Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute, ca. 1844-1871) Author, Activist
We don’t have many books written by women in the nineteenth century let alone Native American women. There is very little in print from indigenous peoples from the 1800’s. The tribes passed down their stories orally for the most part. We are fortunate to have a semi-autobiographical work from a Paiute woman named Sarah Winnemucca. With this work, “Life Among the Piutes[1]: Their Wrongs and Claims,” Sarah became the first Indigenous woman to be awarded a copyright.
I am going to depart from my usual biographical style of writing to give a short history of the details of Sarah’s life and then let her tell you in her own words what it was like to grow up in the mid-nineteenth century as a Paiute. Sarah wrote her book as an appeal for Indians and whites to understand each other. As a white person I learned a lot from reading about the western movement of white people as seen through the eyes of an indigenous person.
We can’t go back and undo the past, but we can learn from it. One of the reasons I am writing these stories on Native American women is so that we can learn from each other, appreciate each other’s cultures, and move toward a better future for everyone.
Biography:
Sarah was born in the Humboldt Lake area of what is now western Nevada. Sarah’s Paiute name, Thocmetony, means Shell Flower. She said she was born “somewhere near 1844, but I am not sure of the precise time.”[2] Her father, Old Winnemucca, was a leader of a small band of Paiutes. Her grandfather, Tru-Ki-Zo (or Truckee) was a peaceful native who wanted the tribal peoples to get along with the whites. Truckee (“an Indian word, it means all right or very well.”[3]) met the great explorer John C. Fremont in California. The men became good friends.
Truckee was able to obtain a Euro-American education for Sarah and her sister, Elma. Sarah visited California with her grandfather where she learned to speak Spanish and a little English. She later lived in the home of Major William Ormsby in Carson City, Nevada, where she and Elma were companions to his daughter. Sarah’s English also greatly improved and she became one of the few Paiutes who could read and write English.
Sometime between 1858 and 1861, Truckee tried to enroll Sarah and Elma in school at the Convent of Notre Dame (San Jose) run by the Sisters of Charity. Sadly, they were turned away due to the prejudice of some of the whites. Sarah educated herself after that while working as a domestic.
Her grandfather, Tru-Ki-Zo died in 1861. He had been a great influence in Sarah’s life. By 1871, because of her proficient language skills she worked as an interpreter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at fort McDermott (Oregon). During this period of time she married Lt. E. C. Bartlett but left him a year later because of his intemperance. Later she married an Indian man but left him because he continually cruelly abused her.
Sarah was with her people in 1872 on the Malheur Reservation (Southeast Oregon). The Indian agent was treating everyone fairly. Later he was replaced with a crooked agent. Sarah wanted to go to Washington D.C. to speak out for her people, but the Bannock War interfered with her plans. She served with United States troops as an interpreter and scout during the 1878 Bannock War. The Indians who started the hostilities were a separate group of Paiutes who were belligerent and aggressive. Sarah worked with the U.S. military to restore peace. She saved her father, whose lodge had been surrounded by the hostile Indians. Sarah had to travel without sleep to cover over 200 miles of treacherous Idaho terrain in 48 hours to accomplish his rescue.
Euro-Americans kept pushing westward. To make room for them, the Paiutes were forced onto a series of reservations. First, they went to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, and then to Malheur in Oregon, and lastly to Yakima, Washington. Sarah was disappointed by these moves because she had helped the whites so she was hoping for better treatment. Some of her people distrusted her because she helped the whites. Nevertheless, she became and remained a strong advocate for her people.
Sarah traveled to Washington to plead for her people. She gave hundreds of lectures attacking bad government policy, corrupt Indian agents, and insensitive missionaries. In January 1880, she met with Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz and President Rutherford B. Hayes. She was given promises, these were later broken by the government. She kept trying. Her people doubted her but still she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping them.
While she was in Boston she met Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and her sister, Mary Tyler Mann (widow of Horace Mann). With their support she built a school in Nevada that promoted Indian language and lifestyle. This only lasted a short while because soon the government closed it down and forced Indian children to go to English-speaking boarding schools. During this time her husband, Lt. L. H. Hopkins died of tuberculosis. Sarah moved to Montana and spent her last days with her sister, Elma. She died on October 17, 1891.
Narrative:
There are many stories from happiness as a child to heartbreak as an adult in Sarah’s book. If you really want to develop more sensitivity to what life was like for America’s indigenous peoples, please get it and read it.
