Analysis: Trouble on the Paiute Reservation

Date: 1888

Author: Sarah Winnemucca

Genre: memoir

Summary Overview

On March 14, 1865, elements of the First Nevada Volunteer Cavalry Battalion, under the command of Captain Almond B. Wells, descended on a Paiute encampment on Mud Lake in the territory's northwestern region while searching for suspected cattle thieves. Although it is unclear who fired the first shot, the action resulted in the death of twenty-nine Natives, most of them women and children. The incident was just one in a long chain of abuses suffered by the Paiute on their Nevada reservation. Corrupt Indian Agents, lack of support and infrastructure, hostile settlers, and an unsympathetic government eager to annex Native lands, made life on the Paiute reservation, and life across all reservations, miserable. The horrid conditions faced by Native peoples in the reservation system was the direct result of government policy, and despite the efforts of reformers and Native advocates, little changed for the better. Terrible conditions persisted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, for many Native peoples, continue until this day.

Defining Moment

In the mid-nineteenth century, as settlers raced to conquer the vast continental interior, driven on by a belief in Manifest Destiny, the singular belief that God himself had bequeathed the West to Americans, they invariably came into contact with the Native peoples who already occupied the land. When clashes occurred, as they inevitably did, the US government could then justify sending in the Army to pacify Native peoples, whom they deemed savages, harassing innocent settlers. In this way, the US government could annex large swaths of territory, displacing Native inhabitants, without any obvious criminal or moral consequence. However, the big question was, what to do with Native peoples once they were moved off their lands?

The answer came in the form of reservations, a name derived ironically from the recognition that Native peoples were independent of US rule. Beginning in 1851, the first reservations were established in what is modern day Oklahoma, in the hopes of containing Native peoples and limiting the violence in the region. However, by the late 1860s, with the Indian Wars raging, inflamed by continued settler encroachment on Native lands, President Ulysses S. Grant established the “Peace Policy.” Under this order, the Indian Bureau was reorganized, and new reservations were established, often on land deemed unsuitable for cultivation and usually far from tribal ancestral land. Tribes were ordered to relocate under threat of force and, once on the reservations, subject to reeducation and conversion at the hands of Christian missionaries.

Grant's policy was a complete disaster. Conditions on the reservations were horrible, and widespread corruption among the religious administrators reached epic proportions. Many tribes resisted relocation orders, leading to some of the bloodiest confrontations of the Indian Wars, including the Battle of Little Bighorn. Native American advocates, along with eastern reformers, pushed hard for a reorganization of the Indian Bureau, and in 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which brought Indian affairs back under the supervision of government administrators and reallocated lands to individuals instead of whole tribes. The intent was to dismantle tribal affiliation, thereby speeding the process of “civilizing” Native peoples. The result was a further fragmentation of Native tribes and a further reduction in Native landholdings, sometimes by a significant amount. Life continued to be difficult on reservations for decades to come, and despite attempts at reform in the twentieth century, most Native peoples continue to live in some of the worst conditions in the country.

Author Biography

Sarah Winnemucca was born in what is Nevada in 1844. Shoshone by birth and Paiute by marriage, she was raised among her people but educated settlers. Fluent in English, she traveled extensively and even performed on the stage. After the massacre at Mud Lake, Sarah worked with both the Indian Bureau and the US Army, promoting cooperation and reform, this work then translated into a life of activism. By the 1880s, Winnemucca was travelling widely across the nation, lecturing and speaking on behalf of Native affairs. In 1883, she published the highly regarded book Life Among the Paiutes, which not only documented some aspects of tribal culture, but also addressed many of the injustices suffered by her people and shed light on the terrible conditions suffered by Native Americans on reservations. In her later years, Winnemucca returned to the reservation, where she opened a private Indian school. She died from tuberculosis in 1891.

Document Analysis

Sarah Winnemucca begins by detailing life on the reservation before the encroachment of white settlers. By her account life was very good. In fact, it should be noted that Winnemucca is not against the reservation system. On the contrary, she is a proponent of it, but the actions of settlers, Indian agents, and the US Army make things on the reservation less than idyllic.

Tension grows quickly in Winnemucca's account. Corruption and theft quickly escalate into violence. Winnemucca recalls with obvious pain the events at Mud Lake in 1865, where a group of American soldiers massacred twenty-nine of her people, mainly women and children. She paints a horrific scene, in which those who weren't shot were thrown alive into bonfires. After the massacre, there is more violence against Native peoples. In all, over 100 are killed. The Paiute were relocated and put under the military supervision. Harsh treatment followed. Her account is typical of the experience of most Native peoples during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Dispossessed, constantly harassed by the Army and settlers driven both by racism and greed, Native peoples had to walk a fine line. To resist often meant violence and massacre, but to submit often meant an invitation for abuse and exploitation.

Winnemucca spends a good amount of time cataloguing the corruption of the Indian agents that administered the reservation. Money trades hands. Ranchers pay Indian agents to use reservation land for grazing. Farmers pay Indian agents money to use reservation land for cultivation. Deals are struck. The needs of Native people are ignored. It is interesting to consider what may occur when cattle grazing on reservation land stray too far or simply wander off. Would the Paiute then be accused of theft? If so, the Army would be called in to pacify the troublemakers, and if things escalated, the misunderstanding would likely become violent. Were these the circumstances that led to the massacre at Mud Lake?

Winnemucca is most skilled in the tact she uses to bring the abuses against her people to the attention of her white audience. She does not condemn the American people, the government, not even the Army or the reservation system, but instead focuses all her attention on just a handful of corrupt individuals. She tells her reader, who she addresses as “good Christian people,” that only a few scheming, immoral officials are at fault. By framing her argument in this way, she is able to call for reform and stir sympathy, while also assuaging the guilt of her audience, thus eliminating the possibility of resentment. Furthermore, she appeals to Victorian notions of white superiority, by arguing that the real tragedy of the corruption that abounds in the Indian reservation system is not necessarily the violence and suffering, but the lack of civilizing progress. We could be like you, Winnemucca pleads, if you were just to teach us.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. 1970. New York: Holt, 2007. Print.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Boston: Beacon P, 2014. Print.

Greenwald, Emily. Reconfiguring the Reservation: The Nez Perces, Jicarilla Apaches, and the Dawes Act. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2002. Print.

Truer, David. Rez Life. New York: Atlantic Monthly P, 2012. Print.