Author | Sarah Winnemucca |
---|---|
Genre | Memoir |
Published | 1883 |
Publisher | G.P. Putnam's Sons |
Pages | 268 |
Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims is a book that was written by Sarah Winnemucca in 1883. [1] It is both an autobiographic memoir and a history of the Paiute people during their first forty years of contact with European Americans. It is considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman." [1] 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. [2] Winnemucca wrote Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims while she was delivering lectures on the East Coast of the United States, advocating in the English language for the rights of the Northern Paiute people, [3] and she was assisted in the funding, editing, and publishing of the book by sisters Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Mary Peabody Mann. [4]
Winnemucca had been working as an advocate, diplomat, and interpreter for the Paiute people, utilizing her ability to speak English, since 1866. [3] Her frequent interactions with and work alongside among the Anglo-Americans empowered her to act as a "politically savvy mediator" [4] between the two cultures. In the face of marginalization by the U.S. government, violence by white settlers, and stereotypes of "savagery" that many Anglo-Americans held against her people, [1] Winnemucca's intentions in writing Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims were candidly political. [3] The purposes were to inform white audiences about the oppression of the Northern Paiutes, raise monetary support for her people, [4] and defuse ethnically divisive stereotypes. [1] The book ends with a supplication to her readers to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress requesting for the return of a piece of land to the Paiutes, [3] uses strong pathos and detailed, emotionally-heavy imagery in describing the difficulties of reservation life, [1] and calls for white audience responsibility with quotes such as "Oh my dear good Christian people, how long are you going to stand by and see us suffer at your hands?". [5] For these reasons, the reliability of Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims as a purely autobiographical work has been questioned. [3]
Winnemucca is the only incorporated city in, and is the county seat of, Humboldt County, Nevada, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 8,431, up 14.0 percent from the 2010 census figure of 7,396. Interstate 80 passes through the city, where it meets U.S. Route 95.
Sarah Hopkins was a Northern Paiute writer, activist, lecturer, teacher, and school organizer. Her Northern Paiute name was Thocmentony, also spelled Tocmetone, which translates as "Shell Flower."
The Northern Paiute people are a Numic tribe that has traditionally lived in the Great Basin region of the United States in what is now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeast Oregon. The Northern Paiutes' pre-contact lifestyle was well adapted to the harsh desert environment in which they lived. Each tribe or band occupied a specific territory, generally centered on a lake or wetland that supplied fish and waterfowl. Communal hunt drives, which often involved neighboring bands, would take rabbits and pronghorn from surrounding areas. Individuals and families appear to have moved freely among the bands.
Winnemucca Lake is a dry lake bed in northwest Nevada that features the oldest known petroglyphs in North America. Located astride the border between Washoe and Pershing counties, it was a shallow lake until the 1930s, but was dried when a dam and a road were built that combined to restrict and block water flow. It was formerly designated as a National Wildlife Refuge, but its status as a refuge was removed due to the lack of water.
According to reports of Northern Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah, Saiduka or Sai'i were a legendary tribe who the Northern Paiutes fought a war with and eventually wiped out or drove away from the area, with the final battle having taken place at what is now known as Lovelock Cave near Lovelock, Nevada, United States. They had red hair, and are often described as having been cannibals. In some versions of the legend they were giants. In 1911, a large amount of artifacts and mummified human remains were discovered under three to six feet of guano by guano miners in Lovelock Cave.
Winnemucca was a Northern Paiute war chief. He was born a Shoshone around 1820 in what would later become the Oregon Territory.
Fort Churchill State Historic Park is a state park of Nevada, United States, preserving the remains of a United States Army fort and a waystation on the Pony Express and Central Overland Routes dating back to the 1860s. The site is one end of the historic Fort Churchill and Sand Springs Toll Road. The park is in Lyon County south of the town of Silver Springs, on U.S. Route 95 Alternate, eight miles (13 km) south of U.S. Route 50. Fort Churchill was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. A 1994 park addition forms a corridor along the Carson River.
Egan is the American name given to Pony Blanket. Pony Blanket was a Northern Paiute leader in the Oregon Country in the 19th century.
The Winnemucca Indian Colony of Nevada is a federally recognized tribe of Western Shoshone and Northern Paiute Indians in northwestern Nevada.
