Many Paiutes died of starvation at Pyramid Lake.
Winnemucca and her family were expected to abandon their nomadic life for a settled, “American” lifestyle-and make a success of farming in a dry, arid landscape without any training. In 1859, land was set aside near Pyramid Lake for a reservation. At her grandfather’s request, she and her sister went to a convent school in San Jose, California, but they were only there a few weeks when “complaints were made to the sisters by wealthy parents about Indians being in school with their children.”įor most of her life, she sought to straddle American and Native cultures to help the Northern Paiutes. (The 19th-century Malheur Indian reservation lies immediately north of the current wetlands).Īs Winnemucca grew up, she came to understand that the settlers were not leaving and she began adopting Anglo-American habits, acquiring the Christian name Sarah and mastering English and Spanish.
And though she was uncomfortable with the role, her influence is still felt today: Winnemucca’s autobiography, Life Among the Paiutes, the first English narrative by a Native American woman, voices a thoughtful critique of Anglo-American culture while recounting the fraught legacy of federal lands, including Nevada’s Pyramid Lake and Oregon’s Malheur region, recently the site of a militia takeover.
Translating between the two cultures became her life’s work. But even during her early years, Winnemucca had learned to be afraid of the men with “white” (blue) eyes, who looked like owls because of their beards.įor Winnemucca, being “American” was a complicated process of adopting the behaviors and language of people she had reason to distrust. Born Thocmetony (Shell Flower) among the Numa (known among whites as the Northern Paiute or “digger” Indians), she roamed with her people over western Nevada and eastern Oregon, gathering plants and fish from local lakes. For the first few years of her life, Sarah Winnemucca, who was born around 1844, did not know that she was American.
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