WEBVTT - Sarah Winnemucca, Part 1 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.720 of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:16.520 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.280 Today we are going to talk about Sarah Winnemucca, who 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.400 was Northern Paiute and was born not long before her 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.320 band had their first contact with people of European descent. 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.800 That happened in the middle of the nineteenth century, which 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.479 means that she lived through a lot, and a lot 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.519 of what she lived through was violent and horrifying. She 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.880 spent a lot of her adult life trying to advocate 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:46.559 for the Northern Piute. Although her legacy in that regard 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.680 has some complexities, there's enough that happened and enough complexities 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:56.360 that this blossomed into a two part episode. Sarah Winnemaka's 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.360 name in the Northern Paiute language was Tony Tonige and 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.760 that means shellflower, and she published her book under the 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.200 name Sarah Winnemaca Hopkins, which was her married name at 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.760 the time. The name Winnamacca means giver, and in addition 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.720 to her use of it as a surname, it was 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:19.560 also used by multiple men in her family, including her grandfather, father, 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:24.320 and brother. So to try to avoid confusion, we are 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.440 going to refer to her mostly as Sarah, to her 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:33.400 father as Winnemacca, and to her grandfather and brother as 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:35.680 other names that they were also known by, and those 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.160 are Trucky for her grandfather and Natchez for her brother. 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.120 Both of those are probably nicknames that were given to 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:47.039 them by white people. Trucky probably came from a Northern 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:50.640 Payte word meaning alright, was something that they heard him 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.440 say a lot, and the Natchez came from the northern 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:57.800 Payete word for boy, because that was how his father 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.040 would refer to him in front of white people and 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:02.520 be like, Okay, you can talk to my boy about that. 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:06.920 They are also though names that Sarah used for them 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:11.160 in her book and other writings. The term Piute is 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:15.640 used to describe multiple distinct Numic speaking peoples from the 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:19.920 Great Basin region of western North America. That's the watersheds 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.120 surrounded by mountains and plateaus that includes most of what 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:29.440 is now Nevada, as well as adjacent parts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, California, 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:34.760 and northwestern Mexico. The name Piute comes from Spanish, possibly 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.519 from the same origins as the word Ute, which is 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.640 used for another Numic speaking people of this region and 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:44.560 is also the origin of the name Utah. The Northern 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.320 and Southern Piute are two distinct peoples, and multiple Northern 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:53.760 and Southern Pyute bands still exist today. Although Piute isn't 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.560 the name these bands and tribes chose for themselves, it 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.960 is one that many of them use. The Northern Piute 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:06.080 referred to themselves as Nimah, meaning the People. Their ancestral 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:12.160 homeland includes what's now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeastern Oregon. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.480 Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake in what's now 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:20.960 Nevada around eighteen forty four, although she wasn't sure exactly when. 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:26.440 At that time, Mexico claimed most of the territory where 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:30.440 her people lived. In her book Life among the Piutes, 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.440 Their Wrongs and Claims, she describes the Northern Piute as 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:37.520 scattered all over what is now known as Nevada before 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.600 she was born. Much of the beginning of the book 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.160 is about the Northern Piute's first encounters with white people, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.640 which started when she was still a baby. These were 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.280 not the first white people ever to arrive in the 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.240 Great Basin that had happened at least twenty years before, 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.760 but they were the first ones her grandfather, known as 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:01.120 Tracy mentioned earlier as Trucky or Old Winnemucca, personally saw. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.400 In her words quote, my grandfather was chief of the 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.160 entire Piute nation and was camped near Humboldt Lake with 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.160 a small portion of his tribe when a party traveling 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:16.159 eastward from California was seen coming. When the news was 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.599 brought to my grandfather, he asked what they looked like. 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:21.680 When told that they had hair on their faces and 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.040 were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.800 and cried aloud. My white brothers, My long looked for 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:33.480 white brothers, have come at last. This description of her 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:37.839 grandfather as the chief of the entire Piute nation doesn't 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:41.480 really capture the full story. The Northern Piute were made 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.919 up of bands of families, with each band having a headman. 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.320 The headman made some decisions along with a council of elders, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.520 but often the consensus of the entire band was involved. 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:58.520 Different people also served as leaders for different specific functions, 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.080 like being the leader of a h hunting party, or 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.400 in the time of war. Sometimes, if there was a 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.880 reason for multiple bands to come together, someone might act 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.479 as the primary mediator and counselor among them, but that 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.120 responsibility lasted only as long as it needed to. It 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.520 was not a permanent situation. White newcomers to the area, 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.400 on the other hand, expected there to be some kind 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:27.320 of centralized leadership governing an entire tribe, so they assumed 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.080 Trucky was chief or king of all the Northern Piutes. 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.839 That fed into white people seeing Trucky and his whole 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:39.880 family as authority figures, which then affected their relationship with 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.200 the rest of their tribe. So we don't fully know 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.720 Sarah Winnemucka's thought process behind describing her grandfather in this 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.440 way like he was important, she gave him a different 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.320 degree of importance than really he would have had among 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.000 the Northern Piute, And there were definitely people who thought 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.719 it was really self serving and self for grandizing. But 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:05.479 this book, along with all of Sarah Winnemucca's other writing 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.120 and speeches, was created with the goal of getting white 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:13.440 people's support to help her tribe. Describing herself and her 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.719 family in this way suggested to her audience that she 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.279 deserved their respect and their admiration, or at the very least, 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:24.160 their interest, and it suggested that she had the kind 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:27.160 of status that would allow her to speak on her 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:28.080 people's behalf. 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.840 To return to what Tracy read just a moment ago, 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.479 Trucky saw the newcomers not only as brothers, but brothers 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:41.680 whose arrival he had been eagerly anticipating. Sarah described him 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.400 telling a story about their people's origins involving two boys 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.720 and two girls, one of each dark and the other white. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.560 In the context of this story, Trucky thought the arrival 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:55.520 of white people to what's now Nevada was going to 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.799 heal an ancient wound between the descendants of these two pairs. 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.320 Trucky met and made friends with people like Captain John Fremont, 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.000 who was on an expedition to map the Great Basin region. 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.360 Trucky and eleven other Payute men went with him into 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.400 Mexican Territory to support a group of Americans in a 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.600 rebellion against Mexican authorities, which came to be known as 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.880 the Bear Flag Revolt. He returned to Pyute Territory after 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:29.520 the Mexican American War with stories of how beautiful California was, 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.880 and he also carried a letter of introduction from Fremont, 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.040 which he used to basically open doors for himself and 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.520 his people when he encountered white authority figures. Later on 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.800 in her book, Sarah described this as a talking paper 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.360 and Trucky called it his rag friend. Not long after 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:54.080 rejoining his band, Trucky returned to California with about thirty families. 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.600 While he was gone, words started to spread among the 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.640 Northern Pyute and other tribes about grit groups of white 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.120 people who were coming through and killing anyone who got 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:08.600 in their way. Indigenous people started fleeing into the mountains 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.679 to try to stay safe. At one point, Trucky's band 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.440 heard that there were white people coming, and Sarah described 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.440 trying to run away with her mother and her aunt, 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:23.120 along with her baby sister and a cousin. But Sarah 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.080 and her cousin just couldn't keep up. Sarah really was 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:30.000 too terrified to even move, so her mother and aunt 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.960 decided to bury the girls up to their necks and 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.400 cover their faces with sagebrush to hide them and protect 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:40.520 them from the sun. And Sarah's words quote, oh can 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.680 anyone imagine my feelings, buried alive, thinking every minute that 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.080 I was to be unburied and eaten up by the 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:52.160 people that my grandfather loved so much. Eventually, they thought 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.240 the danger had passed, and Sarah's mother and aunt came 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.600 back to retrieve her and her cousin. But then they 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:03.319 learned that white people had found and burned their winter supplies. Quote. 