Sarah Winnemucca

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Sarah Winnemucca – Paiute

Sarah Winnemucca (1844-1891) was born Thocmentony which means Shell Flower. She was a peacemaker, teacher, interpeter, scout, and defender of the rights of Native Americans. She was notable for being the first Native American woman to secure a copyright and to publish in the English language. She was also known by her married name, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, under which she published her book, Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, an autobiographical account of her people during their first forty years of contact with explorers and settlers.

Sarah was a person of two worlds. At the time of her birth the Paiutes of western Nevada had only very limited contact with Euro-Americans; however, Winnemucca spent much of her adult life in white society. Like many people of two worlds, she may be judged harshly in both contexts. Many Paiutes viewed her as a collaborator who helped the U.S. Army kill her people. Modern historians view her book as an important primary source, however one known more for its heartfelt descriptions of her peoples' plight than for its historical detail. Sarah has received much positive attention recently for her activism, and in 2005 a statue of her was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.

Early life

Sarah Winnemucca – Paiute writer and lecturer

Born "somewhere near 1844" at the Humboldt Sink in what is now western Nevada, Sarah Winnemucca was the daughter of Chief Winnemucca (Poito). Her father was a shaman and her grandfather, being a recognized chief of the northern Paiutes, helped to earn her the nickname from the press of "Paiute Princess".

Sarah's grandfather, Chief Truckee was enthusiastic about the arrival of white people in the western part of the United States. He guided John C. Frémont during his 1843-45 survey and map-making expedition across the Great Basin to California. Later he fought in the Mexican-American War, earning many white friends. Sarah's initial experience of white people was one mixed with awe and fear. Her grandfather took her with him on a trip to the Sacramento, California area (a trip her father, who remained skeptical of whites, refused to make). Later her grandfather placed her in the household of William Ormsby of Carson City, Nevada to be educated. Sarah Winnemucca soon became one of very few Paiutes in Nevada able to read and write English.

William Ormsby was later killed in action at the first battle of the Pyramid Lake War when the militia force he led was annihilated by a Paiute force led by Sarah's cousin Numaga. Sarah's book tells how her brother Natchez unsuccessfully tried to save Ormsby by faking his death. Her father and brother both fought on the Paiute side.

After the war, Sarah's family moved to the Malheur Reservation which was designated a reservation for the Northern Paiute and Bannock Indians by a series of Executive Orders issued by President Ulysses S. Grant. Sarah taught in a local school and acted as interpreter for Indian Agent Samuel Parrish. Parrish worked well with the Paiutes, and established a coherent and well-managed agricultural program. Unfortunately, other agents assigned to the Northwest tribes would prove not to be as ethical or easy to work with.

Bannock War

After four years, Parrish was replaced by agent William Rinehart, who failed to pay Paiute workers for agricultural labor in commonly held fields, and alienated many tribal leaders. Conditions at the Malheur Reservation quickly became intolerable. Sarah's book tells how the Indian Agent sold many of the supplies intended for the people to local whites. Much of the good land on the reservation was also illegally expropriated by white settlers. In 1878 virtually all of the people on the reservation left it in order to find better land and another source of subsistence. The Bannock tribes then began raiding isolated white settlements in southern Oregon and northern Nevada, triggering the Bannock War.

During the Bannock War, Sarah worked as a translator for the U.S. Army. She also describes scouting and message-carrying duties that she performed on behalf of the Army. Her description of engagements is frequently comical - according to her account both the Bannock and the Army soldiers liked each other so much that they rarely shot to kill. Sarah was highly regarded by the officers she worked for, and her book includes letters of recommendation from several of them.

In her autobiography, she recounts the story of raiding a Bannock camp at night in order to rescue her father and brother being held captive by the warring tribe of Bannocks. She said of this brave escapade, "It was the hardest work I did for the army." Unfortunately, Sarah's army experience was met with little reward and more disappointments for her people.

Yakama Reservation

Sarah Winnemucca – daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca

Following the Bannock War, the Northern Paiute bands she was associated with were deemed untrustworthy and forced to march to the Yakama Indian Reservation (in Washington Territory), where they endured great deprivation. Sarah went there with them to serve as a translator, although as she had a job she was not required to live on a reservation. Upon observing their difficulties there, she began to lecture across California and Nevada on the plight of her people. During the winter of 1879 and 1880, she and her father visited Washington D.C. and gained permission from Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schulz, for the Paiutes to return to Malheur at their own expense. Her and her father also met briefly with President Rutherford B. Hayes. However, the promise of land at Malheur Reservation went unfulfilled for years. Sarah was bitterly disappointed by the orders from agent Wilbur, quoted below, stating that her people could not leave the Yakama Indian Reservation.

Knowing the temper of the people through whom they must pass, still smarting from the barbarities of the war two years previous, and that the Piutes, utterly destitute of everything, must subsist themselves on their route by pillage, I refused permission for them to depart . . . and soon after, on being more correctly informed of the state of affairs, the Hon. Secretary revoked his permission though no determination as to their permanent location was arrived at. This was a great disappointment to the Piutes and the greatest caution and care was necessary in dealing with them.
Report of Yakama Agent, James H. Wilbur
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Year 1881, p. 174 and 175.
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest

In 1884, she travelled to the East Coast once again, in order to testify before Congress. She asked that the Paiutes be given lands and citizenship. She also spoke before the Senate Subcommittee on Indian afffairs. On July 6, 1884 the Senate passed a bill which enabled the Paiutes to return to Pyramid Lake but not to their preferred location, the Malheur Reservation.

Lectures and writing

While lecturing in San Francisco, California, Sarah met and married Lewis H. Hopkins, an Indian Department employee. (She had two previous short-lived marriages to white men.) In 1883, they traveled east where Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins delivered nearly three hundred lectures. In Boston, the sisters Elizabeth Peabody and Mary Peabody Mann, wife of the educator Horace Mann, began to promote her speaking career. The latter helped her to prepare her lecture materials into Life Among the Piutes, which was published in 1883.

Sarah's husband supported his wife's efforts by gathering material for the book at the Library of Congress. However, her husband's tuberculosis combined with his gambling addicition left Sarah with little financial reward for all her efforts.

After returning to Nevada, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins pursued her dream of building a school for Indian children, hoping to promote the Indian culture and language. The school was forced to close after a few years when the Dawes Act of 1887 was passed, which granted Native Americans citizenship, while also requiring Indian children to attend English-speaking boarding schools. Despite a bequest from Mary Peabody Mann and efforts to turn the school into a technical training center, Sarah's funds were depleted by the time of her husband's death in 1887, and she spent the last four years of her life retired from public activity. She died at her sister's home in Henry's Lake, Nevada of tuberculosis. She was only 47 years old.

Commemorations

Sarah Winnemucca
(NSHC statue)

In 2005, Sarah Winnemucca's statue was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol by the state of Nevada.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Further Reading

  • Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Henry Holt & Co. (1970) ISBN 0805066349

External links and references


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