Here are two excerpts. This first one is very informative. It established the fact that indigenous people are not so very different from Europeans. If anything, some tribes were more democratic and egalitarian.
The chief’s tent is the largest tent, and it is the council-tent, where everyone goes who wants advice. In the evenings the head men go there to discuss everything, for the chiefs do not rule like tyrants; they discuss everything with their people, as a father would in his family. Often they sit up all night. They discuss the doing of all, if they need to be advised. … The women know as much as the men do, and their advice is often asked. We have a republic as well as you. The council-tent is our Congress, and anybody can speak who has anything to say, women and all. They are always interested in what their husbands are doing and thinking about. And they take some part even in the wars. … It means something when the women promise their fathers to make their husbands ‘themselves’. They faithfully keep with them in all the dangers they can share. They not only take care of their children together, but they do everything together; and when they grow blind, which I am sorry to say is very common, for the smoke they live in destroys their eyes at last, they take sweet care of one another. Marriage is a sweet thing when people love each other. If women could go into your Congress I think justice would soon be done to the Indians. I can’t tell about all Indians; but I know my own people are kind to everybody that does not do them harm.[4]
Sarah tells many stories of what life was like for the Paiutes. She praised the good soldiers, agents, governors, and religious people who worked to better life for the tribal peoples. This makes her book fair and balanced. On the other hand, she does not shirk from the horrors of some of the treatment by wicked, unscrupulous enemies.
In 1864-5 there was a governor by the name of Nye. There were no whites living on the reservation at that time, and there was not any agent as yet. My people were living here and fishing, as they had always done. Some white men came down from Virginia City to fish. My people went up to Carson City to tell Governor Nye that some white men were fishing on their reservation. He sent down some soldiers to drive them away. Mr. Nye is the only governor who ever helped my people, — I mean that protected them when they called on him in the way.
In 1865 we had another trouble with our white brothers. It was early in the spring, and we were then living at Dayton, Nevada, when a company of soldiers came through the place and stopped and spoke to some of my people, and said, “You have been stealing cattle from the white people at Harney Lake.”[5] They said also they would kill everything in their way, men, women, and children. The captain’s name was Wells. The place where they were going to is about three hundred miles away. The days after they left were very sad hours, indeed. Oh, dear readers, these soldiers had gone only sixty miles away to Muddy Lake, where my people were then living and fishing, and doing nothing to any one. The soldiers rode up to their encampment and fired into it, and killed almost all the people that were there. Oh, it is a fearful thing to tell, but it must be told. Yes, it must be told by me. It was all old men, women and children that were killed; for my father had all the young men with him, at the sink of Carson on a hunting excursion, or they would have been killed too. After the soldiers had killed all but some little children and babies still tied up on their baskets, the soldiers took them also, and set the camp on fire and threw them into the flames to see them burn alive. I had one baby brother killed there. My sister jumped on father’s best horse and ran away.[6]
Conclusion:
Sarah’s book also contains accounts of how she tried to get justice for her people. She went back east and spoke many times. She would be given promises and most of the time the promises were broken. By 1880 “the tribe of Piute Indians that formerly occupied the greater part of Nevada, and now diminished by its sufferings and wrongs to one-third of its original number, has always kept its promise of peace and friendliness to the whites since they first entered their country, and has of late been deprived of the Malheur Reservation decreed to them by President Grant.”[7]
After years of fighting for her people and finding it impossible to gain justice, Sarah went to live with her sister in Montana. She continued to visit her people when asked, but she died disillusioned and betrayed before she could complete her task.
More than a century later, in 1994, Sarah was recognized for her work. She was honored for her loyalty to her people and for her service to the United States. A Washoe County school was named in her honor. She was awarded the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Award for her book from the Friends of the Library, University of Nevada, Reno. In 2005, her statue was added to the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.
[1] Sarah spells the name of her tribal people “Piute”. When I am quoting from her I will spell it her way. Also, in the 1800’s it was common to refer to indigenous people as “Indians”. I will defer to historical accuracy and call the native peoples Indians as they did themselves.
[2] Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883) Reprinted by Arcadia Press, 2017. Page 9.
[3] Life Among the Piutes, page 10.
[4] Life among the Piutes, page 28.
[5] Accusing the Indians of doing something that they did not do was an excuse for shooting and killing them. This happened many times and the whites could get away with it because there was no legal justice for the Indians then. The white people could then just steal the cattle, land, fishing rights or whatever they wanted without having to pay for it.
[6] Ibid., page 38.
[7] Ibid., page 108.
