Sarah Winnemucca
Over a century ago, in 1883, Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute activist, educator, and lecturer, engaged in a mission to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery by petitioning the US government to return governance of Malheur Reservation to her people—as the US had promised in 1872.
Despite the designation of Malheur Reservation to the Paiute, the US never fulfilled this agreement, allowing white settlers to disrupt vital food sources and waterways that were crucial to the tribe’s well-being.
Federal agents worsened the situation by confiscating rations and fostering dependency among the Paiute on government aid. Moreover, many Paiute were forcibly relocated hundreds of miles away to Yakima Reservation in Washington state, leading to family separations and longing for their homeland. Winnemucca, backed by supportive allies, tirelessly demanded restitution for her tribe, highlighting the unfulfilled promises made by the US government.
In a formal congressional petition, Winnemucca urged the United States Congress to honor its promise of returning land to the Paiute people and respecting their self-governance. To rally support, and to circulate her petition, she penned her autobiography, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) which delves into her upbringing, family dynamics, education, and life within the tribe, before detailing her role as a US military interpreter and an advocate for her people.
Winnemucca conveys this history, of many injustices and wrongs done to her people, with deeply emotional language and situations. She builds intimate connections between characters and readers so that by the end, they re-see and re-feel the land from the perspective of a Paiute child who was born and raised in a community that predates settler arrival. She includes her petition at the end, along with a note that urges her predominantly middle-class white American readership to copy, sign, and distribute the petition within their circles.
Her project sought a coalition of allies who understood the need for Indigenous communities to retain access and rights of self-determination on their ancestral lands. That is because, especially in the nineteenth century, ideals about justice for many Christian humanitarians, however progressive, suffered from a limited knowledge of Indigenous peoples’ worldviews. Author Patty Krawec (Anishinaabe and Ukrainian) discusses this issue in her book Becoming Kin (2022):
Over and over, these settlers have written themselves on top of our stories, taking small parts of our stories and fitting them into the biblical narrative. Even when they did listen to our stories, it was only to hear fragments of their own story, not to understand ours. They had good news for us, after all; why would they think we might have good news for them? (Krawec 31)
Christians who identified as “Friends of the Indians” often promoted assimilationist policies that furthered dispossession and championed cultural erasure by forcibly removing children from their homes to educate them in government- or church-run boarding schools.
In “Literacies of the Decolonizing Narratives, Storying, and Literature,” Sandra Styres (Kanien’kehá:ka)1 asserts that “to be in good relationship with one another requires a critical conscious awareness and an acknowledgment of whose traditional lands we are now on as well as the historical and contemporary realities of those relationships” (Styres 32).
Without an explicit education from an Indigenous critical center, reforms made by people who are genuinely interested in helping would still perpetuate imperialistic notions of what “liberty and justice for all” means.
For Winnemucca, true decolonial coalitions cannot form until Euro-American people begin to see the land and its history from a Paiute worldview.
In Life Among the Piutes, Winnemucca presents a Paiute worldview using sentimental dramatic scenes and biblical language, which was characteristic of reform literature during the nineteenth century. For example, she recounts the fear of fleeing her home with her family as “a very small child” when settlers arrive “like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion”—calling to mind 1 Peter 5, when the Apostle Peter warns us to be “vigilant” of the devil who walks on the land “as a roaring lion . . . seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8, KJV).
Like a mirror reflecting on Christian readers, who would have been familiar with this language, Winnemucca portrays settler peoples as devils, entering and roaming a land where her people have always been.
Central to Winnemucca’s storytelling is her use of Paiute legends and creation stories which further emphasize the ancient and enduring presence of her people on the land that settlers invaded. As soon as she establishes that her childhood was marked by settler invasion—that she and her people lived here before settlers arrived like lions—Winnemucca recalls that her grandfather’s response to settler arrival was to gather the tribe, and share a traditional Paiute legend reaffirming the origins of their people:
In the beginning of the world there were only four, two girls and two boys. Our forefather and mother were only two, and we are their children. You all know that a great while ago there was a happy family in this world. One girl and one boy were dark and the others were white. For a time they got along together without quarrelling, but soon they disagreed, and there was trouble. They were cross to one another and fought, and our parents were very much grieved. They prayed that their children might learn better, but it did not do any good; and afterwards the whole household was made so unhappy that the father and mother saw that they must separate their children; and then our father took the dark boy and girl, and the white boy and girl, and asked them, Why are you so cruel to each other? ‘They hung down their heads, and would not speak. They were ashamed. He said to them, ‘Have I not been kind to you all, and given you everything your hearts wished for? You do not have to hunt and kill your own game to live upon. You see, my dear children, I have power to call whatsoever kind of game we want to eat; and I also have the power to separate my dear children, if they are not good to each other.’ So he separated his children by a word. He said, ‘Depart from each other, you cruel children; – go across the mighty ocean and do not seek each other’s lives.’ (Winnemucca)
This legend emphasizes the Paiute connection to the land and asserts their identity as its original inhabitants.
