Old Indian Legends

Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She was raised there by her mother, Ellen Simmons, whose Yankton Dakota name was Taté Iyohiwin (Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind). Her father was a European-American man named Felker, about whom little was known. Zitkala-Sa lived a traditional lifestyle until the age of eight, when she left her reservation to attend Whites Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker mission school in Wabash, Indiana. She went on to study for a time at Earlham College in Indiana and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.