Sarah Winnemucca (1844–1891) was one of the most influential and charismatic Native American women in American history. Born near the Humboldt River Sink in Nevada to a legendary family of Paiute leaders at a time when the Paiutes’ homeland and way of life were increasingly threatened by the influx of Anglo settlers, Sarah later wrote that the white men “came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so ever since.”

Winnemucca gave lectures in buckskin, red leggings and moccasins. Photo courtesy Nevada historical society.

A milestone in Sarah’s early life occurred as a young teenager, when her family placed her and her younger sister, Elma, in the Genoa, Nevada household of William and Margaret Ormsby to learn English, probably in exchange for help with household tasks. Within a few months, Sarah did learn English, one of several languages she would master and an early sign of her extraordinary gifts. Her command of eloquent, forceful English would one day enable her to bring the Paiute cause to the nation. In 1869 Sarah became the interpreter at Camp McDermitt. This brought her into contact with the young men of the army, and in 1872 she married the dashing scapegrace Lieutenant Edward Bartlett, who would be one in a string of failed relationships.

When Indian agent Samuel Parrish invited Sarah to interpret at Malheur Reservation in southeastern Oregon, a happy interlude ensued, in which Sarah also served as an assistant teacher. Unfortunately, the harsh agent William Rinehart soon replaced Parrish, and Sarah’s vigorous protests against his maltreatment of the Indians resulted in her expulsion from the reservation. She had made an enemy whose campaign of character assassination against her would blacken her name with Washington authorities.

The Bannock War
In 1878, starvation and other factors led the Bannock people at Fort Hall reservation to revolt and sweep across southeastern Oregon pursued by the U.S. Army under General Oliver Howard’s command. Although some Paiutes joined the warriors willingly, the Bannock held the band led by Sarah’s father, Chief Winnemucca, under duress. At General Howard’s camp, Sarah volunteered for a mission so dangerous that no one else would undertake it. She promised to ascertain the location of the Bannock camp and secretly lead her people away to army protection. What followed was one of the most famous rides in the annals of the West. In three days, with little food or rest, Sarah covered some 230 miles of rugged terrain and brought her people to safety, fulfilling the first duty of a Paiute. As the army pressed on, Sarah remained with General Howard as a trusted adviser, scout, messenger and interpreter. This role made her a controversial figure among the Paiutes. According to tribal elder Helen Williams, some blame her to this day for showing the army secret Indian water sources in the desert.

The army defeated the Bannock in a matter of months. In violation of army commitments, many Paiutes who had not participated in the war were exiled to Yakama Reservation in Washington Territory and forced on a midwinter journey in which soldiers dragged screaming women and children into wagons, and men, shackled in chains, walked through the snow. At least one-fifth of these Paiutes died at Yakama; everyone longed to return to their homeland.

Lectures and Diplomacy
Having been told that only an order from Washington authorities could free her people from their misery, Sarah determined to raise a clamor that Washington could not ignore. In November 1879, she began to deliver a series of lectures in San Francisco. Audiences packed the auditorium to laugh and weep with her, cheer her and interrupt her with tumultuous applause. She would stride onto the stage with no trace of shyness and speak without notes in what reporters called “a spontaneous flow of eloquence,” telling stories from Paiute history, from her childhood and from her experiences in the Bannock War. When an invitation arrived to come to Washington and meet with government officials, it appeared that her lectures had struck the mark.

In January 1880, Sarah and several Paiute leaders set off for Washington. Meetings with Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz resulted in an order directing that the Paiutes at Yakama be allowed to return to Malheur Reservation. At a meeting with President Rutherford B. Hayes, Sarah felt able to say the Paiute request to leave Yakama had been granted. With a singing heart, Sarah made the long ride from Nevada to Yakama through snow and danger to carry the “beautiful letter” containing the secretary’s commitment—only to see him change his mind. His promises, Sarah bitterly observed, “like the wind, were heard no more.” Evicted from the reservation, from a place nearby Sarah counseled her people to undertake what was really a campaign of passive resistance. Refuse to farm, she suggested, build no houses, do nothing to indicate that you will accept staying at Yakama. Although many Paiutes blamed her for Schurz’s broken promise, they did as Sarah advised. Eventually, under a less-tyrannical reservation agent willing to turn a blind eye, the Paiutes would escape from Yakama in small groups, and Sarah would testify before Congress on their behalf to forestall the nightmare of a forced return to Yakama.

In the spring of 1883, Sarah began lecturing in Boston. She became a close friend of the venerable New England reformer Elizabeth Peabody and spent several months writing at a rapid pace in the home of Peabody and her sister, Mary Mann. Peabody’s expertise in publishing assured the prompt appearance in print of Sarah’s book, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, the first book written in English by an Indian woman and the first to record the customs of the Paiutes. At the same time she took the Northeast by storm, lecturing more than 300 times, always spontaneously.

Nevada’s statue of Sarah Winnemucca stands before the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., shortly before its installation into Statuary Hall. Photo Bob Harmon, Courtesy of the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs.

Sarah again went to Washington in 1884 to plead the cause of the Paiutes to the current president, Chester Arthur, and other officials, only to be brushed aside. As Sarah observed, “Their eyes aren’t opened yet.” Her testimony to Congress produced no better result. Indomitable in the face of any adversity, Sarah was soon on the train to Nevada with a new project in mind.

She determined to start her own school in a brush shelter on the ranch belonging to her brother Natches near Lovelock, Nevada, where Paiute children had no school. Sarah’s ideas on education were revolutionary compared to U.S. Indian policy at that time, which aimed to eradicate Indian culture by converting the young to Christianity and assimilating them by enforced attendance in distant boarding schools. Never did Sarah favor the eradication of Paiute culture, only the selective adoption of some of the white man’s innovations. Regrettably, lack of funds closed her school within four years. Sarah went to live with her sister Elma at Henry’s Lake, Idaho, where she died under mysterious circumstances in 1891 at the age of 47.

Arthur Corpus, a descendant of Natches, speaks of how Sarah “stood up for her people, their rights and wrongs” and takes pride in his relationship to her. His pride is widely shared. On March 9, 2005, a bronze statue of Sarah Winnemucca representing the state of Nevada was unveiled in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.—a fitting if long-overdue recognition of this extraordinary woman.

Sally Zanjani is the author of, among other works, Sarah Winnemucca (University of Nebraska Press, 2001), winner of the Evans Biography Award and the Westerners International Best Book Award. She is associated with the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno.