[2] The autobiographical details contrast her early life on the Yankton Indian Reservation and her time as a student at White's Manual Labour Institute and Earlham College.
[3] The collection includes legends and stories from Sioux oral tradition, along with an essay titled America's Indian Problem, which advocates for rights for Native Americans and calls for a greater understanding of Native American cultures.
[4] The story begins with a description of the big path that leads from Zitkala-Sa's childhood wigwam to a river which, in turn, makes its way to "The Edge of Missouri".
Recounting a conversation with her mother on one of their return trips from the river, Zitkala-Sa told her that when she is older like her 17-year-old cousin Warca-Ziwin, she will come and get water for her.
In this story, Zitkala-Sa shares with the readers how, "I loved best the evening meal, for that was the time old legends were told.
I was always glad when the sun hung low in the west, for then my mother sent me to invite the neighboring old men and women to eat supper with us."
The atmosphere must be set, and in due time, the elders would tell the stories of their people, and pass on the Legends to the children of the tribe.
"[7] "That Zitkala-Sa was independent enough to write about her "varying moods" is a credit to her and a bonus for anyone interested in some of the impulses that launched an American Indian Literary tradition in English.
Even during this time, Zitkala-Sa shares the experience of childhood envy in regards to the artist products of the beadwork of her friends.
In this story, Zitkala-Sa describes the day when strange people with painted faces come into her neighborhood to the new warrior Haraka Wambdi's wigwam.
The crowd sits in the grass surrounding a fire with venison being cooked in kettles hanging above it.
Zitkala-Sa, still in her own wigwam, becomes restless seeing all of the guests heading over to the feast while she has to wait for her mother to finish cooking a duck.
Most of her memories from when she was a child were in the summer but she recalls a winter day when some missionaries gave her a bag of marbles.
These visiting white men were recruiting Indian children to go to Eastern schools.
Zitkala Sa's mother understood the other children's influence on Zitkala-Sa in regards to the "white man's lies."
(Bonnin, 42) The innocent naïve Zitkala-Sa was insistent to go to the wonderful Eastern land to experience the unknown education of the palefaces.
(Bonnin, 45) "By using the apple as a symbol of the Western tradition, Zitkala-Sa subverts the idea that the missionaries were "saving the Indians"; instead, she enacts a reverse temptation wherein the missionaries tempt her with forbidden fruit, causing her to fall out of the coherent oral culture of her mother into the "white man's" world of knowledge, a world too often promising her "white men's lies"—knowledge as delusion."
(Stanley, 66) One day while playing in snowdrifts, Zitkala-Sa and her friends were told not to fall face first into the snow.
Judewin, the only one of the three girls who could speak English, told Zitkala-Sa and Thowin that when the "pale face" looks into their eyes and talks loudly they must wait until she stops and then say the word "no".
After listening a bit, Judewin realized she taught the girls the wrong reply.
Zitkala-Sa's grandmother reports that the pony survived until her husband died, at which time it was killed.