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# 2019-02-22 - Life Among The Piutes by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins
History is generally written by victors. I am grateful for this
exceptional book. It is remarkable how relevant the content remains
to this time. I felt heartbroken while reading this story and have
difficulty imagining going through those experiences and maintainin
my survival let alone my integrity. The humanist rhetoric also
appealed to me. Sarah Winnemucca advocated treating everyone as full
human beings regardless of race, sex, etc. Telling that she and her
people received the worst treatment from professed Christians and
were treated best by non-Christians and soldiers. At least one of
those non-Christians lost his office because of his religious status.
# Chapter 1
We travelled with them at that time two days, and the third day we
all camped together where some white people were living in large
white houses. ... There was some kind of a fight,--that is, the
captain of the train was whipping negroes who were driving his team.
That made my poor grandfather feel very badly. He went to the
captain, and told him he would not travel with him. He came back and
said to his people that he would not travel with his white brothers
any farther.
Now, my dear reader, there is no word so endearing as the word
father, and that is why we call all good people father or mother; no
matter who it is,--negro, white man, or Indian, and the same with the
women.
> Surely you all know that they are human. Their lives are just as
> dear to them as ours to us.
# Chapter 2
> We have a republic as well as you. The council-tent is our
> Congress, and anybody can speak who has anything to say, women and
> all. ... If women could go to into your Congress I think justice
> would soon be done to the Indians.
> At council, one is always appointed to repeat at the time
> everything that is said on both sides, so that there may be no
> misunderstanding , and one person at least is present from every
> lodge, and after it is over, he goes and repeats what is decided
> upon at the door of the lodge, so all may be understood.
> it was only here that people did wrong and were in the hell that
> it made, and that those that were in the Spirit-land saw us here
> and were sorry for us. But we should go to them when we died,
> where there was never any wrong-doing, and so no hell. That is our
> religion.
# Chapter 5
These reports were only made by those white settlers so that they
could sell their grain, which they could not get rid of in any other
way. The only way the cattle-men and farmers get to make money is to
start an Indian war, so that the troops may come and buy their beef,
cattle, horses, and grain. The settlers get fat by it.
> Because white people are bad that is no reason why the soldiers
> should be bad too.
(Brother and my people always say "the white people," just as if the
soldiers were not white, too.)
Now, dear readers, this is the way all the Indian agents get rich.
The first thing they do is start a store; the next thing is to take
in cattle men, and the cattle men pay the agent one dollar a head.
# Chapter 7
> This was the hardest work i ever did for the government in all my
> life, -- the whole round trip, from 10 o'clock June 13th up to June
> 15th, arriving back at 5:30 P.M., having been in the saddle night
> and day; distance, about two hundred and twenty-three miles. Yes,
> i went for the government when the officers could not get an Indian
> man or a white man to go for love or money. I, only an Indian
> woman, went and saved my father and his people.
> That is the way with you citizens. You call on the soldiers for
> protection and you want to make thousands of dollars out of it. I
> know if my people had a herd of a thousand horses they would let
> you have them all for nothing." The General looked at me so funny,
> and said, "Yes, Sarah, your people have good hearts, better ones
> than these white dogs have.
This battle lasted from 8 A.M., to 12:30 P.M. Where do you think the
citizen volunteer scouts were during the fight? The citizens, who
are always for exterminating my people (with their mouths only), had
all fallen to the rear, picking up horses and other things which were
left on the battle-field, and after the battle was over they rode up
to where we were and asked where were the Indians. Gen. Howard
said,-- "Go look for them."
> ... Oh! how thankful i feel that it is my own child who has saved
> so many lives, not only mine, but a great many, both whites and her
> own people. Now hereafter we will look on her as our chieftan, for
> none of us are worthy of being chief but her, and all I can say to
> you is to send her to the wars and you stay and do women's work,
> and talk as women do.
# Chapter 8
Oh for shame! You who are educated by a Christian government in the
art of war; the practice of whose profession makes you natural
enemies of the savages, so called by you. Yes, you, who call
yourselves the great civilization; you who have knelt upon Plymouth
Rock, covenanting with God to make this land the home of the free and
the brave. Ah, then you rise from your bended knees and seizing the
welcoming hands of those who are the owners of this land, which you
are not, your carbines rise upon the bleak shore, and your so-called
civilization sweeps inland from the ocean wave; but, oh, my God!
leaving its pathway marked by crimson lines of blood, and strewed by
the bones of two races, the inheritor and the invader; and I am
crying out to you for justice--yes, pleading for the far-off plains
of the West, for the dusky mourner, whose tears of love are pleading
for her husband, or their children, who are sent far away from them.
Your Christian ministers hold my people against their will; not
because he loves them,--no far from it,--but because it puts money in
his pockets.
... my uncle, Captain John, rose and spoke, saying, "My dear people,
I have lived many years with white people. Yes, it is over thirty
years, and I know a great many of them. I have never once known one
of them to do what they promised. I think they mean it just at the
time, but I tell you they are very forgetful. It seems to me,
sometimes, that their memory is not good, and since I have understood
them, if they say they will do so and so for me, I would say to them,
now or never, and if they don't, why it is because they never meant
to do, but only to say so."
I thought within myself, "If such an outrageous thing is to happen to
me, it will not be done by one man or two, while there are two women
with knives, for I know what an Indian woman can do. She can never
be outraged by one man; but she may by two." It is something an
Indian woman dare not say till she has been overcome by one man, for
there is no man living that can do anything to a woman if she does
not wish him to. My dear reader, I have not lived in this world for
over thirty or forty years for nothing, and I know what I am talking
about.
Ah, there is one thing you cannot say of the Indian. You call him
savage, and everything that is bad but one; but, thanks be to God, I
am proud to say that my people have never outraged your women, or
have even insulted them by looks or words. Can you say the same of
the negroes or the whites? They do commit some most horrible
outrages on your women, but you do not drive them round like dogs.
Oh, my dear readers, talk for us, and if the white people will treat
us like human beings, we will behave like a people; but if we are
treated by white savages as if we are savages, we are relentless and
desperate; yet no more so than any other badly treated people.
My people are ignorant of worldly knowledge, but they know what love
means and what truth means. They have seen their dear ones perish
around them because their white brothers have given neither love nor
truth. Are not love and truth better than learning? My people have
no learning. They do not know anything about the history of the
world, but they can see the Spirit-Father in everything. The
beautiful world talks to them of their Spirit-Father.
author: Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca, 1844-1891
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Sarah_Winnemucca
LOC: E99.P2 H7
(HTM) source: http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/life_among_the_piutes/
tags: biography,ebook,history,native-american
title: Life Among The Piutes
# Tags
(DIR) biography
(DIR) ebook
(DIR) history
(DIR) native-american