“The Toad and the Boy” is a Native American tale of promise, loss, and remembrance. The short tale about a boy stolen from his parents by an ugly toad was published for the first time in Old Indian Legends (1901), a collection of childhood Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota folk tales collected and retold by Native American author Zitkala-Ša.
Born Gertrude Simmons (1876–1938) on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Zitkala-Ša was taken from the reservation and her family to receive a formal American education at White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana. She was eight years old when she left and did not return until graduation. Upon returning, she adopted a traditional tribal name, meaning red eagle, and became a teacher, writer, musician, and activist. She often spoke and wrote of the sadness she and other Native Americans experienced at the cultural displacement they experienced during the nineteenth century as they were forced onto reservations and into schools away from their families. The commissioned collection represents the first time that Native American folklore was translated from the tribe’s oral tradition into written English by a Native American woman. The publication followed her much acclaimed autobiographical essay, “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” published in the Atlantic Monthly the previous year.
“The Toad and the Boy,” through the simplicity of folktale, describes the pain of cultural loss experienced by a stolen child, but also of lingering cultural memory and longing. Although not considered an autobiographical tale, it reflects Zitkala-Ša’s deep interest in children and childhood development. The tale also remarks on her concerns with the forced assimilation of Native American children in America.
The tale opens on a prosperous pastoral scene among the Sioux people. The autumn season is indicated by the men, who are hunting, and the fires that the women tend in their teepees. The story presents a romanticized version of Native American childhood along the shores of a marshy lake. The “black-eyed baby boy” demonstrates his happiness by “cooing and laughing” in the manner of all happy, healthy babies. And that he is loved is evident as his mother whispers a lullaby and places a blanket over him to ensure his comfort. Furthermore, the family of this particular child is portrayed as important and prosperous since they reside in the “largest teepee.” In representing family as the central unit of security, Zitkala-Ša’s narrative works to dispel the image of the primitive Native American as a restless savage, which had been prominent in the literature offered by white writers during the nineteenth century. She also works to align the happy Native child with his Anglo counterpart.
But the happy scene is soon shattered by an unknown and unseen intruder. For when the baby’s mother leaves the teepee to secure items for maintaining a warm fire, she returns to discover her baby has been taken. In desperation, she runs from one teepee to the next in search of her baby, but he is gone and she sheds “great tears” as she recounts her story to one after another of her tribespeople. The women drop their chores to help her locate her son, as do the hunters as they return from the field. The tale indicates the significance of both the family and tribal bond as all the members of the community join the desperate “wailing” mother and father in their days-long search for the missing boy.
The story portrays the parents as remaining in mourning for ten years, returning to the hunting grounds each season in a futile search for the “lost baby.” But in the tenth season, as the mother prepares to leave, a “little wild boy” watches her weep from the other side of the lake and is moved. He runs to the small hut where he was raised to ask his mother, a “big, ugly toad,” why he was so deeply moved by the stranger’s sorrowful voice. His “mother” warns him not to long for his native voice, but rather to learn to love hers. She attempts to mimic the song but fails because she does not understand the importance of the mourning song, nor the boy’s need for his “real mother.”
In many ways, the plight of the small child in “The Toad and the Boy” reflects Zitkala-Ša’s own experience and that of many native children taken from their families to be raised in a perpetual state of cultural displacement. Cut off from their cultural heritage, they cannot simply shed the vestments of their tribal family and cloak themselves in a new cultural identity. The boy, like Zitkala-Ša, finally reunites with his family, but not before he has “grown tall” and missed the happy upbringing that the opening scenes anticipate would have been his to enjoy. The story also reflects the loss of the family and the tribe. The boy’s parents do not lose hope that they will be reunited with their child, but they remain in an eternal state of mourning even as they anticipate the reunion. Although the story ends with the restored family, it refuses to contemplate the future, leaving open two possibilities: that he can be reintegrated into his natural family or that he will remain ever displaced from his cultural roots.
Tracey-Lynn Clough
See also Arrow Boy; Bear Man of the Cherokee; Coyote Tales; Deer Woman; Great Hare; Iktomi; Shooting of the Red Eagle; Tricksters, Native American; Warlike Seven
Further Reading
Okker, Patricia. 1994. Native American Literatures and the Canon: The Case of Zitkala-Sa. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Stout, Mary Ann. 1984. “Zitkala-Sa: The Literature of Politics.” In Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization, edited by Bo Scholer, 70–78. Aarhus: Seklos.
Thompson, Stith. 1929. Tales of the North American Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Velikova, Roumiana. 2000. “Troping in Zitkala-Sa’s Autobiographical Writings.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 56 (1): 49–64.
Zitkala-Ša. 1901. Old Indian Legends. Boston: Ginn.