Part I: Zitkala-Sa — The Cutting of My Long Hair

In the first account, Zitkala-Sa remembers a bitterly cold winter morning that marked her early days at a boarding school run by people of the dominant white culture — "the land of apples," where the snow still covered the ground and the trees were bare. From the very start the place feels strange and hostile to her. The clatter of a large breakfast bell, the annoying noise of shoes on bare floors, the unfamiliar clothes forced on the children and the constant supervision of a "paleface woman" all press down on her. Stripped of her blanket and made to eat "by formula" to the tapping of bells, she feels swept into a cold, mechanical world that has no respect for who she is, and she ends her first meal crying, too afraid to venture anything more.

Her deepest distress centres on her hair. Her mother had taught her that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy, that short hair was worn by mourners, and that shingled hair was the mark of cowards. So when her friend Judewin warns her that the school means to cut the children's long hair, she is filled with dread. Judewin says, "We have to submit, because they are strong," but Zitkala-Sa rebels: "No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!" She slips away and hides, crawling under a bed in a dim room, determined to resist. …