The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1921-01-24

| new frame SCHOOL mouse tnere.
The great father at Washington
has granted pension to Jack Hur-
ley, the old scout. who served with
Gen. Howard in the Nez Perez war
and he does not have to ask so many
favors of his friends now. While
Jack was scouting under General
Howard in the Nez Perez war, that
one armed chieftain had the advice
and counsel of an Indian interpreter
named Winnemucca Sarah. Winnie
mucca means giver and she gave gen.
erously of her own life to bring
about an understanding between her
own people and the palefaces.
Sarah was BORN near Humboldt
Lake in 1874, the year General Ere
mont went thru that country, after
Exploring the Salt Lake valley. Her
father was chief of the band that
lived about the Humboldt and Pyra-
mid Lakes, sometimes spoken of as
| "Winnemucca' band" Her father,
being chief, when General Fremont
went thru to California in the fall of
1843, he accompanied the paleface
chief, being one of the sixty-five men
who crossed the Sierra Nevada noun
tains in the dead of winter in snow
so deep that it marked the starv-
ing time. Fremont gave the Indian
the name of Captain Truckee and
he went by that name until his death
in 1859. In 1860 his granddaughter
Sarah, was taken to San Jose and
placed in Catholic school, but re-
NAMED there only few weeks. Her
people were sent to occupy the res
ervation or lands assigned to them
to live on in the neighborhood of
Pyramid Lake and she went with
them. 1t was formed into a reserva-
ton in the year 1854 and Sarah's
mother died at about that time. In
1858 Sarah began acting as inter-
prefer for the Indian agent to the
Shoshone Indians. When General
Towards army was in conflict with
the Piutes and Bannocks in the war
OF 1877 when no Indian man could
be induced to take the risk of bear
ing messages to the Indians, Winnie
mucca Sarah, who spoke Bannock
and Piute, carried messages back
and forth between them and General
Howard.
Sarah's own father, the son of
Captain Truckee was a leader of a
hostile tribe and Sarah induced him
and his followers to leave the war
path and stop their opposition to the
white man.
When the war was over, she was
appointed government Interpreter at
Malheur agency in Oregon and in
1881 conducted a school for Indian
children at the Vancouver barracks
in Washington. She had come into
notice by the government officials
during trip to Washington with her
father, Chief Winnemucca, in the
year 1879, settling up some of the
questions following the war of 1877
IS with the Piutes, the Shoshones,
the Bannocks and the Nez Perces. |
The thing they were the most inter-
ested in on this trip was to get per-
mission from the government for the
Piute Indians to be turned from the
Yakima reservation to the Malheur
reservation and this was granted by |
the secretary Of the interior, but J
the Indian agent at Yakima after
wards thwarted the plan so they
were never returned. In 1881, she
made another trip east, but did not |
succeed in accomplishing the trans
fer of her people. She was greatly
over the way the Indian
agents mistreated the Indians. She
visited number of eastern cities,
where she delivered addresses to
packed houses explaining to them
how their Indian agents in the west
were treating the red men. She ex-
planned how she had sat in council
with her people and the palefaces,
how she had explained their express
,ions to one another and brought
hem to understanding wherever. it
was possible and showed that where
most of the trouble had arisen was
;hru lack of understanding thru the
acts of the outlaw people of both
aces. She showed that the respon-
'ible and reliable people of both
aces were only arrayed against each
)ther thru the unreliable characters
IN both sides. To aid in this work
'he wrote book entitled, Life
Among the Piutes, Their Wrongs and
Claims" which was published in
1888.
When Sarah was about thirty
eight years old she had love affair
md married white man, Lieutenant
Hopkins, who afterwards died of
Upon his death, Sarah
to lose hope; she gave up the
work she was doing for the school;
he disappointments and the wrongs
uttered by her people seemed to
,rostrate her and she never recoy-
red her formr hope and ambition
md her determination to do for her
'eople. She had sister living at |
honida, Mont, which is on the
boundary line between Montana and
IDAHO from which 1t derives its
lame. A great cloud had come over
Ter life which at this time had begun
o bear heavily on her. At the time
nat she was lecturing and writing to /
expose the grating OF the Indian