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:05.880 My father took some of his men during the night 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.120 to try and save some of it, but they could not. 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.959 It had burnt down before they got there. These were 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.240 the last white men that came along that fall. My 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.520 people talked fearfully that winter about those they called our 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:22.280 white brothers. My people said they had something like awful 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.920 thunder and lightning, and with that they killed everything that 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:30.880 came in their way. In Sarah's account, her father, Winnemucca, 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.800 was filling the role of chief in Trucky's absence, and 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.440 he started to have prophetic dreams about white people coming 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.840 and killing them all. A lot of people were afraid 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.280 not just of being killed, but also, as I alluded 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:49.280 to earlier, of being eaten. That possibly came from stories 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.480 of the Donner Party, which had become stranded in the 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:57.920 Sierra Nevada in October of eighteen forty six. Eventually, Winnemaca 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.320 recommended that their band moved the mountains where they would 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.720 usually go in the spring and summer to gather pine nuts, 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.360 and they would wait there until Trucky returned. When Trucky 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.520 got back, he continued to insist that the white people 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.080 were their brothers, even after a group of white men 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:19.480 killed several of their tribe while they were fishing. Eventually, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.960 Trucky decided to return to California, this time taking most 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.680 of his family with him. Sarah was probably about seven 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.760 at that point. This was a time when a lot 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.920 more white people were coming to and through the area, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.640 thanks in part to the California Gold Rush. By her 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.480 own account, Sarah was absolutely terrified of all the white 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.960 people they encountered along the way. In addition to the 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.520 traumatic experiences she'd already had, She thought their wide eyes 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.880 and facial hair made them look like owls. Her feelings 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.120 on this only started to change a little after she 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.040 got very sick and was nursed back to health by 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.640 a white woman. At first, Sarah thought that her illness 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.760 came from eating a sugary bread that some white people 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.000 had given to her, but it turned out that she 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.880 had gotten into some poison oak. This was something that 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:13.640 did not grow where she was from, but it's native 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.160 to the part of California that they were traveling through. 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.880 She was really miserable and her eyes were swollen shut. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.360 Sarah never really trusted white people in the way that 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.280 her grandfather did, but after this experience, she did start 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.319 to become more comfortable around them. At this point, there 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.120 is a six year gap in Sarah's account. Then, in 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:39.240 eighteen fifty seven, she and her sister went to work 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.160 for Major William Ormsby, who was an agent of the 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:46.720 Carson Valley Stage Company in Genoa in what is now Nevada. 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.240 She doesn't say which sister this was, but it was 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:53.480 probably her younger sister, Elma. Sarah would have been about 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.240 thirteen and her sister a couple of years younger. They 0:11:57.280 --> 0:12:01.000 were hired to be companions for William's daughter, Lizzy, and 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.840 they probably also did some domestic work. They may have 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.520 been allowed to sit in with Lizzie on her lessons, 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:09.839 which would mean that this was when Sarah learned to 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:13.200 read and write. This also may have been when she 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:16.480 started going by the name Sarah rather than Tony Taniga, 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:19.440 although it's not really clear when that happened. 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.560 In her book, Sarah describes this as a community in 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.800 which white and Indigenous people loved one another without any 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:32.240 violence or theft. Sarah considered Ormsby and his family to 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.599 be friends, especially after her parents joined the rest of 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.400 the family at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, which is northeast of 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.480 what's now Reno. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had set 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.120 aside land for a reservation for the Northern Piute at 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.880 Pyramid Lake. This happened a few years after the reservation 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:55.200 system was first established under the Indian Appropriations Act of 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:59.800 eighteen fifty one, although the reservation wasn't formally surveyed or 0:12:59.880 --> 0:13:03.120 like formally established until much later than this. 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.400 But that piece she described did not last, and we 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.280 will get to that after we pause for a sponsor break. 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.880 While Sarah Winnemucca and her sister were living with Major 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:27.480 William Ormsby, two white men from Genoa were robbed and 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.560 murdered while they were on their way to California to 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:35.600 buy supplies for the winter. The culprits stuck arrows into 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:37.920 the victim's wounds to try to make it look like 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:42.080 indigenous people had done it. Because Major Ormsby had a 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:47.079 trusting relationship with Trucky's Northern Paiute band, he summoned several 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:51.559 of them, including Sarah's brother and her cousin, to identify 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.760 the arrows. Sarah's account describes her cousin as war chief 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.480 and her brother as peace chief. During this time, her 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.079 cousin said the arrows were a type that was used 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:05.120 by the Washows, which is a tribe whose homelands are 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.640 in the region around Lake Tahoe. The Washo leader, who 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.920 spoke on their behalf, said that these were the Washo's arrows, 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:14.520 but that no one from his tribe could have killed 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.400 the two men because he knew where they all were 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.680 and no one was unaccounted for. But after this, three 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.080 Washo men were taken prisoner and then were shot by 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.440 white men as they tried to flee. Two of them 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:32.480 died of their injuries. Later on, after Sarah and her 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.680 sister had returned to their family, they learned that the 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.120 actual white perpetrators had been caught and hanged. 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.960 This whole situation led to conflict between Sarah's band and 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:47.200 the Washos. As the Washos tried to get some compensation 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:52.080 for the Piute's involvement in those two men's deaths. Sarah's 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.480 brother Natchez, said that they hadn't had anything to do 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.000 with the white people's actions, but he did eventually give 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:03.280 the washos All horse. In June of eighteen fifty nine, 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:07.600 a rich deposit of silver was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada, 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:11.320 which came to be known as the Comstock Load. This 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.800 led to a huge influx of white people into and 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:21.560 through Northern Pyute territory and increasing tensions and violence. Newcomers 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.840 also started clearing the native pinion trees to use them 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:28.400 for lumber and fuel. The nuts from these trees were 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:31.800 a staple food for the Northern Pyute and other indigenous 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.880 people of the region. White farmers also brought in pigs, 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.000 which ate root vegetables that the Northern Pyute and other 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.600 indigenous peoples depended on. The Winter of eighteen fifty nine 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.680 to eighteen sixty was brutal for the indigenous peoples of 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:50.120 the region, both because of the weather and because of 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:54.200 the loss of those critical food sources. Then, in May 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.280 of eighteen sixty two, Piute people were attacked by white 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.800 men at Williams Station, which was one of the Nevada 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.800 stops for the Pony Express. The Piutes rallied a force 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.480 to retaliate, which led Major Ormsby to muster a force 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:13.320 of his own in response. This was later known as 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.320 the Pyramid Lake War, and on May twelfth of eighteen sixty, 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:22.360 the Piutes defeated Ormsby's force, and Ormsby himself was killed. 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.560 Additional Federal forces were sent into the area, but the 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.520 Piute bands were able to hide in the desert canyons 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.360 and other places they were familiar with that the white 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.200 soldiers didn't really know how to reach. The Pyramid Lake 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:40.440 War temporarily forced the Pony Express to suspend service between 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:44.880 Carson City and Salt Lake City. In October of eighteen sixty, 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:49.400 Sarah's grandfather, Truckee, got sick and died, possibly as the 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:53.840 result of a tarantula bite. At his request, his funeral 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:58.040 and burial rights combined both Pyute and White Christian practices. 