Mazina'iganan
(Books -- fulltexts)
and E-Texts

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University of Virginia's etext project has people busily scanning old books whose copyrights have expired -- mostly early 20th-century, some 19th. I've picked out the Native ones. Also included here are articles e-textified, mostly from the late 19th and early 20th century.


About the Authors: Some biography and history -- who they were, what they wrote, what was going on at the time.


Old Indian Days: TOC chapter by chapter Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), a Dakota Wahpetonwan (Sioux) was raised by his tribal grandmother in the traditional way, in Minnesota until he was 15. He then attended school and college, and became a physician -- the only one available to the survivors of Wounded Knee, in 1890. You can also download the entire book, a much bigger file. First published in 1907, currntly in print as ?Dover, or University of Oklahoma Press paperback.

  • Indian Boyhood: TOC -- By Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), Wahpetonwan Dakota. Culture of an undisturbed eastern Woodland Sioux tribe, some stories. Table of contents for chapter by chapter reading. You can also download the whole book, a much longer file. First published as 2 slightly different books in 1902 (revised 1913). Currently in print as a Dover paperback.

  • The Soul of the Indian: TOC -- By Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), Wahpetonwan Dakota. Table of contents for chapter-by-chaper reading. He tries to show early 20th century readers that his Indian relatives are human beings with rich spiritual lives (shouldn't be massacred). He was in private practice in St. Paul by this time, having been pushed out of the government's Indian Health Service because of his advocacy that Indian people should not be massacred, as the survivors he treated at Wounded Knee had been. You can also download the whole book, a much longer file. First published in 1911; currently in print as a Dover paperback.


Old Indian Legends: TOC -- Zitkala-Sha (Red Bird), or Gertrude Bonnin. Born in 1876 to a Yankton-Nakota Sioux mother, she was an accomplished writer, musician and orator. See her biography) This is a chapter by chapter (story by story) link to her 1901 book of ohunkankan, traditional stories. Or you can download the whole thing a much longer file. The book was illustrated by Angel De Cora (Hinook-Mahiwi-Kiinaka), a talented painter (who also wrote short stories) of the same period. It is currently in print as a University of Nebraska Press paperback, 1985.

    The sequence of stories below, (and some other writings) e-textified from their original turn-of-the-century magazine publication were combined as a book, American Indian Stories, in 1921 when Bonin had become a political activist. University of Nebraska Press reissued this, and her 1902 legends collection simultaneously, in 1985, as Bison paperbacks.

  • Impressions of an Indian Childhood: -- Zitkala-Sha, 1900 publishes an article on recollections of the culture in which she was born and her girlhood days.

  • The School Days of an Indian Girl: 1900. Another article carrying her life forward through a typical government Indian boarding school's approach to "civilizing" the young students.

  • An Indian Teacher Among Indians: , 1900. Zitkala-Sha explores almost the only job available for an educated Indian woman of her time.

  • The Soft-Hearted Sioux, -- Harpers' 1901. This story was denounced by Zitkala-Sha's government-backed employer as "morally bad" in an editorial in March, 1901 not long after her story was published in the prestigious Harpers' magazine. Why? Read it and take a guess.

  • Why I Am a Pagan: 1902 -- Zitkala-Sha picked up on literature, art, music, oratory -- but they didn't make a Christian of her. Later, she and her Yankton Nakota husband were to become advocates for all Indian people in Washington, lobbying for better deals.

  • The Trial Path: 1901 -- A short story, where Zitkala-Sha shows (via a tale told by her grandma) how traditional law and order functioned among her people.


-- Indian Superstitions and Legends, By Simon Pokagon, Michigan Potawotami, 1898. This has abbreviated material from 2 books of Algonquian legends (Potawotami are related to this large language group) published after his death. This title was undoubtedly imposed by white publishers; he probably titled it spiritual beliefs or something like that -- see distortion below of his World's Fair speech title. Pokagon lived to see his novel, Queen of the Woods/O-Gi-Maw-Kwe Mit-I-Gwa-Ki in print (1899) just before he died.

  • Simon Pokagon on Naming the Indians: 1897 various Indian geographical names

  • An Indian on the Problems of His Race: Pokagon, 1895, land, booze, racism. Urges that Indian land be protected from white buyers.

  • The Future of the Red Man: Pokagon, 1897, as Pokagon sees it, Indian people (if educated) will become assimilated, otherwise they'll die out.

