"The old legends of America belong quite as much to the blue-eyed little patriot as to the black-haired aborigine. And when they are grown tall like the wise grown-ups may they not lack interest in a further study of Indian folklore, a study which so strongly suggests our near kinship with the rest of humanity and points a steady finger toward the great brotherhood of mankind, and by which one is so forcibly impressed with the possible earnestness of life as seen through the teepee door! If it be true that much lies "in the eye of the beholder," then in the American aborigine as in any other race, sincerity of belief, though it were based upon mere optical illusion, demands a little respect."

From Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa
Zitkala-Sa [Gertrude Simmons Bonnin] 1876-1938: Zitkala-Sa was born at the Yankton Sioux Agency in South Dakota. Her mother was a full-blood Sioux, while her father seems to have been an Anglo-American. She attended a Quaker mission school for native children in Wabash, Indiana, then completed her studies at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Bonnin was active in Indian rights, at both local and national levels, forming the National Council of American Indians, a major Indian rights organization that kept Native people from diverse regions abreast of legislative concerns and provided them with a centralized focus for a variety of local issues. She published sketches and short stories in several popular magazines and two book-length collections, Old Indian Legends and American Indian Stories, a collection of her fiction and sketches. Bonnin collaborated with William E. Hanson on an Indian opera, Sun Dance, that was selected as the 1937 Opera of the Year by the New York Light Opera Guild.