For her first eight years, Zitkála-Šá lived on the reservation. She later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1884, when Zitkala-Ša was eight, missionaries came to the Yankton Reservation. They recruited several of the Yankton children, including Zitkala-Šá, taking them for education to the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a missionary Quaker in Wabash, Indiana. This training school was founded by Josiah White for the education of "poor children, white, colored, and Indian," to help them advance in society.