in it to show up the Indian Bureau in its ill treatment of Indians and the mishandling and dissipation of their property including great natural resources.

Mrs Bonnin and her husband Captain R. T. Bonnin both agreed that The Society of American Indians was not properly organized in that it was all head and no body. In other words the organization had no local branches, or centers among the various groups of Indians throughout the various States of the Union. Therefore in 1919 they withdrew from further participation in that organization and concentrated their efforts on legislation for the relief of their own particular tribesmen, the Sioux Indians. Their efforts were rewarded for in 1920 an Act was passed by Congress whereby the Sioux Indians were permitted to present their claims to the Court of Claims of the United States for adjudication. The Indians filed claims, through their attorneys, aggregating seven hundred million dollars but thirteen years have gone by and the case has not yet been argued in the Court of Claims. The famous Black Hills of South Dakota form the basis of the main claims, owing to the gold taken out. Those mines have been declared to be the richest in the world.

Through all these years individual Indians were constantly calling on Mrs. Bonnin for help in matters affecting almost every phase of human life. In many of these cases she was able to get some relief but there was always the same old question, from whence flow all these evils to the Indians? The answer seemed ever the same — The Indian Bureau System.

Mrs. Bonnin having resided in Washington, D. C. since 1917 it was quite natural that she should meet Indians from all parts of the United States as they came to this city from time to time on business. Captain Bonnin having gotten out of the Army in 1919 was able from then on to help much in this work. He probably knows more Indians personally than any other person in the world. However there were many Indians who wrote for help that were unknown to either of the Bonnins. This caused them to feel the real necessity of some sort of local organization in each Indian community from whence correct information could be had at all times. Letters from unknown persons could then be referred back to a reliable source for proper recommendations.

In 1926 a large number of Indians