Helen Hunt Jackson, Zitkala Sa, Noble Savage

I really enjoyed reading Zitkala Sa's stories. Her descriptions about her every day life and surroundings interested me and helped me imagine what it would be like to grow up as a Native American Indian. Obviously, the white man had a huge impact on everyone, especially her mother. I felt bad for her mother because these people had taken away her family. In the last story, when the daughter went away to the east with the missionaries, I felt really bad for her mother. Even though the girl would get an education, these people had taken away almost everything from the mother that mattered most to her. I thought these stories were very informative about what it's like growing up in Indian tribe. It also gave a sense about the problems the Indians faced.

I had trouble reading Helen Hunt Jackson's story in the beginning, but soon it began to get a little easier. It was interesting to me in the beginning how it said the chief of the tribe deserved to be chief of a better tribe. As I later learned, the tribe he had now was in poverty. There were no buffalo to eat, and people were starving. His tribe was falling apart. I liked how he called 'alcohol' fire-water. I thought it was a creative name! When it got into the history of the Poncas tribe, it showed how unfair the tribe was treated by the white men. The Poncas did nothing wrong most of the time, but they were still treated unfairly. Near the end how the white men killed the mother and shot the children was disturbing to me and cruel.

I'm not sure what to think of the Noble Savage. After reading the beginning and pre-history, I think I understand and agree to what a noble savage is. I believe it is true that naturally and in our basic form humans are just barbarians. We are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". I really liked Michel de Montaigne metaphor when he said that people in Brazil eat the bodies of their enemies once they've defeated them. He said when people fight over religion it's even more barbarian like than the Brazilian tradition. I really liked how he stated, "One calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to". This stuck with me.