Sarah’s grandfather tells it in order to reassure the Paiute people that they are the children of the land, despite the presence of white settlers. These stories, which Winnemucca shows us were passed down through generations in the manner demonstrated by her grandfather, offer a unique, Paiute-centered perspective on the land and its history—one that diverges from the Eurocentric accounts that have long dominated historical discourse.
By incorporating these stories into Life Among the Piutes, Winnemucca initiates what Styres calls a “critical conscious awareness and an acknowledgment of whose traditional lands we are now on,” inviting Euro-American readers to act on their newfound awareness by signing her petition.
It was a brilliant strategy for Winnemucca to place her petition at the end of her autobiography. Her petition builds on this emotional storytelling and themes of justice that she brought up in her autobiography.
The petition begins by reminding the US that her people have been loyal friends who “always kept its promise of peace and friendliness to the whites since they first entered their country,” emphasizing that prior to settler presence, the land was “well watered and timbered, and large enough to afford homes and support for them all” which was “essential to their happiness and good character” (Winnemucca).
Now, “diminished by its sufferings and wrongs to one-third of its original number,” when families were “ruthlessly separated” from each other and the land, her people “have never ceased to pine for husbands, wives, and children, which restoration was pledged to them by the Secretary of the Interior in 1880, but has not been fulfilled” (Winnemucca).2
Her appeals throughout her autobiography, culminating in this petition, were an integral part of her lifelong efforts to assert Paiute sovereignty and a non-assimilationist education for Paiute as well as white children.
Regarding the history of coalition building through Indigenous leadership, Winnemucca’s petition is accompanied by an explanatory note from Mary Mann. Mann, the editor of Life Among the Piutes, was a white, Christian, American woman and fervent ally of Winnemucca’s, who expressed that support from sympathetic readers could influence “new Indian policy.” She urges supporters to copy and collect signatures actively.
This participatory approach aimed to mobilize individuals in support of Paiute causes, exemplifying the power of collective action in addressing community issues. On January 24, 1884, after a year of circulation, Republican Representative Ambrose Ranney of Massachusetts introduced the petition in Congress, translating Winnemucca’s grassroots movement into legislative action. This act symbolized Winnemucca’s intervention in a colonial political system, asserting the Paiute people’s sovereign right to self-determination.
At the heart of Winnemucca’s narrative lies a profound commitment to forging alliances around the goal of returning Paiute land to her people. In this spirit, she actively engaged with Christian humanitarians of her era by presenting a narrative of the land that predates their own.
She unfolds her life story against the backdrop of a tumultuous period in American history, marked by the relentless march of westward expansion and the systematic disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples.
Yet, amidst the chaos and upheaval, she found common cause with individuals who, despite belonging to different cultural and religious backgrounds, shared her vision of a more just and equitable society.
Moreover, Winnemucca’s example challenges readers today to continue re-examining our understanding of history and to confront the narratives of conquest and domination that have long shaped the collective consciousness of the land now known as North America.
In this way, Winnemucca’s work continues as we work in coalition with her, aware that our actions today create a wake in the ongoing decolonial project. This wake will persist and evolve, shaping the course of history for generations to come, even a hundred years from now.
The concept of a “historical coalition,” then, takes on profound significance when viewed through the lens of Winnemucca’s experiences. It speaks to the enduring legacy of collaboration and cooperation between Indigenous leaders and Christian humanitarians, whose efforts laid the groundwork for future alliances in the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights and self-determination.
As we continue to dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and challenge systems of oppression, let us draw inspiration from Winnemucca’s indomitable spirit and emulate her example of coalition-building.