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= Sarah_Winnemucca =
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Introduction
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Sarah (née Winnemucca) Hopkins ( - October 17, 1891) was a Northern
Paiute writer, activist, lecturer, teacher, and school organizer. Her
Northern Paiute name was Thocmentony, also spelled Tocmetone, which
translates as "Shell Flower."
Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake, Nevada, into an
influential Northern Paiute family who led their community in pursuing
friendly relations with the arriving groups of Anglo-American
settlers. She was the daughter of Chief Winnemucca of the Paiute
nation and the granddaughter of Chief Truckee. At 16, Sarah studied at
a Catholic school in San Jose, California. When the Paiute War erupted
between the Pyramid Lake Paiute and the settlers, including some who
were friends of the Winnemucca family, Sarah and some of her family
traveled to San Francisco and Virginia City to escape the fighting.
They made a living performing onstage as "A Paiute Royal Family." In
1865, while the Winnemucca family was away, their band was attacked by
the U.S. cavalry, who killed 29 Paiutes, including Sarah's mother and
several members of her extended family.
At 27, Sarah began working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort
McDermit in 1871 as an interpreter. Subsequently, Winnemucca became an
advocate for the rights of Native Americans, traveling across the U.S.
to tell Anglo- Americans about the plight of her people. When the
Paiute were interned in a concentration camp at Yakima, Washington
after the Bannock War, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby
Congress and the executive branch for their release. She also served
U.S. forces as a messenger, interpreter, and guide, and as a teacher
for imprisoned Native Americans.
Winnemucca published 'Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims'
(1883), a book that is both a memoir and history of her people during
their first 40 years of contact with European Americans. It is
considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American
woman." Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as "one of the first
and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an
American Indian," frequently cited by scholars. Following the
publication of the book, Winnemucca toured the Eastern United States,
giving lectures about her people in New England, Pennsylvania, and
Washington, D.C. She returned to the West, founding a private school
for Native American children in Lovelock, Nevada.
Since the late 20th century, scholars have paid renewed attention to
Winnemucca for her accomplishments. In 1993, she was inducted
posthumously into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. In 2005, the state
of Nevada contributed a statue of her by sculptor Benjamin Victor to
the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
Winnemucca's legacy has been controversial. Some biographers have
wished to remember her primarily for her activism and social work to
better the conditions for her people, while others have criticized her
for her tendency to exaggerate her social status among the Paiute.
Among the Paiute, her assistance to the U.S. military at a time when
they were at war with the Paiute has been criticized, as has her
advocacy for assimilation of Natives to Anglo-American culture. Still,
Paiute have also recognized her social work and activism for
Indigenous rights.
Early life and family
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Born "somewhere near 1844" at Humboldt Lake in what is now western
Nevada, Sarah Winnemucca was the daughter of Winnemucca ('Poito'), a
Shoshone who had joined the Paiute through marriage, and his wife
'Tuboitonie'. Her father was an influential war chief of a small band
of about 150 Northern Paiute people. The town of Winnemucca, Nevada
was named after her father. Winnemucca's grandfather, 'Tru-ki-zo' or
'Truckee', had established positive relations with the European
Americans who started exploring in the area. He guided Captain John C.
Frémont during his 1843-45 survey and map-making expedition across the
Great Basin to California. Later, Truckee fought in the
Mexican-American War (1846-1848), earning many white friends and
leading the way for his extended family's relationships with European
Americans.
Sarah had an older sister Mary, younger brother Natchez, and sister
Elma. She and her family spent her early childhood in eastern Oregon
and western Nevada. She learned the ways of her people, including
fishing and gathering plants. At the age of six, Winnemucca traveled
with her family to near Stockton, California, where the adults worked
in the cattle industry. In 1857, her grandfather arranged for
Winnemucca (then 13) and her sister Elma to live and work in the
household of William Ormsby and his wife; he had a hotel and was a
civic leader of Carson City, Nevada. The couple wanted a companion for
their daughter, Lizzie. The Winnemucca girls also did domestic work in
the house. They had a chance to improve their English and learn more
about European-American ways. After having some time to assimilate the
difference between the two cultures, Winnemucca particularly began to
be at ease in going back and forth between Paiute and
European-American culture. She was one of the few Paiute in Nevada who
knew how to read and write English, and her family all spoke English.
