Sarah Winnemucca

Thocmentony, or Shell Flower, was born around 1844 near Humboldt Lake in what is now Nevada, granddaughter of Chief Truckee, a Paiute leader who had guided California-bound wagon trains and believed alliance with the newcomers would protect his people. At six she worked in cattle camps near Stockton, California, and at 13 she was taken in by a trader's family in Carson City, learning English and Spanish alongside her own language. At her grandfather's urging, she and a sister enrolled in a Catholic convent school in San Jose. Weeks later, after wealthy parents complained about Indian children sharing a classroom with theirs, the sisters sent her home.

When the Paiute at Pyramid Lake went hungry through a winter of withheld government rations, Winnemucca rode to Camp McDermit and talked the army into wagons of food, then stayed on as an interpreter. During the 1878 Bannock War she scouted, translated, and carried messages 223 miles on horseback for General Oliver Howard, work that cost her the trust of Paiute who suspected she had sided with the army. In 1883 she published Life Among the Piutes, the first known autobiography in English by a Native American woman, then delivered nearly 300 lectures across the Northeast, meeting Ralph Waldo Emerson and testifying before Congress in 1884. With money from the tour she opened a school for Paiute children near Lovelock, Nevada, teaching them in their own language until federal policy closed it in 1887.

The work exacted its own toll. On March 14, 1865, cavalry from the 1st Nevada Volunteers attacked her father's winter camp at Mud Lake while the young men were away hunting, killing most of the old men, women, and children present, including her mother and infant brother; accounts of the toll range from about 16 to 32 dead. Her sister survived that camp alone. Winnemucca's 1880 trip to Washington won a written promise from Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz that the Paiute could return to the Malheur Reservation, a promise Schurz never kept. Her own school, teaching Paiute children in their own language, was forced shut in 1887 once federal policy mandated English-only, white-run instruction instead, and her closeness with the army left some Paiute calling her a traitor even as she petitioned Congress on their behalf.

Winnemucca died of tuberculosis on October 17, 1891, at her sister's home near Henry's Lake, Idaho, having spent her last years too ill to lecture. For decades her book stayed a curiosity of frontier literature rather than a document historians took seriously; only in the late 20th century did Life Among the Piutes become required reading as one of the earliest sustained accounts, in English, of reservation policy told from inside it. In 2005 Nevada placed her statue, sculpted by Benjamin Victor, in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall, one hand on a book and the other extended in the act of speaking, an image of an advocate rather than a symbol.

Sarah Winnemucca's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims book
  First known autobiography in English by a Native American woman 1883
• Lecture tour of the Northeast speech
  Nearly 300 lectures; introduced her to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes 1883
• Peabody Indian School building
  School near Lovelock, Nevada, teaching Paiute children in their own language; closed 1887 1885
• 1884 petition to Congress other
  Accompanied her congressional testimony; preserved in the National Archives 1884

• c. 1844 aged ~0 Born near Humboldt Lake, in what is now Nevada
• March 14, 1865 aged ~21 Cavalry attacks her father's winter camp at Mud Lake, killing her mother and infant brother Accounts of the dead range from about 16 to 32; her sister was the camp's lone survivor.
• 1871 aged ~27 Begins work as an interpreter at Fort McDermitt
• 1878 aged ~34 Scouts and translates for General Oliver Howard during the Bannock War Rode 223 miles carrying messages between army units.
• 1880 aged ~36 Travels to Washington and wins a promise from Secretary Carl Schurz to return the Paiute to Malheur Schurz never kept the promise.
• 1883 aged ~39 Publishes Life Among the Piutes and begins a lecture tour of the Northeast
• 1884 aged ~40 Petitions and testifies before Congress
• 1887 aged ~43 Her Peabody Indian School is closed under federal assimilation policy
• October 17, 1891 aged ~47 Dies of tuberculosis near Henry's Lake, Idaho

• Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885
  18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War. opposed
• Rutherford B. Hayes 1822–1893
  Nineteenth president whose disputed election settlement ended federal Reconstruction in the South. petitioned
• Chester A. Arthur 1829–1886
  Twenty-first president who signed the Pendleton Act establishing merit-based federal hiring. petitioned
• Horace Mann 1796–1859
  Reformist who championed public education and is considered the father of the American public school system. opposed the movement of