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Sarah Winnemucca [Thocmetony] (1844-1891)

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Emigration

From Life Among the Piutes, 1883. Read Online Download PDF

Reader: Elizabeth Dale

Emigration has always been a controversial topic in California, but today we commonly think of emigrants as persons who leave their native countries to live in the United States. Before California's statehood, however, Americans were the emigrants pouring into a Native-American and Hispanic land.

Thocmetony, also called Sarah Winnemucca, was only a small child when the Donner Party made a lasting impact on her people, the Paiutes of the eastern Sierra Nevada. In her 1883 memoir, Life Among the Piutes, she tells of a feeling of foreboding.

During that day one could see old women getting together talking over what they had heard my father say. They said, - 'It is true what our great chief has said, for it was shown to him by a higher power. It is not a dream. Oh, it surely will come to pass. We shall no longer be a happy people, as we now are; we shall no longer go here and there as of old; we shall no longer build our big fires as a signal to our friends, for we shall always be afraid of being seen by those bad people.' 'Surely they don't eat people?' 'Yes, they do eat people, because they ate each other up in the mountains last winter.' This was the talk among the old women during the day. 'Oh, how grieved we are! Oh, where will it end?'

Thocmetony became one of the first female Native American activists, working to help the Paiutes and other Native Americans until her death in 1891.