Native American Women Authors – Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute, ca. 1844-1871) Author, Activist
We don’t have many books written by women in the nineteenth century let alone Native American women. There is very little in print from indigenous peoples from the 1800’s. The tribes passed down their stories orally for the most part. We are fortunate to have a semi-autobiographical work from a Paiute woman named Sarah Winnemucca. With this work, “Life Among the Piutes[1]: Their Wrongs and Claims,” Sarah became the first Indigenous woman to be awarded a copyright.
I am going to depart from my usual biographical style of writing to give a short history of the details of Sarah’s life and then let her tell you in her own words what it was like to grow up in the mid-nineteenth century as a Paiute. Sarah wrote her book as an appeal for Indians and whites to understand each other. As a white person I learned a lot from reading about the western movement of white people as seen through the eyes of an indigenous person.
We can’t go back and undo the past, but we can learn from it. One of the reasons I am writing these stories on Native American women is so that we can learn from each other, appreciate each other’s cultures, and move toward a better future for everyone.
Biography:
Sarah was born in the Humboldt Lake area of what is now western Nevada. Sarah’s Paiute name, Thocmetony, means Shell Flower. She said she was born “somewhere near 1844, but I am not sure of the precise time.”[2] Her father, Old Winnemucca, was a leader of a small band of Paiutes. Her grandfather, Tru-Ki-Zo (or Truckee) was a peaceful native who wanted the tribal peoples to get along with the whites. Truckee (“an Indian word, it means all right or very well.”[3]) met the great explorer John C. Fremont in California. The men became good friends.
Truckee was able to obtain a Euro-American education for Sarah and her sister, Elma. Sarah visited California with her grandfather where she learned to speak Spanish and a little English. She later lived in the home of Major William Ormsby in Carson City, Nevada, where she and Elma were companions to his daughter. Sarah’s English also greatly improved and she became one of the few Paiutes who could read and write English.
Sometime between 1858 and 1861, Truckee tried to enroll Sarah and Elma in school at the Convent of Notre Dame (San Jose) run by the Sisters of Charity. Sadly, they were turned away due to the prejudice of some of the whites. Sarah educated herself after that while working as a domestic.
Her grandfather, Tru-Ki-Zo died in 1861. He had been a great influence in Sarah’s life. By 1871, because of her proficient language skills she worked as an interpreter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at fort McDermott (Oregon). During this period of time she married Lt. E. C. Bartlett but left him a year later because of his intemperance. Later she married an Indian man but left him because he continually cruelly abused her.
Sarah was with her people in 1872 on the Malheur Reservation (Southeast Oregon). The Indian agent was treating everyone fairly. Later he was replaced with a crooked agent. Sarah wanted to go to Washington D.C. to speak out for her people, but the Bannock War interfered with her plans. She served with United States troops as an interpreter and scout during the 1878 Bannock War. The Indians who started the hostilities were a separate group of Paiutes who were belligerent and aggressive. Sarah worked with the U.S. military to restore peace. She saved her father, whose lodge had been surrounded by the hostile Indians. Sarah had to travel without sleep to cover over 200 miles of treacherous Idaho terrain in 48 hours to accomplish his rescue.
Euro-Americans kept pushing westward. To make room for them, the Paiutes were forced onto a series of reservations. First, they went to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, and then to Malheur in Oregon, and lastly to Yakima, Washington. Sarah was disappointed by these moves because she had helped the whites so she was hoping for better treatment. Some of her people distrusted her because she helped the whites. Nevertheless, she became and remained a strong advocate for her people.
Sarah traveled to Washington to plead for her people. She gave hundreds of lectures attacking bad government policy, corrupt Indian agents, and insensitive missionaries. In January 1880, she met with Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz and President Rutherford B. Hayes. She was given promises, these were later broken by the government. She kept trying. Her people doubted her but still she dedicated the remainder of her life to helping them.
While she was in Boston she met Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and her sister, Mary Tyler Mann (widow of Horace Mann). With their support she built a school in Nevada that promoted Indian language and lifestyle. This only lasted a short while because soon the government closed it down and forced Indian children to go to English-speaking boarding schools. During this time her husband, Lt. L. H. Hopkins died of tuberculosis. Sarah moved to Montana and spent her last days with her sister, Elma. She died on October 17, 1891.
Narrative:
There are many stories from happiness as a child to heartbreak as an adult in Sarah’s book. If you really want to develop more sensitivity to what life was like for America’s indigenous peoples, please get it and read it.
