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Zitkala-Ša

34 quotes

“For the white man's papers I had given up my faith in the Great Spirit. For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks. On account of my mother's simple view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed. Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and God. I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very quick.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) first seen 1637 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article anthologized in American Women Activists' Writings: An Anthology, 1637-2001
“In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) first seen 1637 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article anthologized in American Women Activists' Writings: An Anthology, 1637-2001
“These were my mother's pride,-my wild freedom and overflowing spirits. She taught me no fear save that of intruding myself upon others. ("Impressions of an Indian Childhood," chapter 1)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do; for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder. (II: THE CUTTING OF MY LONG HAIR)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was next to impossible to leave the iron routine after the civilizing machine had once begun its day's buzzing; and as it was inbred in me to suffer in silence rather than to appeal to the ears of one whose open eyes could not see my pain, I have many times trudged in the day's harness heavy-footed, like a dumb sick brute. (V: IRON ROUTINE)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality like a mummy for burial. The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it. (V: IRON ROUTINE)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I hid myself in my little room in the college dormitory, away from the scornful and yet curious eyes of the students, I pined for sympathy. Often I wept in secret, wishing I had gone West, to be nourished by my mother's love, instead of remaining among a cold race whose hearts were frozen hard with prejudice. (VII. INCURRING MY MOTHER'S DISPLEASURE)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Leaving my mother, I returned to the school in the East. As months passed over me, I slowly comprehended that the large army of white teachers in Indian schools had a larger missionary creed than I had suspected. It was one which included self-preservation quite as much as Indian education.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though I burned with indignation upon discovering on every side instances no less shame-ful than those I have mentioned, there was no present help. Even the few rare ones who have worked nobly for my race were powerless to choose workmen like themselves. To be sure, a man was sent from the Great Father to inspect Indian schools, but what he saw was usually the students' sample work made for exhibition. I was nettled by this sly cunning of the workmen who hookwinked the Indian's pale Father at Washington.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With the strong, happy sense that both great and small are so surely enfolded in His magnitude that, without a miss, each has his allotted individual ground of opportunities, I am buoyant with good nature.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“our little ones — they are our future hope. Our children!”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest gift in life is consciousness. Not positions, not the dollar, but that the Almighty Spirit gives us life and we have a rational mind with which to see all the wonders of the universe.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now we are meeting a civilization from a race that came from Europe. We have to meet it each day — there is no dodging, and it is not easy. It is going to take courage; it is going to test your strength. It is going to test your faith in the Greatest of All. It is going to be hard, but let us stand the test, true to the Indian blood. Let us do that. Let us teach our children to be proud of their Indian blood and to stand the test bravely.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Use the words that come to you, that which is in the heart and mind.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“my mother said to me. “You must learn the white man’s language so when you grow up you will talk for us and for the Indian and the white man will have a better understanding.” I said, “I will.” It has not always been easy, but I said, “I am going to do the best I can and then I am going to let the Great Spirit do the rest.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first time you stand up for right and it is refused you, shall you quit? Then you do not believe in it. We must continue speaking and claiming our human rights to live on this earth that God has made, so that we may think our thoughts and speak them — that we may have our part in the American life and be as any other human beings are.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shall we think or shall somebody think for us? We are on this earth to think and do the best we can according to our light.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must put our thoughts into practice every day in the most complex business matter, in the most simple home duty.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us develop our powers by thinking and acting for ourselves. That is the way we grow. We have been told organization is necessary to bring about results. We have been scattered to the four winds. Are we going to organize?”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“we must all work for this thing — that the American Indian must have a voice. He must say what is in him and by exchanging opinions, we are going to grow.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quick to string his bow for vengeance; ready to bury the hatchet or smoke the pipe of peace; never was he first to break a treaty or known to betray a friend with whom he had eaten salt.