Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women (24 page)

Read Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women Online

Authors: Elizabeth Mahon

Tags: #General, #History, #Women, #Social Science, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Women's Studies

BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
11.12Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Mary Ellen Pleasant breathed her last on January 11, 1904, taking her secrets with her to the grave. Legend has it that she was once offered a small fortune to spill the beans about San Francisco society. She regarded the man with disdain and told him, “I have never needed money bad enough to betray anyone.”
Mary Ellen hit a lot of societal hot buttons in post-Civil War California. Not only was she a black woman who had amassed a great deal of money and property but many influential white men had confided their secrets to her, giving her a great deal of power. She challenged society’s norms not just for women in general but for black women specifically. In her own lifetime she became legendary as a black woman who devised her own way to power. People who knew her described her as a formidable and terrifying presence. Others said that “if she had been white and a man, she would have been president.”
 
Sarah Winnemucca
 
1844-1891
 
I, only an Indian Woman, went and saved
my father
and his people.
—SARAH WINNEMUCCA
 
 
Pocahontas, Sacajawea, Sarah Winnemucca. “Wait, Sarah Winnewho?” would be most people’s reaction when they heard that last name. Thanks to the Disney cartoon, every schoolkid knows the story of Pocahontas saving the life of John Smith. More people have mispronounced Sacajawea’s name than know that she was the guide during the Lewis and Clark expedition mapping the Oregon Trail. But Sarah’s name should be on everyone’s lips. She spent her life trying to establish a peaceful coexistence between her people and the white settlers. She fought corrupt government agents, who tried to blacken her reputation, calling her a whore and a drunk. And when the government ignored her, she took the story of her people to the American public through her lectures and books. Only after her death would she be recognized for her work as a peacemaker between the two races.
Sarah Winnemucca was born sometime in 1844 near Humboldt Lake, in what is now Nevada, to the chief of the Paiute Indian tribe. She was named Thocmetony, which means “shell flower” in the Paiute language. In just a few short years, she would witness the destruction of a way of life her people had known for centuries. Already the “white owls,” as they were called by the Northern Paiutes
16
because of their beards and faces, were striking fear in the hearts of the Native tribes. “They came like a lion,” she later wrote, “yes, like a roaring lion and have continued to do so ever since.”
Her grandfather believed that his people needed to learn and understand the ways of the white man in order to survive. He had guided John C. Frémont and his men during his mapmaking expedition across the Great Basin into California and fought in the Mexican-American War. Sarah’s father, Chief Winnemucca, was not as convinced; he distrusted most whites, preferring to keep his distance.
To prepare her for the future, her grandfather sent her and her sister Elma to live with a stagecoach agent’s family in Utah Territory; it was they who gave her the name Sarah. There she learned to speak and write English and Spanish. It was her first prolonged exposure to the white world, and Sarah found much to admire. But when hostilities broke out between the white settlers and the Paiutes, Sarah and her sister were sent home. After her grandfather’s death, she and Elma spent three weeks at a convent school in California but were expelled when the parents of the other students objected to their presence. It was the end of Sarah’s formal education, but she became determined to continue to learn on her own.
When gold and silver were discovered near Pyramid Lake, the trickle of white settlers became a flood. By 1866, the Paiutes began to submit to the policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to resettle on a reservation. Determined to help her people, Sarah moved to the reservation, only to find that there they were exploited by corrupt or incompetent Indian agents who left them starving and destitute. Because Washington was so far away, government orders were ignored or disobeyed. The few good agents who were concerned about the Indians and treated them well were quickly removed and sent elsewhere. Sarah became an outspoken critic concerning the injustices she saw meted out to her people. She was used to speaking up. In Paiute culture, women were permitted to voice their opinions and participate in the decision making.
Since Sarah could speak English as well as several Indian languages, she was hired as a scout and an interpreter at Camp McDermit for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Proud of her new job, she began dressing in tailored suits like a white woman. In July of 1868, five hundred of the Paiutes relocated to Camp McDermit rather than starve. Sarah wrote a letter to Major Henry Douglass, who was assigned as Indian superintendent to Nevada. He was so impressed that he passed it along to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC. In her letter she wrote, “If this is the kind of civilization awaiting us on the reserves, God grant that we may never be compelled to go on one, as it is preferable to live in the mountains and drag out an existence in our native manner.”
Any hope that Sarah had for her people was smashed when President Grant declared them wards of the government and consigned them to reservation land. In 1872, Sarah was invited to work as an interpreter at the Malheur reservation in southwestern Oregon. The agent there, Samuel Parrish, was the only agent Sarah ever trusted. She became his interpreter, and she taught alongside his sister-in-law at the school on the reservation. Parrish treated the Indians fairly for the work they did, encouraging them to work the land. The idyll couldn’t last. Parrish was replaced by William V. Rinehart, who was far from being filled with Christian charity. Rinehart was a bigot who thought that the only good Indian was a dead one. He soon became a thorn in Sarah’s side and one of the worst things to happen to the Paiutes. The Indians were now told that everything they produced belonged to the government but they would be paid a small fee. However, after expenses were deducted, the Indians were left with nothing. Rinehart clashed with Sarah, claiming that she stirred up trouble among the Paiutes. After she complained about him to his superiors, he had her banished from the reservation. Sarah moved to Canyon City, Oregon, where she did housework for a woman who lived on the John Day River.
