''Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims'' is a book that was written by

Sarah Winnemucca Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins ( – October 17, 1891) was a Northern Paiute author, activist (lecturer) and educator (school organizer). Her maiden name is Winnemucca. Her Northern Paiute language, Northern Paiute name was Thocmentony, also spelled To ...

in 1883. It is both an autobiographic memoir and a history of the

Paiute people Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three groups do not form a single set. The term "Paiu ...

during their first forty years of contact with European Americans. It is considered the "first known autobiography written by a Native American woman."''Voices from the Gaps:'' "Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins"

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

website, accessed 11 February 2014 Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as "one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian," frequently cited by scholars.Omer Stewart, Review: "Gae Whitney Canfield, 'Sarah Winnemucca of the Northern Paiutes', Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1983"
''Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology,'' 5(2), 1983, accessed 12 February 2014 Winnemucca wrote ''Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims'' while she was doing lectures on the East Coast of the United States, advocating in the English language for the rights of the Northern Paiute people,Lukens, M. (1998). Her "Wrongs and Claims": Sarah Winnemucca's Strategic Narratives of Abuse. Wíčazo Ša Review, 93-108. and she was assisted in the funding, editing, and publishing of the book by sisters

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic de ...

and

Mary Peabody Mann Mary Tyler Mann ( Peabody; November 16, 1806 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts – February 11, 1887 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts) was a teacher, author, and mother. She was the wife of Horace Mann, American education reformer and politician. E ...

.Lape, Noreen Groover. "I Would Rather Be with My People, but Not to Live with Them as They Live": Cultural Liminality and Double Consciousness in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's" Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims." American Indian Quarterly (1998): 259-279.

Political Intentions

Winnemucca had been working as an advocate, diplomat, and interpreter for the Paiute people, utilizing her ability to speak English, since 1866. Her frequent interactions with and work alongside among the Anglo-Americans empowered her to act as a "politically savvy mediator" between the two cultures. In the face of marginalization by the U.S. government, violence by white settlers, and stereotypes of "savagery" that many Anglo-Americans held against her people, Winnemucca's intentions in writing ''Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims'' were candidly political. The purposes were to inform white audiences about the oppression of the Northern Paiutes, raise monetary support for her people, and defuse ethnically divisive stereotypes. The book ends with a supplication to her readers to sign a petition to the

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is Bicameralism, bicameral, composed of a lower body, the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives, and an upper body, ...

requesting for the return of a piece of land to the Paiutes, uses strong pathos and detailed, emotionally-heavy imagery in describing the difficulties of reservation life, and calls for white audience responsibility with quotes such as "Oh my dear good Christian people, how long are you going to stand by and see us suffer at your hands?". For these reasons, the reliability of ''Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims'' as a purely autobiographical work has been questioned.

References

External links

Life among the Piutes
(archive.org)
Life among the Piutes
(hathitrust)
Life among the Piutes
(yosemite.ca.us) {{Authority control 1883 non-fiction books Anthropology books Paiute Non-fiction books about Native Americans Autobiographies Memoirs