She took on the English name Sarah. Winnemucca also spoke Spanish.
Pyramid Lake War and stage
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With the decreasing pressure of new migrants in the region attracted
to the Washoe silver finds, Old Winnemucca arranged in 1859 to have
his daughters returned to him again in Nevada. In 1860, open conflict
occurred. At Williams Station, two Paiute girls were kidnapped and
abused, leading the Paiute to kill five men at the station. Settlers
and miners organized a militia, with Major William Ormsby leading it
by default. He was killed by the Paiute in a disciplined confrontation
in the first event of the Pyramid Lake War. Settlers were alarmed at
how well the Paiute fought and the ill-prepared miners could not hold
their own. Young Winnemucca, Sarah's cousin, led the Paiute as a war
chief during the war.
The Paiute and whites reached a truce that lasted four years, but it
was a difficult time for the Paiute who lived on the Pyramid Lake
Reservation, giving up their hunter-gatherer way of life. After the
first year, they did not receive the promised supplies from the
government and did not have the training needed to be effective
farmers. Many Paiute starved to death. After Winnemucca begged for
food for her people, military officials at Camp McDermit (later Fort
McDermit) sent supplies.
As a mark of development, Nevada was established as a distinct U.S.
Territory, and James W. Nye was appointed as its first governor. When
he came to the territory, he went to the Pyramid Lake Reservation,
where he met Old Winnemucca, Young Winnemucca and the Paiute, who put
on a grand display. In October 1860, their grandfather Truckee died of
a tarantula bite.
For the next five years (1860-1865), Winnemucca and her family
frequently traveled away from the reservation, performing on stage,
either in Virginia City, Nevada at Maguire's Opera House, or in San
Francisco. They were billed as the "Paiute Royal Family." By this
time, her father had taken a second, younger wife, with whom he had a
young son.
In Nevada, U.S. forces repeatedly acted against Native Americans to
"remind them of who was in charge." The Natives were repeatedly
accused of raids and cattle stealing. In 1865, Almond B. Wells led a
Nevada Volunteer cavalry in indiscriminate raids across the northern
part of the state, attacking Paiute bands. While Winnemucca and her
father were in Dayton, Nevada, Wells and his men attacked Old
Winnemucca's camp, killing 29 of the 30 persons in the band, who were
old men, women and children.
The chief's two wives (including Winnemucca's mother) and infant son
were killed. Although Winnemucca's sister Mary escaped from camp, she
died later that winter due to the severe conditions. Her younger
sister Elma was out of the area, as she had been adopted by a French
family in Marysville, California. There Elma Winnemucca married John
Smith, a white man, and moved with him to a white community in Montana
and, later, Idaho.
In 1868, about 490 Paiute survivors moved to a Camp McDermit, on the
Nevada-Oregon border. They sought protection from the U.S. Army
against the Nevada Volunteers. In 1872, the federal government
established the Malheur Reservation in eastern Oregon, designated by
President Ulysses S. Grant for the Northern Paiute and Bannock peoples
in the area. Three bands of Paiute moved there at the time. In 1875,
Winnemucca, her brother Natchez and his family, and their father Old
Winnemucca moved there, too.
Teaching and interpreter
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In 1871, at the age of 27, Winnemucca began working in the Bureau of
Indian Affairs at Fort McDermitt as an interpreter, and later was
invited to interpret at the Malheur Reservation by Indian Agent Samuel
B. Parrish. She found in observing Parrish that he worked well with
the Paiute; he encouraged them in learning some new ways and helped
them plant crops that could support the people, establishing a
well-managed agricultural program. He had a school built at the
reservation, and Winnemucca became an assistant teacher. She was also
an interpreter for the US Army and a lecturer across the western
United States. In the 1880s she lectured across the eastern United
States and taught at Fort Vancouver and Peabody Institute in Lovelock,
Nevada. Carpenter, Cari M. “Sarah Winnemucca Goes to Washington.”
American Indian
Quarterly 40, no. 2 (April 1, 2016): 87-108.
doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.40.2.0087.
First marriage
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Winnemucca married Edward Bartlett, a former First Lieutenant in the
Army, on January 29, 1872, at Salt Lake City, Utah. He abandoned her,
and she returned to Camp McDermit. In 1876, after having moved to
Malheur Reservation, she got a divorce and filed to take back her name
of Winnemucca, which the court granted. In the divorce decree, Sarah
stated what she did to support herself when her husband left her with
no money, writing, "I did sewing. I made gloves for a living."
