Sarah Winnemucca-Princess of the Paiutes

Back in the old west, in the early 1800s, the northern Paiute Indians in northern Nevada were not very familiar with Europeans, but soon, their lives would change forever. The local chief, Winnemucca, had a daughter who became known as Sarah Winnemucca. In her childhood, she'd never seen a Caucasian before. She later recalled how she remembered the first time she did see someone with white skin and thought of it as something incredible and frightening. Then, a short time later, the European settlers moved in on their way to the California gold rush and were no longer an unusual sight.

Her father was reluctant to befriend the white men, but her grandfather, Truckee, was more trusting. He aided the explorer John C. Fremont in his mapping travels around Nevada and even joined in the Mexican-American War. Truckee took Sarah to Sacramento, California where she saw many white people. When they returned, he made sure she was educated in Carson City. This made her a very special woman, especially since there were not many Paiutes who were able to read or write in English. Due to her education, she blended in with the white population and was able to become a teacher and interpreter.

Throughout the coming years, there were several wars and battles between the Paiutes and the Americans. The Pyramid Lake War was led by a relative of Sarah's, Numaga, and her father and brother, Natchez, fought along side Numaga. After the Pyramid Lake War, the Paiutes were placed on a reservation, the Mahleur Reservation, along with another Indian tribe, the Bannock. The reservation wasn't a bad place to live under the supervision of Parrish, but once he left and William Rinehart took over, the Indians were treated badly. They weren't provided with supplies and white people illegally seized plots of their reservation land. Naturally, this angered the Indians and they began to move off the reservation. Without food and supplies, some members of the Bannock tribe began raiding nearby towns and ranches. This caused the Bannock War. It is believed that some of the northern Paiute joined in and Sarah was known to have worked with the US Army as a translator. After the War, the Paiutes were forced to move to another reservation in Washington state and even though Sarah was employed by the Army and not forced to live on the reservation, she went with them anyway.

She had lived with seeing her own people, and other Indian tribes, mistreated and lied to over the years, so she started to write letters and make speeches against this poor treatment. She gave lectures and even went to Washington DC with her father to request that the Paiutes be allowed back to Malheur Reservation. She wrote a book, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, which told of her experience and the plight of the Paiutes. Sarah died of tuberculosis in 1891, after living a full and diverse life.