(Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844 1891) was a Northern ...)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844 1891) was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator. Winnemucca published Life Among the Paiutes: 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.
Life Among the Piutes: The First Autobiography of a Native American Woman: First Meeting of Piutes and Whites, Domestic and Social Moralities of Piutes, ... Reservation of Pyramid and Muddy Lakes
(Life Among the Paiutes is considered the "first known aut...)
Life Among the Paiutes is considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman." This is both an autobiographic memoir and history of the Paiute people during their first forty years of contact with European Americans. It Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as "one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian."
Contents:
First Meeting of Piutes and Whites
Domestic and Social Moralities
Wars and Their Causes
Captain Truckee's Death
Reservation of Pyramid and Muddy Lakes
The Malheur Agency
The Bannock War
The Yakima Affair
The Newspaper Warrior: Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's Campaign for American Indian Rights, 1864-1891
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Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Northern Paiute) has long bee...)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Northern Paiute) has long been recognized as an important nineteenth-century American Indian activist and writer. Yet her acclaimed performances and speaking tours across the United States, along with the copious newspaper articles that grew out of those tours, have been largely ignored and forgotten.
The Newspaper Warrior presents new material that enhances public memory as the first volume to collect hundreds of newspaper articles, letters to the editor, advertisements, book reviews, and editorial comments by and about Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. This anthology gathers together her literary production for newspapers and magazines from her 1864 performances in San Francisco to her untimely death in 1891, focusing on the years 1879 to 1887, when Winnemucca Hopkins gave hundreds of lectures in the eastern and western United States; published her book, Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883); and established a bilingual school for Native American children.
Editors Cari M. Carpenter and Carolyn Sorisio masterfully assemble these exceptional and long-forgotten articles in a call for a deeper assessment and appreciation of Winnemucca Hopkinss stature as a Native American author, while also raising important questions about the nature of Native American literature and authorship.
(Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (1844 1891) was a Northern Pai...)
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (1844 1891) was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator.
Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake, Nevada, into an influential Paiute family who were leading their community in pursuing friendly relations with the arriving groups of Anglo-American settlers. She was sent to study in a Catholic school in Santa Clara, 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 on stage as "A Paiute Royal Family". In 1865 while the Winnemucca family was away, their band was attacked by the US cavalry, who killed 29 Paiutes, including Sarah's mother and several members of her extended family.
Subsequently Winnemucca became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, traveling across the US 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, DC to lobby Congress and the executive branch for their release. She also served US forces as a messenger, interpreter and guide, and as a teacher for imprisoned Native Americans.
Winnemucca published Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), a book that is both a memoir and history of her people during their first forty years of contact with European Americans. It is considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman."
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 to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
In all the glimpses Mrs. Hopkins gives of the religion and moralities of the Piutes, we see the moral riches of their nature and traditions. Old Heckerwelder, in his history of the North American Indians, gave a multitude of facts of a like kind ; but it is only an Indian and an Indian woman who could do full justice to the subject. The story of this Indians devotion to her people must touch the hearts of all philanthropic people. It is one of the best known and most authentic books on Indian conditions ever published.
CONTENTS.
I.FIRST MEETING OF PAIUTES AND WHITES
II.DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL MORALITIES
III.WARS AND THEIR CAUSES
IV.CAPTAIN TRUCKEE'S DEATH
V.RESERVATION OF PYRAMID AND MUDDY LAKES
VI.THE MALHEUR AGENCY
VII.THE BANNOCK WAR
VIII.THE YAKIMA AFFAIR
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator.
Background
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was born near Humboldt Lake about 1844 in the part of Utah Territory that later became Nevada, the fourth child of her father, Chief Winnemucca, called Old Winnemucca and mother, Tuboitonie. They named her Thocmetony, meaning Shell Flower. Later she took the name Sarah, a name she kept the rest of her life. The homelands of the Northern Paiutes extended over parts of present day Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. Over those lands, the Paiutes hunted, gathered seeds (especially pine nuts), and fished in the rivers and lakes. During Winnemucca's lifetime, however, they were crowded onto reservations and deprived of much of their land.
Education
She was sent to study in a Catholic school in Santa Clara, California.