Bannock War
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Parrish was replaced in the summer of 1876 by agent William V.
Rinehart. The Paiute were sorry to see Parrish leave. A proponent of
extermination-style warfare, Rinehart emphasized keeping the Paiute
under his thumb. He reversed many of the policies that Parrish had
initiated, telling the Paiute the reservation land belonged to the
government. He failed to pay their workers for agricultural labor in
communal fields, and alienated many tribal leaders. Conditions at the
Malheur Reservation quickly became intolerable.
In her 1883 book, Winnemucca recounted that Rinehart sold supplies
intended for the Paiute people to local whites. Much of the good land
on the reservation was illegally expropriated by white settlers. In
1878, virtually all of the Paiute and Bannock people left the
reservation because of these abuses and their difficulties in living.
The Bannock from southern Idaho had left the Fort Hall Reservation due
to similar problems. They moved west, raiding isolated white
settlements in southern Oregon and northern Nevada, triggering the
Bannock War (1878). The degree to which Northern Paiute people
participated with the Bannock is unclear. Winnemucca wrote that she
and several other Paiute families were held hostage by the Bannock
during the war.
During the Bannock War, Winnemucca worked as a translator for General
Oliver O. Howard of the U.S. Army, whom she had met during his visit
to the reservation; she also acted as a scout and messenger. According
to her account, the Bannock warriors and the Army soldiers liked each
other so much that they rarely shot to kill. For whatever reason,
casualties were relatively few. Winnemucca was highly regarded by the
officers she worked for, and she included letters of recommendation
from several of them in her 1883 book. Impressed by many of the
officers, Winnemucca began to support the U.S. Army's position to have
the military take over administration of the Indian reservations,
rather than political appointees.
Move to Yakama Reservation
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Sarah Winnemucca, performing as "Princess Winnemucca", daughter of
Chief Winnemucca
Following the Bannock War, the Northern Paiute bands were ordered from
Nevada to the Yakama Indian Reservation (in eastern Washington
Territory), where they endured great deprivation. A total of 543
Paiute were interned in what has been described as a "concentration
camp."
Winnemucca accompanied them to serve as a translator. Since she had an
official job, she was not required to live on a reservation. Outraged
by the harsh conditions forced on the Paiute, she began to lecture
across California and Nevada on the plight of her people. During the
winter of 1879 and 1880, she, her father, and two other Winnemucca
visited Washington, D.C. to lobby for release of the Paiute from the
Yakama Reservation. They gained permission from Secretary of the
Interior, Carl Schurz, for the Paiute to be allowed to return to
Malheur, at their own expense. Instead, the government decided to
"discontinue" the Malheur Reservation in 1879, closing it.
Second marriage
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In 1881, General Oliver O. Howard hired Winnemucca to teach Shoshone
prisoners held at Vancouver Barracks. While there, she met and became
close to Lieutenant Lewis H. Hopkins, an Indian Department employee.
They married that year in San Francisco. Winnemucca's husband had
contributed to his wife's efforts by gathering material for the book
at the Library of Congress. But, he ran through Winnemucca's money.
Her husband died of tuberculosis on October 18, 1887, and was buried
in Lovelock at the Lone Mountain Cemetery. Despite a bequest from Mary
Peabody Mann and efforts to turn the school into a technical training
center, Winnemucca was struggling financially by the time of her
husband's death in 1887.
Lectures and writing
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Sarah Winnemucca
In 1883, the Hopkinses traveled east, where Winnemucca delivered
nearly 300 lectures throughout major cities of the Northeast and
Mid-Atlantic, seeking to heighten awareness of injustice against
Native Americans. The press reported her talks and sometimes referred
to her as the "Paiute Princess" or "Indian princess".
In Boston, Winnemucca met the sisters Elizabeth Peabody and Mary
Peabody Mann, the latter married to the educator Horace Mann; they
began to promote her speaking career. In addition, the two women
helped her to compile and prepare her lecture materials for
publication as 'Life Among the Piutes'. Her book was published in
1883, the "first known autobiography written by a Native American
woman" and the first U.S. copyright registration secured by a Native
American woman.
