Sarah Winnemucca, Life Among the Piutes: their wrongs and claims (1883/1994)
Content warning:
Death, discrimination and bigotry, war and displacement
Synopsis
Life Among the Piutes: their wrongs and claims by Sarah Winnemucca was first published in 1883. This text is one of the first, if not the first, autobiographies to have been written in English by a Native American woman. Life Among the Piutes details experiences from Winnemucca’s life, as well as those of her tribe located across Eastern Oregon and Western Nevada. In a style reminiscent of Native American oral tradition, Winnemucca reaches out to her audience with stories she hopes will foster a greater understanding of her people. She begins the autobiography with an account of her tribe's first interactions with white settlers. She explains how her grandfather, the chief of the entire Piute nation, was insistent on welcoming these settlers as their long lost “white brothers”. Winnemucca recounts an Indigenous creation story that claims that at the beginning of the world, there were only four beings; two girls and two boys. One boy and one girl had darker skin, while the other two were white. The children of these first people grew to cross one another and often fought. Due to this cruelty, their parents decided to separate the children to opposite sides of the world. For this reason, Winnemucca’s grandfather advocated for welcoming the settlers as kin. Winnemucca recalls the initially wary yet peaceful interactions between the Piutes and the settlers. However, the peace ultimately did not last. And yet even in the face of colonial violence, she shares how her grandfather’s dying wish was for her to learn English and bridge the gap between the two cultures. Winnemucca fulfills her grandfather’s wish by becoming fluent in five languages by the age of fourteen, and going on to do meaningful activism on behalf of her tribe as a lecturer and translator. It is through this work that she played a vital role in nineteenth-century Indian policy. After the Bannock War, the Northern Piutes were forcefully relocated to Yakima, Washington. Winnemucca dedicated many years of her life to lobbying the United States government and rallying public support for the return of her people to the Malheur reservation in Southeastern Oregon. Winnemucca ends her autobiography with a direct plea to white Americans to petition to the U.S. Congress for the restoration of the ancestral lands of the Northern Piutes. Life Among the Piutes is a valuable piece of Oregon history that continues to keep the memory of Sarah Winnemucca alive.
Essay
Life Among the Piutes showcases Sarah Winnemucca’s direct influence over Oregon history. Winnemucca offers readers a window into the past, and sheds light on what life was like for the Northern Piutes in Eastern Oregon during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Winnemucca shares memories of her people fleeing to the mountains when they heard news of settlers murdering people in other tribes. She recalls the brutal deaths of her two uncles, and a massacre committed by a band of white volunteer cavalry that killed her mother. Winnemucca also addresses the physical and sexual abuse of Native women as a tool of colonization, as well as the systemic violence of forced relocations. And yet she never gave up on honoring her grandfather’s dying wish. Through Winnemucca’s writing, it is clear that she dedicated her life to acting as a bridge between cultures while fighting for Indigenous rights. Life Among the Piutes should serve as a reminder of the extreme hardships Indigenous communities have been forced to endure in Oregon, and that the fight for Indigenous sovereignty is ongoing. Considering the text’s status as the first autobiography to be written and published by a Native American woman, it is too important not to include as a part of Oregon’s literary history.
Author Bio
Sarah Winnemucca was a Northern Paiute activist and educator who had a direct impact on nineteenth-century Indian policy. She was born around 1844 in what is now Western Nevada. In addition to her activism, Winnemucca witnessed and participated in armed conflicts with non-Indigenous immigrants and settlers. She also observed the new systems of education and government introduced at the time, and gave more than 400 lectures across the United States and Europe to gain support for the Paiutes. It is her activism and work as a translator that eventually led to her people returning to Southeastern Oregon after their forced relocation. However, she was also a controversial figure, with some people seeing her as a tool for the U.S. military, and others appreciating her advocacy for better conditions on local reservations. Winnemucca completed Life Among the Piutes only eight years before she died of tuberculosis in 1891.
Further Reading
Sally Zanjani, Sarah Winnemucca (2001)
- This biography dives deeper into Winnemucca’s personal life and advocacy.
Laura Berg, The First Oregonians (2007)
- Provides essays and oral histories about forced relocation and assimilation.