Georgia Hedrick writes about Sarah Winnemucca, a tireless advocate for the Paiute Indians. Winnemucca (1844-1891) was the author of Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), the first book by an Indian woman.

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.

So begins the first book ever written by a Piute woman, a Nevada Indian woman.

When Sarah's father heard that there were men in the country with hair on their faces and were white, Sarah says that he jumped up and clapped his hands saying: My white brothers! My long looked-for white brothers have come at last!

The white brothers, however, were not so happy. They did not know the legend that Sarah s father and grandfather knew. They did not know that they were long-awaited . They would. In time, they would. Sarah would teach them. Sarah would also teach her own people as well. And nothing would ever be the same.

All Sarah Winnemucca ever wanted her whole life was justice and truth and peace for her people. All Sarah, and her people, ever got, was something else.

For her entire life, Sarah would be controversial. Her friends loved her, befriended her, invited her to speak on behalf of her people. Her main enemy was the Department of the Interior and most of is Indian Agents.

She would tell everyone, how these Indian Agents broke promises over and over. She would tell how these Indian Agents starved, cheated, and tried their best to exterminate her people. She named names and places and events her memory was unerring. For such truths told, they retaliated by calling her: prostitute, gambler, liar, street woman of no character, irresponsible, untrustworthy, disreputable.

Among the many Indian Agents who hated Sarah, there was one, more full of hatred and venom and spite than all the others together.

He forced the Piute to work the land and raise the wheat with promises of pay; and then he took and wheat and sold it for himself, telling them, that it belonged to the government . He refused to give the Piutes enough food to last them through the Winter. He refused to issue clothing and blankets. He let many freeze, get sick, and die. He refused medical care. He denied them schooling. If they complained, he blamed Sarah for their problems as she would report him to the Military and to her friends in the East. He would not change; he grew even more spiteful, more cruel, more evil.

The saddest part was that he did this as a Christian Minister, he said.

Sarah would not change either. She began to travel, and speak on behalf of her people. And when she spoke, she spoke without notes, in perfect English, and from the heart. She spoke to packed houses in San Francisco, in Virginia City, and all along the Eastern Coast. Her audiences would listen spellbound, totally captivated by her message, her dress, her depth of feeling.

However, the mind-set of the 1800 s was one that viewed Indians as a problem to be either contained, assimilated, or exterminated. In so-called civilized society , newspapers found it better for sales to print letters from Rinehart about Sarah, then to print the message of Sarah. The following excerpt is an example of Rinehart s views:

Her influence with the Indians has always been to render them licentious, contumacious and profligate. This woman has been several times married, that by reason of her adulterous and drunken habits, neither squawmen nor Indians would live long with her; that in addition to her character of Harlot and drunkard, she merits and possesses that of a notorious liar and malicious schemer.

It was to Rinehart s economic benefit to say whatever evil he could of Sarah as she knew enough about his misuse of government money to get him removed from his money-making post as an Indian Agent. After all, whatever he didn t spend on the Indians but told his Washington superiors that he did so he kept for himself. By assassinating her character, he preserved his job and his income and slowly rid himself of the presence of the Indian in the West. He had long believed in the total extermination of the Indians as a policy.

Sarah, on the other hand, had one simple message: help my people. Yes, she defended herself at times, the basic, constant cry was for her people and their welfare.

I am appealing to you to help my people, to send teachers and books among us. Educate us. Everyone shuns me, and turn a back on me with contempt. Some say I am half-breed. My father and my mother were Pure Indian. I would be ashamed to acknowledge there was White blood in me. I want homes for my people, but no one will help me.

Sarah did have one weakness: she was attracted to dependent, dysfunctional men. Her first husband, a military man, was an alcoholic and was already married with wife and children in the East. It is said that he married Sarah, for fun . Her last husband was a compulsive gambler. The men in between were little spoken of by Sarah. We can assume that they were a serious disappointment to her. Her last husband, Hopkins, died of tuberculosis after gambling away most of Sarah s funds that she had raised through her speaking tours and book sales.

Love her or hate her, no one could ignore her. She was a presence to be acknowledged, and listened to.

And listened to, she was from Virginia City to San Francisco, to cities in New York, Connecticut, Rhode island, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, she packed the houses and the hallways, to the very doorways with her audiences. Thanks to her special patrons Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Mary Mann (Mrs. Horace Mann) she did so. People such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Leland Standard, were well aware of all the good she stood for. Sarah was invited by the president of Vassar College, and spoke there as well.

Sarah dressed for these occasions. She seemed to know what was expected, whether it was as a Piute or as a woman who needed to be taken seriously. Her costume was more true to what East Coast white people thought she should wear than an accurate description of her people s native wear.