Career
Winnemucca's own friendship may have been influenced by her maternal grandfather, the leader of the tribe. He was known as Truckee, from a Paiute word meaning "good" or "all right. " The name was given to him by Captain Fremont when they met soon after Winnemucca was born. Truckee and eleven Paiutes went with Fremont to California to help fight Mexican influence there. They returned full of stories of the ways of white people. Truckee, impressed by Fremont and the culture he had been exposed to in California, told his people to welcome the "white brothers. " As more emigrants moved west, however, the Paiutes heard horror stories about the killing of Indians. They apparently also heard a garbled account of the Donner Party, who survived a winter trapped in the Sierra Nevadas by eating their dead. These stories terrified Winnemucca. Her fears were intensified by an experience she described in her book Life Among the Piutes. Truckee was in California, and Old Winnemucca had become chief. One morning, hearing that white men were coming, the entire tribe fled in terror. Tuboitonie, who was carrying a baby on her back and pulling Winnemucca by the hand, found that she couldn't keep up. She and another mother decided to hide their older children by partially burying them in the ground and arranging branches to shade their faces. "Oh, can any one imagine my feelings, " Winnemucca says, "buried alive, thinking every minute that I was to be unburied and eaten up by the people that my grandfather loved so much?" At nightfall, the mothers returned and dug up the girls. It was an experience Winnemucca never forgot. It was long before she would look at white people or forgive her grandfather for his love of them. Finding that the white men had set fire to the tribe's stores of food and that all their winter supply was gone, Chief Winnemucca could no longer agree with his father-in-law that the white men were his "brothers. " Winnemucca's distrust of white folk lasted for some time. In the spring of 1850, Truckee traveled again to California, taking fifty people, including Tuboitonie and her children. Carrying a letter of commendation given him by Fremont, Truckee was able to get friendly receptions and occasional gifts of food or clothing from the settlers they met. Winnemucca, herself, hid from the strangers, refusing to speak or to look at them. Her attitude changed, however, after she fell sick with poison oak and was nursed back to health by a white woman. Although she never came to believe as strongly as her grandfather in the goodness of the "white brothers, " she did try to understand them and to learn about their customs, without losing touch with her own traditions. Serves as Interpreter and Scout as the Wars Begin Winnemucca showed an early facility for languages, learning English, Spanish, and several Indian languages during the time she spent in California. She also came in close contact with white people when she, her mother and her sisters started to work in the houses of white families. When Winnemucca was thirteen, she lived with her younger sister Elma in the home of Major William M. Ormsby, a trader. Ormsby's wife, Margaret, and their daughter taught the girls to sew and cook. They learned and became quite proficient at English, even began to learn to read and write. As contacts between the whites and Indians increased, Winnemucca often served as interpreter for her father when he met with Indian agents, army officers and in inter-tribal councils. In 1875, she was hired as interpreter for the Indian agent S. B. (Sam) Parrish at Malheur Reservation, which had been established three years earlier. In 1868 Winnemucca served as interpreter at Camp McDermit, while her father and almost 500 of his followers lived at the camp, under the protection of Captain Jerome and the U. S. Army. Parrish and Jerome were two men that Winnemucca trusted, men she believed treated her people fairly. Winnemucca served as scout, along with her brother, Natchez, while she was at Camp McDermit, but it was during the Bannock War in 1878 that she met her greatest challenge. On her way to Washington, D. C. , where she hoped to get help for her people, she learned that the Bannock tribe was warring with the whites and that some Paiutes, her father among them, were being held by the Bannocks. On the morning of June 13, she left the Camp McDermit for the Bannock camp with two Paiutes, arriving at nightfall of the second day. Wrapped in a blanket, her hair unbraided so she wouldn't be recognized, she crept into the camp. There she found her father, her brother, Lee, and his wife, Mattie, among those held captive. They escaped during the night, but were soon pursued by the Bannocks. Winnemucca and her sister-in-law raced their horses to get help, arriving back at Sheep Ranch at 5:30 on June 15. She had ridden a distance of 223 miles. "It was, " Winnemucca said, "the hardest work I ever did for the army. " Winnemucca was poorly rewarded for her hard work for the U. S. Army. Both she and Mattie served as scouts during the Bannock War. After the war, the Paiutes were to be returned to Malheur Reservation, but to Sarah's distress, they were ordered to be taken to Yakima Reservation on the other side of the Columbia River, a distance of about 350 miles. It was winter, and the Paiutes did not have adequate clothing. Many people died during the terrible trip, and others, including Mattie, died soon after. Writes and Speaks Out for Her People Over the years the situation worsened. Winnemucca sent messages, complaints and entreaties to anyone she thought might help. She traveled to San Francisco and spoke in great halls, telling of the mistreatment of her people by the Indian agents and by the government. She was labelled "The Princess Sarah" in the San Francisco Chronicle and her lecture was described as "unlike anything ever before heard in the civilized world-eloquent, pathetic, tragical at times; at others her quaint anecdotes, sarcasms and wonderful mimicry surprised the audience again and again into bursts of laughter and rounds of applause. " News of her lectures reached Washington, and in 1880 she was invited to meet with the President. Together with Chief Winnemucca, and her brother Natchez, she met with Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz and, very briefly, with President Rutherford B. Hayes. However, Winnemucca was not allowed to lecture or talk to reporters in Washington, and the small group were given promises that were not kept. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and her sister, Mary Peabody Mann, the widow of Horace Mann, helped arrange speaking engagements for Winnemucca in Boston and many other cities in the East. They encouraged her to write, as well as speak. She wrote many letters, at least one magazine article and a book. Her friends also encouraged Winnemucca in her dream to start an all-Indian school. Winnemucca had been an assistant teacher on the Malheur Reservation, even though her formal education was limited to three weeks at a Californian Catholic school. In 1884, she founded the Peabody School for Indian children near Lovelock, Nevada, on land that had been given to Natchez. It was to be a model school where Indian children would be taught their own language and culture as well as learning English. Unable to get government funding or approval, however, she had to close the school after four years. Winnemucca's own life was cut short a few years later by disease. On October 16, 1891, Winnemucca died at the home of her sister Elma at Henry's Lake, Idaho, probably of tuberculosis as well.
(Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c. 1844 1891) was a Northern ...)
Views
Quotations:
"If women could go into your Congress, I think justice would soon be done to the Indians. "
"I have not contended for Democrat, Republican, Protestant or Baptist for an agent. I have worked for freedom, I have laboured to give my race a voice in the affairs of the nation. "
"Be kind to bad and good, for you don't know your own heart. "
"When I think of my past life, and the bitter trials I have endured, I can scarcely believe I live, and yet I do; and, with the help of Him who notes the sparrow’s fall, I mean to fight for my down-trodden race while life lasts. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In his book Famous Indian Chiefs I Have Known, General Oliver Otis Howard said of Winnemucca's Army career, "She did our government great service, and if I could tell you but a tenth part of all she willingly did to help the white settlers and her own people to live peaceably together, I am sure you would think, as I do, that the name of Thocmetony should have a place beside the name of Pocahontas in the history of our country. "
Connections
After brief marriages to 16t Lieutenant Edward Bartlett and to Joseph Satwaller, she married Lewis H. Hopkins in 1881.