American Indian Stories Literary Elements

Short Stories; Autobiographical Fiction

North Dakota, late nineteenth century

Zitkala-Sa is the narrator and the stories are written from her own perspective.

Both happy and sad; melancholy; additionally, a sense of injustice

Zitkala-Sa and her tribe are the protagonists, while the European missionaries are the antagonists.

There is conflict between the missionaries and the tribe because the objective of the missionaries is to take the tribe's children and effectively erase their heritage.

In "My Mother," the climax is when Zitkala-Sa's mother tells her of all the things the paleface have taken from the tribe and also that they are responsible for the deaths of her cousin and uncle.

The missionaries visit the tribal village and tell the children fantastical stories about the land of red apples which foreshadows the fact they want to take them away and mould them into European-American children.

Zitkala-Sa writes the she is homesick, which is an evident understatement because she wanted her mother, aunt and cousin, and also cried herself to sleep every night.

Zitkala-Sa alludes to the legends that are told by the tribal elders in almost every story in the collection specifically relating to honoring the spirits of the dead and also carrying on the traditions of the tribe.

The harvest is described in vivid detail; not only are the smells of the fruit and vegetables described for the reader to imagine, but also the colors of all the individual fruits, and the large vegetables hanging between two poles.

Zitkala-Sa is excited for adventure and experiences other than her own but she is longing for and excited about what is going to be the worst experience of her life.

There is a parallel between the stories told by the elders of the tribe and the stories recreated in the traditional beadwork that Zitkala-Sa makes with her mother.

The tribe is a way of describing all of the individual people who are part of the Sioux tribe in the neighborhood.

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