After returning to Nevada in 1884, Winnemucca spent a year lecturing
in San Francisco. When she returned again to Pyramid Lake, she and her
brother built a school for Indian children at Lovelock, Nevada, in
order to promote the Paiute culture and language. The Peabody Indian
School, named for their benefactor Mary Peabody Mann in Boston,
operated for a couple of years. Changes in federal policy following
what was considered the success of the Carlisle Indian School prompted
the federal government to promote education for Native American
children at English-language boarding schools. Winnemucca's school was
closed in 1887 and the children were transferred to a facility in
Grand Junction, Colorado.
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 required allotment of communal lands
on reservations to individual households to force assimilation of
tribes.
Later years and death
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Winnemucca spent the last four years of her life retired from public
activity. She died of tuberculosis at her sister Elma Smith's home at
Henry's Lake, Idaho.
Legacy
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*Anthropologist Omer C. Stewart has described Winnemucca's book about
the Paiute as "one of the first and one of the most enduring
ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian," frequently cited
by scholars through the 20th century.
*In 1993, Sarah Winnemucca was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall
of Fame.
*In 1994, a Washoe County, Nevada elementary school was named in her
honor.
*In 1994, Sarah Winnemucca was inducted into the National Women's Hall
of Fame.
*In 2005, the state of Nevada contributed a statue of Winnemucca to
the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
Works
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By Winnemucca
*1870, . The original letter was addressed to Major H. Douglass.
Forwarded by him, with his report as Indian Superintendent, Nevada, to
Ely Samuel Parker.
*1883, (new edition in 1994 )
*1885,
With Winnemucca or her papers or lecturers
*1886 pamphlet,
*2015 . Based upon an anthology of publications about Winnemucca and
her lectures .
Further reading
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* Carpenter, C. M. (2003). "Tiresias Speaks: Sarah Winnemucca's Hybrid
Selves and Genres." 'legacy', 19(1), 71-80. Chicago
*Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. 'The Newspaper Warrior: Sarah Winnemucca
Hopkins's Campaign for American Indian Rights, 1864-1891' edited by
Cari M. Carpenter and Carolyn Sorisio. (U of Nebraska Press, 2015)
[
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Newspaper-Warrior,676064.aspx
excerpt]; anthology of her writings from her 1864 to 1891, focusing
on the years 1879 to 1887.
* Lape, Noreen Groover. "'I Would Rather Be with My People, but Not to
Live with Them as They Live': Cultural Liminality and Double
Consciousness in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's" Life among the Piutes:
Their Wrongs and Claims," 'American Indian Quarterly' (1998): 259-279.
* Lukens, M. (1998). Her" Wrongs and Claims": Sarah Winnemucca's
Strategic Narratives of Abuse. 'Wíčazo Ša Review', 93-108.
* Morrison, Dorothy Nafus. 'Chief Sarah: Sarah Winnemucca's Fight for
Indian Rights.' Oregon Historical Society Press, 1990.
* Powell, M. (2005). "Princess Sarah, the Civilized Indian: The
Rhetoric of Cultural Literacies in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's 'Life
Among the Piutes'." 'Rhetorical Women: Roles and Representations',
63-80.
* Powell, M. D. (2006). Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins: Her Wrongs and
Claims. 'American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word
Magic', 69-91.
*Pritzker, Barry M. [
https://books.google.com/books?id=uiCWatRVT0gC 'A
Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples'], Oxford
University Press, 2000.
* Scherer, Joanna Cohan. "The public faces of Sarah Winnemucca."
'Cultural Anthropology' 3, no. 2 (1988): 178-204.
* Scholten, P. C. (1977). "Exploitation of ethos: Sarah Winnemucca and
Bright Eyes on the lecture tour," 'Western Journal of Speech
Communication', 41(4), 233-244.
* Tisinger, Danielle. "Textual Performance and the Western Frontier:
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's" Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and
Claims"." 'Western American Literature' (2002): 170-194.
External links
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*[
http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/life_among_the_piutes/ Sarah
Winnemucca Hopkins, 'Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims']
(1883). Full e-text online.
*[
http://www.unr.edu/nwhp/bios/women/winnemucca.htm Biography: "Sarah
Winnemucca"] , Nevada Women's History Project, University of Nevada,
Reno
*[
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/hopkinsSarah.php 'Voices from
the Gaps:' "Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins"], University of Minnesota
website
*
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