Here are two excerpts. This first one is very informative. It established the fact that indigenous people are not so very different from Europeans. If anything, some tribes were more democratic and egalitarian.
The chief’s tent is the largest tent, and it is the council-tent, where everyone goes who wants advice. In the evenings the head men go there to discuss everything, for the chiefs do not rule like tyrants; they discuss everything with their people, as a father would in his family. Often they sit up all night. They discuss the doing of all, if they need to be advised. … The women know as much as the men do, and their advice is often asked. We have a republic as well as you. The council-tent is our Congress, and anybody can speak who has anything to say, women and all. They are always interested in what their husbands are doing and thinking about. And they take some part even in the wars. … It means something when the women promise their fathers to make their husbands ‘themselves’. They faithfully keep with them in all the dangers they can share. They not only take care of their children together, but they do everything together; and when they grow blind, which I am sorry to say is very common, for the smoke they live in destroys their eyes at last, they take sweet care of one another. Marriage is a sweet thing when people love each other. If women could go into your Congress I think justice would soon be done to the Indians. I can’t tell about all Indians; but I know my own people are kind to everybody that does not do them harm.[4]
Sarah tells many stories of what life was like for the Paiutes. She praised the good soldiers, agents, governors, and religious people who worked to better life for the tribal peoples. This makes her book fair and balanced. On the other hand, she does not shirk from the horrors of some of the treatment by wicked, unscrupulous enemies.
In 1864-5 there was a governor by the name of Nye. There were no whites living on the reservation at that time, and there was not any agent as yet. My people were living here and fishing, as they had always done. Some white men came down from Virginia City to fish. My people went up to Carson City to tell Governor Nye that some white men were fishing on their reservation. He sent down some soldiers to drive them away. Mr. Nye is the only governor who ever helped my people, — I mean that protected them when they called on him in the way.
In 1865 we had another trouble with our white brothers. It was early in the spring, and we were then living at Dayton, Nevada, when a company of soldiers came through the place and stopped and spoke to some of my people, and said, “You have been stealing cattle from the white people at Harney Lake.”[5] They said also they would kill everything in their way, men, women, and children. The captain’s name was Wells. The place where they were going to is about three hundred miles away. The days after they left were very sad hours, indeed. Oh, dear readers, these soldiers had gone only sixty miles away to Muddy Lake, where my people were then living and fishing, and doing nothing to any one. The soldiers rode up to their encampment and fired into it, and killed almost all the people that were there. Oh, it is a fearful thing to tell, but it must be told. Yes, it must be told by me. It was all old men, women and children that were killed; for my father had all the young men with him, at the sink of Carson on a hunting excursion, or they would have been killed too. After the soldiers had killed all but some little children and babies still tied up on their baskets, the soldiers took them also, and set the camp on fire and threw them into the flames to see them burn alive. I had one baby brother killed there. My sister jumped on father’s best horse and ran away.[6]
Conclusion:
Sarah’s book also contains accounts of how she tried to get justice for her people. She went back east and spoke many times. She would be given promises and most of the time the promises were broken. By 1880 “the tribe of Piute Indians that formerly occupied the greater part of Nevada, and now diminished by its sufferings and wrongs to one-third of its original number, has always kept its promise of peace and friendliness to the whites since they first entered their country, and has of late been deprived of the Malheur Reservation decreed to them by President Grant.”[7]
After years of fighting for her people and finding it impossible to gain justice, Sarah went to live with her sister in Montana. She continued to visit her people when asked, but she died disillusioned and betrayed before she could complete her task.
More than a century later, in 1994, Sarah was recognized for her work. She was honored for her loyalty to her people and for her service to the United States. A Washoe County school was named in her honor. She was awarded the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Award for her book from the Friends of the Library, University of Nevada, Reno. In 2005, her statue was added to the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.
[1] Sarah spells the name of her tribal people “Piute”. When I am quoting from her I will spell it her way. Also, in the 1800’s it was common to refer to indigenous people as “Indians”. I will defer to historical accuracy and call the native peoples Indians as they did themselves.
[2] Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883) Reprinted by Arcadia Press, 2017. Page 9.
[3] Life Among the Piutes, page 10.
[4] Life among the Piutes, page 28.
[5] Accusing the Indians of doing something that they did not do was an excuse for shooting and killing them. This happened many times and the whites could get away with it because there was no legal justice for the Indians then. The white people could then just steal the cattle, land, fishing rights or whatever they wanted without having to pay for it.
[6] Ibid., page 38.
[7] Ibid., page 108.
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