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.640 One of his final wish was also for Sarah and 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:04.560 her sister Elma to be sent to a convent school 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.280 in San Jose, California. They went briefly, but after a 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.720 few weeks, they were sent home because white parents complained 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.639 about their children being in school with two Indigenous girls. 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.840 It's possible that around this time Sarah got married to 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.040 a white man known as Snyder, who was the person 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.520 Truckie had entrusted with escorting her and her sister to 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.680 the convent school. Sarah would have been about sixteen, which 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:35.240 was considered to be a marriageable age. She does mention 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:37.760 Snyder in her book and in other writings, but she 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.560 really does not say anything to suggest that she was 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.640 married to him, although there are some other contemporary accounts 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:48.959 that did. In September of eighteen sixty four, when she 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.160 was about twenty, Sarah went with her father and brother 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:55.800 to Virginia City, Nevada, to try to raise money. Her 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:59.080 father spoke about their plight in the Northern Pyute language, 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.960 and she transfer for him. They managed to raise about 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.119 twenty five dollars, and this is when people started to 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:10.840 call her things like Princess Sarah. At various points after this, 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.600 she her father, and her brother did speaking engagements and 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:18.080 public performances to try to raise enough money for their 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:23.360 band to survive. In eighteen sixty six, a different Northern 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:28.360 Paiute band was accused of stealing cattle. In response, Captain 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.760 Almond Wells arrived and surrounded a group from Sarah's band 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.360 who were fishing at Mud Lake, which is also called 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:40.000 Winnemucca Lake. According to Wells, the people who were fishing 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.639 shot at him and he returned fire. But according to 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.560 Sarah's account, her father had taken all the young men hunting, 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:49.960 so the only people at Mud Lake at that time 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:55.240 were elderly people, women and babies. Wells's men killed twenty 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:58.720 nine Payutes and the only person to escape was Sarah's 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.760 sister Mary, who fled on horseback. Her mother and a 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.440 baby were killed. The account of this massacre in life 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.960 among the Piutes is flatly horrifying, and Sarah describes it 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.720 as almost killing her father win Amaca when he learned 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.400 about it, and while her sister Mary escaped the attack, 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:21.640 she died later on that winter in eighteen sixty eight, 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.399 Sarah received a written message from Lieutenant Aaron Jerome of 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.520 the eighth Cavalry, ordering her and her brother. 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.439 Natchez to meet with him to discuss the deaths of 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:37.040 two soldiers and reports of Piutes stealing horses. In Sarah's account, 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.280 This started after Indian agent Hugh Nugent had illegally sold 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.000 gunpowder to a Piute man who had then been killed 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:49.280 for possessing that gunpowder. Natchez was away when she got 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.119 the message, so the other Piutes wanted her to write 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:56.000 back rather than just sending a verbal message. She didn't 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.280 have anything to write with, so she improvised with a 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:04.480 sharpened s and fish blood for ink. After Natchez returned, 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:07.720 both of them went to meet with Captain Jerome. They 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:10.920 told him about what had happened with Nugent and the gunpowder. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.400 They reassured him that they were not involved in stealing 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:18.200 any horses. Not long after that, Jerome came to them again, 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:23.040 this time asking where Winnemucca was. Sarah explained that her 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.119 father had not been back to Pyramid Lake since the 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:29.359 massacre at Mud Lake had killed so many of his family. 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:34.040 Jerome asked them to bring Winnemaca to Camp McDermott, which 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:37.720 was near the border between Nevada and Oregon, and there 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.800 he said the army would offer him protection and supply 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:45.400 him with provisions. This led to Sarah and her brother Natchez, 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:49.040 going to Camp McDermott and eventually convincing Winnemaca to go 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:54.040 as well, along with about five hundred Northern Paiutes. Sarah 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.159 was hired as an official government interpreter for the camp, 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:00.399 and she was paid sixty five dollars a month. Her 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.000 brother also worked for the army as a scout, and 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:07.639 sometimes she worked with him. Jerome does seem to have 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.520 been