Sarah Winnemucca

Sarah Winnemucca (whose birth name was Thoc-me-tony) was a nationally recognized advocate for Native American rights. Adept in five languages, she used her verbal skills to mediate diplomatic exchanges between her Northern Paiute community and U.S. government officials. In the early 1880s, she visited the White House and the U.S. Capitol to protest the Paiutes’ forced relocation to Yakama Reservation in Washington state. She also delivered hundreds of speeches detailing the mistreatment of Indigenous communities and wrote Life among the Piutes (1883), the first autobiography published by a Native American woman.

Studio photographs such as this helped Winnemucca publicize her cause. It was made in Baltimore, where she delivered approximately sixty-six lectures in 1884. A final trip east in 1887 failed to attract funding for the school Winnemucca had established for Paiute children. Discouraged, she confessed to a supporter, “It is useless for me to try to stand against the World.”