The Soft-Hearted Sioux

The Soft-Hearted Sioux
by Zitkala-Sa
Harper's Monthly
1901

I
Beside the open fire I sat within our tepee. With my red blanket
wrapped tightly about my crossed legs, I was thinking of the coming
season, my sixteenth winter. On either side of the wigwam were my
parents. My father was whistling a tune between his teeth while
polishing with his bare hand a red stone pipe he had recently carved.
Almost in front of me, beyond the centre fire, my old grandmother sat
near the entranceway.
She turned her face toward her right and addressed most of her words
to my mother. Now and then she spoke to me, but never did she allow
her eyes to rest upon her daughter's husband, my father. It was only
upon rare occasions that my grandmother said anything to him. Thus
his ears were open and ready to catch the smallest wish she might
express. Sometimes when my grandmother had been saying things
which pleased him, my father used to comment upon them. At other
times, when he could not approve of what was spoken, he used to work
or smoke silently.
On this night my old grandmother began her talk about me. Filling the
bowl of her red stone pipe with dry willow bark, she looked across at
me.
"My grandchild, you are tall and are no longer a little boy." Narrowing
her old eyes, she asked, "My grandchild, when are you going to bring

here a handsome young woman?" I stared into the fire rather than meet
her gaze. Waiting for my answer, she stooped forward and through the
long stem drew a flame into the red stone pipe.
I smiled while my eyes were still fixed upon the bright fire, but I said
nothing in reply. Turning to my mother, she offered her the pipe. I
glanced at my grandmother. The loose buckskin sleeve fell off at her
elbow and showed a wrist covered with silver bracelets. Holding up the
fingers of her left hand, she named off the desirable young women of
our village.
"Which one, my grandchild, which one?" she questioned.
"Hoh!" I said, pulling at my blanket in confusion. "Not yet!" Here my
mother passed the pipe over the fire to my father. Then she too began
speaking of what I should do.
"My son, be always active. Do not dislike a long hunt. Learn to provide
much buffalo meat and many buckskins before you bring home a wife."
Presently my father gave the pipe to my grandmother, and he took his
turn in the exhortations.
"Ho, my son, I have been counting in my heart the bravest warriors of
our people. There is not one of them who won his title in his sixteenth
winter. My son, it is a great thing for some brave of sixteen winters to
do."
Not a word had I to give in answer. I knew well the fame of my warrior
father. He had earned the right of speaking such words, though even he
himself was a brave only at my age. Refusing to smoke my
grandmother's pipe because my heart was too much stirred by their
words, and sorely troubled with a fear lest I should disappoint them, I
arose to go. Drawing my blanket over my shoulders, I said, as I stepped
toward the entranceway: "I go to hobble my pony. It is now late in the
night."

II

Nine winters' snows had buried deep that night when my old
grandmother, together with my father and mother, designed my future
with the glow of a camp fire upon it.
Yet I did not grow up the warrior, huntsman, and husband I was to have
been. At the mission school I learned it was wrong to kill. Nine winters
I hunted for the soft heart of Christ, and prayed
for the huntsmen who chased the buffalo on the plains.
In the autumn of the tenth year I was sent back to my tribe to preach
Christianity to them. With the white man's Bible in my hand, and the
white man's tender heart in my breast, I returned to my own people.
Wearing a foreigner's dress, I walked, a stranger, into my father's
village.
Asking my way, for I had not forgotten my native tongue, an old man
led me toward the tepee where my father lay. From my old companion
I learned that my father had been sick many moons. As we drew near
the tepee, I heard the chanting of a medicine-man within it. At once I
wished to enter in and drive from my home the sorcerer of the plains,
but the old warrior checked me. "Ho, wait outside until the
medicine-man leaves your father," he said. While talking he scanned
me from head to feet. Then