Mary Tyler Mann was an American teacher, author, and reformer. Mary was one of three Peabody sisters who were influential women of their day in education, literature, and art. Like her sister Elizabeth, she was a leader in education reform and establishment of kindergartens. Sophia was an artist and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Mary was a participant in the Transcendentalism Movement. She was an abolitionist. She supported the work of her husband Horace Mann, an American education reformer and politician, as well as Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Sarah Winnemucca.
Truckee, also known as Captain Truckee, Wuna Mucca, The Giver of Spiritual Gifts, Old Winnemucca, One Moccasin, Onennamucca, One-ah-mucca), or Old Chief Winnemucca, was a medicine chief of the Northern Paiute people and an influential prophet. How he gained the name Truckee is up for debate as different accounts credit different people/groups with giving Winnemucca the nickname. Chief Truckee led his people through a rapidly changing time in California history while also becoming one of the most respected chiefs both by his people and to an extent by the settlers who he often aided. For simplicity he will be referred to as Truckee or Old Winnemucca for the rest of the Article.
The Williams Station massacre was an incident that ignited the Pyramid Lake War of 1860.
Native American literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by Native Americans in what is now the United States, from pre-Columbian times through to today. Famous authors include N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Louise Erdrich, Gerald Vizenor, Joy Harjo, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, James Welch, Charles Eastman, Mourning Dove, Zitkala-Sa, John Rollin Ridge, Lynn Riggs, Hanay Geiogamah, William Apess, Samson Occom, Gerald Vizenor, Stephen Graham Jones, et al. Importantly, it is not "a" literature, but a set of literatures, since every tribe has its own cultural traditions. Since the 1960s, it has also become a significant field of literary studies, with academic journals, departments, and conferences devoted to the subject.
The Cedarville Rancheria is a federally recognized tribe of Northern Paiute people in Modoc County, California, about 30 miles (48 km) south of the Oregon border. Cedarville Rancheria is 26 acres in Cedarville. The tribal headquarters is located 20 miles away from the Rancheria in Alturas. The tribe has an environmental protection agency that is dedicated to keeping the Rancheria clean and teaching children how to protect and care for the planet.
Numaga was a Paiute leader during the Paiute War of 1860 that centered on Pyramid Lake in what is now Nevada in the United States. The war was caused by an influx of miners and ranchers after silver was discovered in the Comstock Lode near to Carson City. The newcomers assaulted the Paiutes and destroyed their foods supplies. When the Paiutes responded, the U.S. Army used force to suppress them. Both before and after the war, Numaga was a strong advocate of peace and did much to reduce the violence on both sides. He died of tuberculosis, a "white man's disease", in 1871.
The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone peoples, whose reservation Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation spans the Nevada and Oregon border next to Idaho. The reservation has 16,354 acres (6,618 ha) in Nevada and 19,000 acres (7,700 ha) in Oregon.
The Battle of Mud Lake/Mud Lake Massacre, also known as the "Skirmish at Mud Lake", occurred on 14 March 1865 during the Snake War in northwest Nevada Territory, at present-day Winnemucca Lake, Nevada, during the closing months of the concurrent American Civil War.
The Indian princess is usually a stereotypical and inaccurate representation of a Native American or other Indigenous woman of the Americas. The term "princess" was often mistakenly applied to the daughters of tribal chiefs or other community leaders by early American colonists who mistakenly believed that Indigenous people shared the European system of royalty. This inaccurate portrayal has continued in popular animation, with characters that conform to European standards of beauty, with the most famous misrepresentation being that of Pocahontas. Frequently, the "Indian Princess" stereotype is paired with the "Pocahontas theme" in which the princess "offers herself to a captive Christian knight, a prisoner of her father, and after rescuing him, she is converted to Christianity and lives with him in his native land." - a false narrative which misrepresents the events of Matoaka's life. The phrase "Indian princess", when used in this way, is often considered to be a derogatory term, a type of racial slur, and is deemed offensive by Native Americans.
William Vance Rinehart was an American soldier who served as a Union Army officer in both the 1st Oregon Volunteer Cavalry Regiment and 1st Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. He was later appointed as Indian agent at the Malheur Indian Reservation in eastern Oregon. Rinehart then moved to Seattle, Washington where he engaged in business and was active in state and local politics. He was elected to Washington state's first legislature, serving as a state senator from 1889 through 1890.
John Carlos Rowe is an American academic and author. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine as well as the USC Associates' Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.