1. 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.
33 Facts About Sarah Winnemucca
1. 2.
Sarah Winnemucca was the daughter of Chief Winnemucca of the Paiute nation and the granddaughter of Chief Truckee.
3.
At 16, Sarah studied at a Catholic school in San Jose, California.
4.
At 27, Sarah Winnemucca began working in the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort McDermit in 1871 as an interpreter.
5.
Subsequently, Sarah Winnemucca became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, traveling across the US to tell Anglo- Americans about the plight of her people.
6.
Sarah Winnemucca served US forces as a messenger, interpreter, and guide, and as a teacher for imprisoned Native Americans.
7.
Sarah Winnemucca published Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, a book that is both a memoir and history of her people during their first 40 years of contact with European Americans.
8.
Sarah Winnemucca's father was an influential war chief of a small band of about 150 Northern Paiute people.
9.
The town of Sarah Winnemucca, Nevada was named after her father.
10.
Sarah Winnemucca had an older sister Mary, younger brother Natchez, and sister Elma.
11.
Sarah Winnemucca learned the ways of her people, including fishing and gathering plants.
12.
At the age of six, Sarah Winnemucca traveled with her family to near Stockton, California, where the adults worked in the cattle industry.
13.
In 1857, her grandfather arranged for Sarah Winnemucca 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.
14.
Sarah Winnemucca was one of the few Paiute in Nevada who knew how to read and write English, and her family all spoke English.
15.
Sarah Winnemucca was killed by the Paiute in a disciplined confrontation in the first event of the Pyramid Lake War.
16.
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.
17.
Sarah Winnemucca 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.
18.
Sarah Winnemucca had a school built at the reservation, and Winnemucca became an assistant teacher.
19.
Sarah Winnemucca married Edward Bartlett, a former First Lieutenant in the Army, on January 29,1872, at Salt Lake City, Utah.
20.
Sarah Winnemucca abandoned her, and she returned to Camp McDermit.
21.
Sarah Winnemucca reversed many of the policies that Parrish had initiated, telling the Paiute the reservation land belonged to the government.
22.
Sarah Winnemucca failed to pay their workers for agricultural labor in communal fields, and alienated many tribal leaders.
23.
Sarah Winnemucca wrote that she and several other Paiute families were held hostage by the Bannock during the war.
24.
Sarah Winnemucca was highly regarded by the officers she worked for, and she included letters of recommendation from several of them in her 1883 book.
25.
In 1881, General Oliver O Howard hired Sarah Winnemucca to teach Shoshone prisoners held at Vancouver Barracks.
26.
Sarah Winnemucca's husband had contributed to his wife's efforts by gathering material for the book at the Library of Congress.
27.
Sarah Winnemucca's husband died of tuberculosis on October 18,1887, and was buried in Lovelock at the Lone Mountain Cemetery.
28.
In 1883, the Hopkinses traveled east, where Sarah Winnemucca delivered nearly 300 lectures throughout major cities of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, seeking to heighten awareness of injustice against Native Americans.
29.
In Boston, Sarah 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.
30.
Sarah Winnemucca's book was published in 1883, the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman" and the first US copyright registration secured by a Native American woman.
31.
Sarah Winnemucca's school was closed in 1887 and the children were transferred to a facility in Grand Junction, Colorado.
32.
Sarah Winnemucca spent the last four years of her life retired from public activity.
33.
Sarah Winnemucca died of tuberculosis at her sister Elma Smith's home at Henry's Lake, Idaho.