sympathetic to the Paietes after their experiences with Nugent, 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.399 and he's one of the white authority figures that Sarah 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:19.479 generally trusted and believe treated her people fairly. It does 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.280 seem like they had more food and other resources at 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:25.679 McDermott than they had at Pyramid Lake, but this was 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.280 also a strategic move that was connected to a more 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.159 overarching US policy, as the federal government tried to force 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:38.960 all indigenous people to live on reservations. Warfare was ongoing 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:42.240 between the United States and a number of indigenous nations, 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.760 including the Bannock tribe, which has a lot of cultural, historical, 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.920 and linguistic connections to the Northern Paiute. In the wake 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:53.920 of these wars, people from multiple tribes and nations were 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.679 all being brought to Camp McDermott until they could be 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.840 placed on a reservation somewhere else. Some of the chiefs 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:02.959 and headmen who had already been brought to camp mc 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:06.560 Dermott didn't want to make decisions without Winnemucca there, so 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.040 while these efforts applied to all of the Northern Paiut, 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:15.479 Jerome was also looking for Winnemucca's band specifically. Sarah was 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.879 skilled and respected as an interpreter. During her lifetime, she 0:22:19.960 --> 0:22:25.680 became fluent in at least five languages, including Northern Paiut, Shoshone, English, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:31.040 and Spanish, but white people also criticized various aspects of 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:35.680 her behavior. At McDermott. She socialized with the soldiers, and 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:39.919 sometimes this included drinking and gambling. She also carried a 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.760 knife to protect herself, something that she had been doing 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:46.320 for years, starting after white men had tried to abduct 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.400 her older sister. At some point, she had heated disputes 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:55.280 with other people, and sometimes these disputes escalated into physical brawling. 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.439 As she became more and more publicly known, newspapers covered 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:04.119 these kinds of things with a tone of almost gleeful scandal, 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:07.560 and there were some incidents in which she was clearly 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:11.200 the victim and things were skewed against her like At 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:14.680 one point years later, a man tried to break into 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:17.800 her home and she defended herself with her knife, and 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:21.800 she was the one who faced charges rather than the 0:23:21.840 --> 0:23:25.919 man who tried to break in. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:30.879 so white society would have considered all of this unacceptable 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:33.679 behavior if a white woman was the person doing it, 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:37.200 but since it was an Indigenous woman, this was seen 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:41.439 with even more suspicion and scrutiny, and it fed into 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:45.400 like damaging stereotypes of what white people thought Indigenous women 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:49.920 were like. All of this scrutiny and sometimes insulting news 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:54.720 coverage increased with Sarah's growing prominence among white people, which 0:23:54.720 --> 0:24:07.320 we will get into more after a sponsor break. On 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:11.439 April fourth, seventeen eighty, Sarah Winnemucca wrote a letter to 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:16.600 Major Henry Douglas, Superintendent of Indian Fairs for Nevada. The 0:24:16.640 --> 0:24:19.439 commander at Camp McDermott had asked her to do this, 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:23.400 essentially to bring Douglas up to speed on the Northern Piete. 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.480 Douglas was impressed with this letter enough that he forwarded 0:24:27.520 --> 0:24:31.000 it to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington. The 0:24:31.080 --> 0:24:34.880 letter was also reprinted in a number of newspapers, including 0:24:34.880 --> 0:24:38.840 in Harper's Weekly, and that prompted other newspapers to print 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:44.399 responses that really attacked Sarah's morals and character. In this letter, 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:48.359 Sarah again described her father Winnemucca, as the head chief 0:24:48.480 --> 0:24:51.879 of the whole tribe. She described their time at the 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:56.639 Pyramid Lake Reservation, which she calls Trucky River. She wrote, quote, 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:59.440 if we had stayed there, it would be only to starve. 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:02.080 I think that if they had received what they were 0:25:02.240 --> 0:25:05.160 entitled to from the agents, they would never have left them. 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:08.800 So far as their knowledge of agriculture extends, they are 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:12.480 quite ignorant, as they have never had the opportunity of learning. 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:15.719 But I think if proper pains were taken that they 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:18.880 would willingly make the effort to maintain themselves by their 0:25:18.920 --> 0:25:22.080 own labor, providing they could be made to believe that 0:25:22.119 --> 0:25:25.520 the products were their own for their own use and comfort. 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:29.239 It is needless for me to enter into details as 0:25:29.320 --> 0:25:31.639 to how we were treated on the reservation while we 0:25:31.640 --> 0:25:34.320 were there. It is enough to say that we were 0:25:34.359 --> 0:25:37.359 confined to the reserve and had to live on what 0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:39.440