Zitkala Sa - Impressions of an Indian Childhood

This is an amazing first person account of an Indian daughter and her relationship with her mother. The mother had lost many things in life, most importantly a spouse and a daughter, to the Europeans. Sa utilizes emotional language when the daughter describes her distraught mother whose “full arched lips were compressed into hard and bitter lines, and shadows fell under her black eyes”. Seeing this the daughter yells “I hate the paleface that makes my mother cry!”

Later on the daughter is provided with an opportunity to go to Europe with palefaced missionaries to be educated. This obviously creates trepidation in the heart of her mother. This would mean that the same race, the same people who devastated her life would take away her daughter.

The conflict exists between the daughters infatuation with ideas of “a country more beautiful than [hers]… and big red apples” (all of which the mother says are “white men’s lies”) and the mothers protective nature.

Missionaries came to persuade the mother. Their objective was to take her daughter away with them to the East. “Alas! They came, they saw, they conquered!”

At first the daughter was elated. However, as she left she “saw the lonely figure of [her] mother vanish in the distance” and “a sense of regret settled heavily upon [her]”. In the last line the daughter expresses her feelings – “I was as frightened and bewildered as the captured young of a wild creature”.

Maybe mother does know best.

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