The Bannocks, an Idaho tribe on a reservation near Fort Hall, were sick and tired of their mistreatment at the hands of oppressive Indian agents and ready to fight. Sarah’s father refused to join the uprising. In retaliation, the Bannocks held him and several other members of the Paiutes hostage. When Sarah found out, she offered her services as a scout and interpreter to General Howard, who was the commander of the army during the Bannock war. But Sarah decided to go one step further and rescue her father and the other prisoners. It was an insane undertaking involving miles of treacherous rocky terrain. Nearing the Bannock camp, Sarah and her brother Lee dismounted and crawled on their hands and knees up the mountain. While the Bannocks were slaughtering cattle for the evening meal, they stealthily made their way through enemy lines and rescued seventy-five people.
Sarah continued to serve as a scout and interpreter, slipping out to the Bannock camps, stealing plans, and aiding in the capture of prisoners. “That was the hardest work I ever did for the government in all my life,” she wrote. For her pains Sarah earned the sum of five hundred dollars. Despite her heroism there were some among the Indian tribes who saw Sarah as a traitor for working with the army, but she felt that the army at least had always treated the Indians decently and could be trusted, as opposed to the civilian Indian agents.
By the end of the summer of 1878 the war was over. The Paiutes assumed that because they hadn’t joined the Bannock war they would be able to stay at the Malheur reservation, but the army instead considered all Indians prisoners of war, regardless of their tribe. Instead they were forced to march three hundred miles north to the Yakima reservation in what is now Washington State. The Paiutes were poorly housed and fed, many of them dying before spring came. The Paiutes were assured that wagonloads of warm clothing were on their way. However, the promised goods turned out to be twenty-eight shawls and a handful of fabrics. The Yakimas resented the newcomers and stole their horses. The agent in charge did nothing to foster good relations between the tribes.
Deciding that she had to do more to raise awareness about the injustices being done to her people, Sarah turned to the lecture stage. This was not her first time on the stage. In 1864, when she was twenty, Sarah had acted in a series of
tableaux vivants
that conformed to Indian stereotypes, including “The War Dance,” “The Indian Camp,” and “Scalping the Prisoner,” in Nevada and San Francisco with her grandfather and her sister Elma. The shows were to raise money for the Paiutes, who had no other source of income for their basic needs. After each scene, Old Winnemucca had given a speech, which Sarah had interpreted for the audience. Although their appeals were ignored by the audiences, the experience gave Sarah confidence to speak in front of whites.
She launched her new career in San Francisco. Taking the stage before a standing-room-only crowd, she wore a buckskin dress embellished with fringe, scarlet leggings, and an eagle feather crowning her long, dark hair. Within minutes Sarah had the audience spellbound as she began to speak, surprising them with her fluency in English. Speaking without notes, she told stories of her people, about her grandfather and the ill-treatment of the Paiutes. She wasn’t afraid to name names of the unscrupulous agents. So it wasn’t all doom and gloom, she told humorous anecdotes and performed impressions of people she knew. At the end, instead of hitting them up for money, as was expected, Sarah asked for books and teachers for her people. “Educated Indians would quickly become good citizens of the United States.”
Called the “Paiute Princess” by the press, Sarah was now a celebrity of sorts after her exploits during the Bannock war. Local and regional newspapers covered the speeches, and several, including the
San Francisco Chronicle
, the
San Francisco Call
, and the Nevada
Daily Silver State
, ran feature stories about her. It was the first public relations campaign by a Native American woman.
The publicity garnered by her lectures led to an invitation to Washington to voice her complaints. Accompanied by her father, brothers, and an escort from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Sarah discovered after her arrival that she was confined to a strict schedule. Her only appointments were with government officials, interspersed with lots of sightseeing. Sarah soon realized that the trip was less about helping her people than it was damage control after all the publicity generated by her lectures. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was trying to save face. Still Sarah was optimistic.
As a placating gesture, Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz gave her a letter that stated that the Paiutes could go back to Malheur, along with an allotment of one hundred tents and muchneeded supplies. When he heard that she was hoping to lecture, he admonished her not to, telling her it would be bad form since the government invited her and then paid her way. If she hadn’t been sure before that they were trying to keep her quiet, it was clear to her now. Even her brief meeting with President Hayes seemed designed more as a photo op than a real opportunity. What she didn’t know was that her old nemesis William Rinehart undermined her efforts by sending a barrage of letters to government officials, calling her a prostitute and a drunk.
Sarah waited for two weeks at the delivery point for tents and supplies, but they never came. Sarah was ridiculed for once again believing in the empty promises of the whites. Though she had an order authorizing the Paiutes’ return to Oregon, the move was never funded, and the Yakima agent James Wilbur refused to free the Paiutes from the reservation. Instead he tried to get her to keep quiet by offering her a job as an interpreter. When she refused the job, Wilbur sent a letter to Schurz, claiming that Sarah had misrepresented the Paiutes and been banned from the reservation. It was another blow to both Sarah and her people. Her failures led them to question her loyalty. She left the reservation with a broken heart to work as an interpreter and teacher at Fort Vancouver.
At the end of 1881 in San Francisco, Sarah married a handsome dandy named Lewis Hopkins. This was her second marriage to a white man, and no better than the first. For an intelligent woman, Sarah had the worst taste in men. Like her first husband, Hopkins was another charming soldier who stole from her and left her heartbroken. Even before they left the city, he’d gambled away five hundred dollars of her money. Since Hopkins preferred a life of leisure to actually holding a job, the couple moved to a reservation.

Other books

Comanche Woman by Joan Johnston
A Lie About My Father by John Burnside
Sweet Memories by Starks, Nicola
Head Shot by Burl Barer
Holy Water by James P. Othmer
Before You Go by Clare James
Los Humanoides by Jack Williamson
One Night with a Rake (Regency Rakes) by Mia Marlowe, Connie Mason