When she spoke, she spoke with fire and fury as well as heartache and tears. She never failed to reach all who listened. Once, she and her family finally got a private visit with the President, Rutheford B. Hayes, which was set immediately after the Winnemuccas were given assurances that housing and food and clothing would be given her people. Later, she testified before Congress as to the condition of the Indian people and was listened to, intently.

However, nothing was ever done. It appeared to Sarah that all that white people in power could do well, was lie. Promises made then, were never kept.

Yet, in spite of all the broken promises, all the lies and cheating, the knavery and thievery and seeming slavery, for all the reasons her people had to give up and never believe in her again, what she did achieve over her 47 years of life can never be denied.

The facts speak for themselves: Sarah had learned to speak five languages English, Spanish, Paiute, Shoshone, Washoe. She could write in English, in fact, she wrote a book, that Mary Mann edited, and Elizabeth Peabody, her sister, published as LIFE AMONG THE PIUTES; THEIR WRONGS AND CLAIMS. Sarah taught the Indian children at Vancouver Reservation, Malheur Reservation, even for a bit at Yakama Reservation. Sarah served the military as well, as scout, interpreter, translator.

Note this: Sarah had no formal education. Her Grandfather had tried to enroll her in a school in San Jose with her sister, Mary, but after 3 weeks, the parents complained about their children being with savages so much, the Winnemucca girls left, and went home.

One special achievement of Sarah, that she took great pride in was the school she began in Lovelock, NV, for Indian children. It was too Indian they said. Yet Sarah s students could read and write and sing in English as well as count to the thousands, again, in English.

This school so impressed the local prominent citizens of Lovelock in 1886 that they wrote glowingly of it, and sent their comments to Miss Elizabeth Peabody who forwarded it on to the Boston Transcript where it was printed, as follows:

When we neared the school, shouts of merry laughter rang upon our ears, and little dark and sun burnt faces smiled a dim approval of our visitation. Speaking in her native tongue, the Princess (Sarah) requested the children to name all the visible objects, repeat the days of the week, and months of the year, and calculate to thousands, which they did in a most exemplary manner. Then she asked them to give a manifestation of their knowledge upon the blackboard, each in turn printing and spelling his name aloud.

It is needless to say, Miss Peabody, that we were spellbound.

Yet the Indian Bureau continued to treat Sarah s school as if it did not exist. No support of any sort was ever given. The very beginnings of the value of bilingual education were shown in the methods used by Sarah and no support was ever given.

In fact, later that year, a Washington official arrived at the school to tell Sarah that if she wanted money, she would have to give up her school and her brother would have to give up the land, his land, upon which the school was built. Sarah refused.

In the end, the government won: it passed a law requiring Indian children be educated in White English-speaking schools, whether their parents approved or not. Those school were to be located far away from Reservations or their homes. The children were forbidden to speak, do, or act in any way that reflected their Indian Heritage.

One day, a man called Mr. Davis simply came to the school and took the children away to Colorado to school Parents were not told. Lee Winnemucca had his boy stolen in such a manner. He was told that this was the law and there was nothing he could do about it.

Sarah, ever the educator, had known what really worked with her pupils, yet, no one asked her. She had written once:

It seems strange to me that the Government has not found out years ago that education is the key to the Indian Problem. Much money and many precious lives would have been saved if the American people had found my people with Books instead of powder lead. Education civilized your race and there is no reason why it cannot civilize mine.

Indian schools are failures at many agencies, but it is not the fault of

the children, but of the teacher and the interpreter&the most necessary thing for the success of an Indian school is a good interpreter, a perfect interpreter, a true interpreter&I attribute the success of my school not to my being a scholar and a good teacher but because I am my own interpreter, and my heart is in my work.

The seeds of the value of education, and a bilingual education for second-language learners are in Sarah s methods. The greatness of Sarah is just being seen today, 100 plus years after her death. Teacher, lecturer, interpreter, translator, multilingual speaker, author she was all of this.

And more she was a Nevada woman, and a native Nevada woman, who made a difference, like no other.

If ever a woman were key to the history of a state, it was Sarah, Super Sarah, Sarah Winnemucca.

Note: there is a bill (as you read this) in the Nevada State Legislature that has passed the Assembly and is stalled in the Senate. It is a resolution to make the second statue to represent Nevada in Statuary Hall one of Sarah Winnemucca. Every state is allowed two statues. She would be among the six women and 95 men already installed there. the only Indian woman there.

Find more information about Georgia Hedrick's CLOUDWOMAN at http://www.ebookmall.com.