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The invasion of his broad dominions by a paler race brought no dismay to the hospitable Indian. Samoset voiced the feeling of his people as he stood among the winter-weary Pilgrims and cried "Welcome, Englishmen." Nor did the Indian cling selfishly to his lands; willingly he divides with Roger Williams and with Penn, who pay him for his own. History bears record to no finer examples of fidelity. To Jesuit, to Quaker, to all who kept their faith with him, his loyalty never failed.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unfortunately civilization is not an unmixed blessing. Vices begin to creep into his life and deepen the Red Man's degradation. He learns to crave the European liquid fire. Broken treaties shake his faith in the newcomers. Continued aggressions goad him to desperation. The White Man's bullet decimates his tribes and drives him from his home.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He loved the inheritance of his fathers, their traditions, their graves; he held them a priceless legacy to be sacredly kept. He loved his native land. Do you wonder still that in his breast he should brood revenge, when ruthlessly driven from the temples where he worshiped? Do you wonder still that he skulked in forest gloom to avenge the desolation of his home? Is patriotism a virtue only in Saxon hearts? Is there no charity to cover his crouching form as he stealthily opposed his relentless foe?”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let it be remembered, before condemnation is passed upon the Red Man, that, while he burned and tortured frontiersmen, Puritan Boston burned witches and hanged Quakers, and the Southern aristocrat beat his slaves and set bloodhounds on the tracks of him who dared aspire to freedom. The barbarous Indian, ignorant alike of Roman justice, Saxon law, and the Gospel of Christian brotherhood, in the fury of revenge has brought no greater stain upon his name than these.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets sing of a coming federation of the world, and we applaud. Idealists dream that in this commonwealth of all humanity the divine spark in man shall be the only test of citizenship, and we think of their dream and future history.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today the Indian is pressed almost to the farther sea. Does that sea symbolize his death?”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To take the life of a nation during the slow march of centuries seems not a lighter crime than to crush it instantly with one fatal blow.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We clasp the warm hand of friendship everywhere. From honest hearts and sincere lips we hear the hearty welcome and Godspeed.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After my first three years of school, I roamed again in the Western country through four strange summers. During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice of human aid. My brother, being almost ten years my senior, did not quite understand my feelings. My mother had never gone inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian nor a tame one. This deporable situation was the effect of my brief course in the East, and the unsatisfactory "teenth" in a girl's years. (VI: FOUR STRANGE SUMMERS)”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this stage of my own evolution, I was ready to curse men of small capacity for being the dwarfs their God had made them. In the process of my education I had lost all consciousness of the nature world about me. Thus, when a hidden rage took me to the small white-walled prison which I then called my room, I unknowingly turned away from my one salvation. Alone in my room, I sat like the petrified Indian woman of whom my mother used to tell me. I wished my heart's burdens would turn me to unfeeling stone. But alive, in my tomb, I was destitute! For the white man's papers I had given up my faith in the Great Spirit. For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks. On account of my mother's simple view of life, and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed. Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and God. I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my oversenstive nature was scraped off to the very quick.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally resuming the chair at my desk I feel in keen sympathy with my fellow-creatures, for I seem to see clearly again that all are akin. The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living mosaic of human beings. And even here men of the same color are like the ivory keys of one instrument where each resembles all the rest, yet varies from them in pitch and quality of voice. And those creatures who are for a time mere echoes of another's note are not unlike the fable of the thin sick man whose distorted shadow, dressed like a real creature, came to the old master to make him follow as a shadow. Thus with a compassion for all echoes in human guise, I greet the solemn-faced "native preacher" whom I find awaiting me. I listen with respect for God's creature, though he mouth most strangely the jangling phrases of a bigoted creed.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would not forget that the pale-faced missionary and the hoodooed aborigine are both God's creatures, though small indeed their own conceptions of Infinite Love. A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. Here, in a fleeting quiet, I am awakened by the fluttering robe of the Great Spirit. To my innermost consciousness the phenomenal universe is a royal' mantle, vibrating with His divine breath. Caught in its flowing fringes are the spangles and oscillating brilliants of sun, moon, and stars.”
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) said by 1938 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source