  • Review of Simon Pokagon at World's fair 1893, Written in 1898. Contains Pokagon's speech, reprint of "Red Man's Greeting" (1893) -- Pokagon had titled this "Red Man's Rebuke", which they changed to "Greeting"; and "An Indian's Observations on the Mating of Geese," an 1896 essay that is naturalistic or scientific observational, and also metaphorical. The article's white author calls him "an interesting representative of a vanishing race" as if he were a speciment, rather than a writer and thinker..


Black Elk Speaks -- Black Elk, Oglala Lakota. Table of contents and a couple of chapters of this famous book, with intro by Vine Deloria Jr. From th University of Nebraska Press website. See Book Review of this very influential book. John G. Neihardt's daughter (who took the notes her father used in compiling Black Elk's book) has new info to contribute also.


Remaining Causes of Indian Discontent, Cherokee writer John M. Oskison, 1874-1947, North American Review 1907, writes about problems as a very acculturated person (living in New York) saw it. Oskinson's writings mostly were not about Indians or Indian life. He wrote dime novel type westerns, potboiler stories -- and one more sensitive Western novel (Three Brothrs), in which the Indian themes are very muted, but often the downfall of mixed-blood, acculturatd characters comes about from forgetting that respect for the land is their heritage.

  • Friends of the Indian.: Oskinson, 1905, Indians need to vote, if they are to have any political influence over their destinies. Oskison describes the abandonment of several court cases started by Indians to pursue rights and land claims. He says that a few Congressmen could get more done than all the "friends" -- he's responding to a specific meeeting of such a group.

  • The Quality of Mercy, : A Story of the Indian Territory by John Oskison. This is typical of Oskison's commercial potboiler-stories. He wrote potboiler dime novels and stories like this for his living.. Rarely were Indians more than minor characters in pulp Westerns.

  • The Biologist's Quest: -- John Oskison story, 1901. A little less of a potboiler (but still typical pulp). There's an interesting Indian character, but the story centers on the biologist who is defeated by the desert.


Voices from a Troubled Land -- an on-line book composed almost entirely of interviews/translations of statements, testimony and letters from Navajo elders who have been (are still being) forced to relocate from parts of the partitioned Navajo-Hopi Joint Use area (Black Mountain) where they have lived for over 100 years. The underlying cause is Peabody Coal, mining the sacred mountain. Many photos.

  • Navajo government's Position Papers -- on the Navajo-Hopi Land Use dispute, collected by 4th World Documentation Project.

  • Would like to link to or get Hopi position papers. I heard they are unhappy at all the Internet publicity given the Navajo side, but find nothing relevant on several sites about Hopi. If anyone's in contact with their Council, they can send me a disk or you arrange to email it, and I'll put it on this server and link-to it here, and on a Tribes -- Nations

    page I'm working on.

-- Myths and Legends of the Sioux 38 stories collected in childish, bowdlerized forms by Marie McGlaughlin, a U.S. Army wife of some Indian ancestry (she was on the Army payroll too, prepared those bad McGlaughlin rolls for hubby and the government), published in a S.D. newspaper in 1916, loved by white South Dakotans for nearly a century as examples of primitive childish Injun thinkin'.

  • The Legend of the Peace Pipe as Marie McGlaughlin tells it in Myths and Legends of the Sioux. Compare this short, sanitized, homogenized, bowdlerized kiddie story version with the two more recent tellings from real traditional people here. This should tell you McGlaughlin's myths are in no sense authentic.

  • John Fire Lame Deer in 1967 told this story of the coming of the sacred Pipe to the Lakota people.

  • Joseph Chasing Horse Oglala elder told this version of the coming of the sacred Pipe in 1994 on the occasion of an elders' gathering where the White Buffalo Calf had been born in Wisconsin, as prophesied.



The BOOK REVIEWS SUBJECT INDEX for the NATIVE AMERICAN BOOKS section has many reviews of books for all ages -- from pre-readers to adults -- including contemporary Native fiction and myths and legends. Purchase info for all reviewed books is provided. SAee BOOKS MAINMENU for many other features.


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Page prepared by Paula Giese graphics and layout copyright 1995, 1996

Copyrights to the stories are held by their respective creators, 1995.

Last updated: Thursday, July 04, 1996 - 6:20:47 AM