Hidden Figure: Thocmetony Sarah Winnemucca
Northern Paiute, Activist, Interpreter, Educator, and Author
It was Thocmetony Sarah Winnemucca's duty to make sure her people weren't erased and forgotten. She was a freedom fighter and defender of human rights, in plight to make the world a better place, as ingrained in her by her father Chief Winnemucca.
The early years
Thocmetony Sarah Winnemucca was born to Chief Winnemucca of the Paiute tribe in what is today known as the state of Nevada. Her year of birth is estimated to be around 1844. Her given Paiute name was Thocmetony or Tocmetoni, which means shellflower in the Numu language of the Northern Paiute
Around Thocmetony's birth, her people's land was inhabited solely by the Northern Paiutes and the Washos. Her people moved each season, so she experienced a traditional childhood harvesting nuts and other foods with the women while the men hunted and fished.
The arrival of white people
Thocmetony's way of life would be disrupted by the Europeans' arrival. They brought strange and disruptive customs and habits. They also brought diseases like measles, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever. The Northern Paiutes and the Washos people would go on to experience mass Genocide from these diseases, and a significant number of them became sick and died, including two of Thocmetony's aunts. The natives' beloved forest dwindled as colonizers began to chop down trees with no regard for the land.
Years later, Thocmetony shared an account of this time in her biography. Notably, Thocmetony was the first Native woman to publish a book. It was the first book published to detail Paiute culture.
"I was born somewhere near 1844, but am not sure of the precise time. I was a very small child when the first white people came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued so ever since, and I have never forgotten their first coming. My people were scattered at that time over nearly all the territory now known as Nevada. My grandfather was chief of the entire Piute nation, and was camped near Humboldt Lake, with a small portion of his tribe, when a party travelling eastward from California was seen coming. When the news was brought to my grandfather, he asked what they looked like? When told that they had hair on their faces, and were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together and cried aloud – "My white brothers – my long-looked for white brothers have come at last!"
Some members of the tribe, like Chief Truckee, Thocmetony's grandfather, welcomed their "white brothers" with open arms to the extent of even bearing arms alongside European Generals in the Bear War. Others, like Thocmetony's father, Chief Winnemucca, did not trust the white people who had arrived in his home. He even warned his people to stay away from them.
As Thocmetony grew older and realized that the colonizers were not leaving, she picked up various aspects of Anglo-American culture and habits, soon adopting the name Sarah. At age 16, Thocmetony and her sister were sent to study at the Academy of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic mission school in San Jose, California. It was a dark chapter, where they experienced bullying from students and parents, often called "savages" and derogatory names. Thocmetony was brought believing in the goodness of all people. This experience broke her heart and murdered her spirit.
Upon Thocmetony's return home from the mission school, she was horrified to discover that the colonizers had stolen their fertile land and left her people to die of starvation, exposure, and disease.
Working to protect her people
Around 27, Thocmetony started working as an interpreter for what is now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She did this out of desperation to help her people who were displaced from their land on Pyramid Lake Reservation. Her quick actions allowed her people to receive wagons full of supplies.
All the while, her father and her people were experiencing displacement after displacement. They would again be moved to the Malheur Reservation in 1872. Her experience as an interpreter may have allowed her people a sense of relief regarding the harsh treatment Natives were experiencing. However, being an interpreter for colonizers put Thocmetony in many impossible situations with an abusive work environment.
"During the 1870s she translated for William V. Rinehart who was described as unlikable. If she translated his words without comment or passed on a concern from the Northern Paiutes, she was likely to be fired and she was. In time, William Rinehart banned her from Malheur."
Thocmetony also served in the U.S. Army as a scout, messenger, interpreter, and associate of General Oliver Howard at the start of the Bannock War in 1878. Here's her recount about this time, her work, and a mission to save her father and his people:
"This was the hardest work I ever did for the government in all my life. Having been in the saddle night and day; distance, about two hundred and twenty-three miles. Yes, I went for the government when the officer could not get an Indian man or white man to go for love or money. I, only an Indian woman, went and saved my father and his people."
Her bravery put her on the front page of the New York Times in June of 1878, which ended up causing mistrust between her and the local tribes.
Despite the work Thocmetony did for the military of the colonizers at the end of the war, the Paiutes were sent away and exiled to Yakama Reservation in Yakama, Oregon. The treatment they would experience there was cruel and horrific—another mass genocide. So many Paiutes died that there was no room in the graveyard. The agent of the reservation ordered bodies dumped into the Columbia River
An advocate for her people
In 1880, in Washington D.C., before the Secretary of the Interior and President Rutherford B. Hayes, Thocmetony pleaded for the cause of equal treatment for not just her own people but all Natives.
Improvements were promised but were quickly abandoned by the government. This caused her people to lose trust in her again. Her name would be smeared by General Reinhart, who she'd worked for as an interpreter but was quickly fired by him when trying to pass on her people's concerns. He hated that she was educated and an advocate of the humanity of her people. Despite countless attacks on herself and her people, she stood strong on what she believed and what her father had planted deep in her heart as a child.
Following the failure of her 1880 trip to Washington, she sent a petition to Congress in 1884 for the Paiute Indians to be restored to the Malheur Reservation in southern Oregon.
In it, Thocmetony insisted that her people be allowed to return to the Malheur Reservation:
“which is well watered and timbered, and large enough to afford homes and support for them all, where they can enjoy lands in severalty without loosing [sic] their tribal relations, so essential to their happiness and good character, and where their citizenship, implied in this distribution of land, will defend them from the encroachments of the white settlers, so detrimental to their interest and their virtues.”
Representative Ambrose Ranney of Massachusetts introduced the petition in the House on January 24, 1884, and it was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. On April 22, 1884, Winnemucca appeared before a subcommittee of the Indian Affairs Committee, becoming one of the first Native American women to do so. Representative Robert S. Stevens, chair of the Indian Affairs subcommittee before which Winnemucca appeared, introduced H.R. 6973, “For the relief of the Piute Indians,” on May 12, 1884, but it died in committee.
An educator for her people
Unable to convince the U.S. government to help her people, Thocmetony returned West to do the only thing left she felt would help her tribe: teach.
U.S. policy was actively working to erase Native Culture and seeking to "Americanize" Native peoples in a policy called "education for extinction" by officials. To combat this, in 1885, Thocmetony opened an American Indian School on her brother's Natches' ranch around Lovelock, Nevada, entirely funded by private donations. Her school created a framework for Native American Education, where her students excelled in their studies, being taught in the traditional Paiute way.
The government did not support this school, and Thocmetony was seen as a threat. It eventually had to close due to a lack of funding. After the school closed, Thocmetony went to live with her sister in Idaho, where she passed in 1891 under what has been called mysterious circumstances.
Fighting for her people forever
For the majority of her life, Thocmetony fought for her people, despite losing popularity amongst them often. She delivered more than 400 speeches advocating for their rights. In the words of Tribal elder Marjorie Dupee: "Sarah Winnemucca's life helped Native peoples hold onto their pride."
In 2005, a statue of Sarah "Thocmetony" Winnemucca was erected and given to the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. by the state of Nevada. It was Thocmetony Sarah Winnemucca's duty to make sure her people weren't erased and forgotten, a freedom fighter and defender of human rights, in a plight to make the world a better place as ingrained in her by her father, Chief Winnemucca.
