page_title: Sarah Winnemucca
section_title: Pyramid Lake War and stage
hierarchical_section_title: Sarah Winnemucca / Pyramid Lake War and stage
caption_attribution_description: English: Numaga was the chief during the Paiute war. He was called the Peace Chief. Français&#160;: Numaga était un chef Amérindien de la tribu des Païutes. Il était surnommé par les anglophones "Peace Chief" (Chef de la Paix).
context_page_description: Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was a Northern Paiute author, activist and educator.
  Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake, Nevada, into an influential Paiute family who led their community in pursuing friendly relations with the arriving groups of Anglo-American settlers. She was sent to study in a Catholic school in Santa Clara, California. When the Paiute War erupted between the Pyramid Lake Paiute and the settlers, including some who were friends of the Winnemucca family, Sarah and some of her family traveled to San Francisco and Virginia City to escape the fighting. They made a living performing onstage as "A Paiute Royal Family." In 1865, while the Winnemucca family was away, their band was attacked by the US cavalry, who killed 29 Paiutes, including Sarah's mother and several members of her extended family.
  Subsequently, Winnemucca became an advocate for the rights of Native Americans, traveling across the US to tell Anglo-Americans about the plight of her people. When the Paiute were interned in a concentration camp at Yakima, Washington after the Bannock War, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and the executive branch for their release.
context_section_description: With the decreasing pressure of new migrants in the region attracted to the Washoe silver finds, Old Winnemucca arranged in 1859 to have his daughters returned to him again in Nevada. In 1860, open conflict occurred. The Paiute had killed two men who had kidnapped and abused two Paiute girls. Settlers and miners organized a militia, making Major Ormsby lead it by default. He was killed by the Paiute in a disciplined confrontation in the first event of the Pyramid Lake War. Settlers were alarmed at how well the Paiute fought and the ill-prepared miners could not hold their own. The Paiute and whites reached a truce by the end of the summer. Young Winnemucca, Sarah's cousin, led the Paiute as a war chief by then. In October 1860, their grandfather Truckee died of a tarantula bite.
  As a mark of development, Nevada was established as a distinct US Territory, and James W. Nye was appointed as its first governor. When he came to the territory, he went to the Pyramid Lake Reservation, where he met Old Winnemucca, Young Winnemucca and the Paiute, who put on a grand display. For the next five years (1860–1865), Sarah and her family frequently traveled away from the reservation, performing on stage, either in Virginia City, Nevada at Maguire's Opera House, or in San Francisco. They were billed as the "Paiute Royal Family." By this time, her father had taken a second, younger wife, with whom he had a young son.
  In Nevada, US forces repeatedly acted against Native Americans to "remind them of who was in charge." The Natives were repeatedly accused of raids and cattle stealing. In 1865 Captain Almond B. Wells led a Nevada Volunteer cavalry in indiscriminate raids across the northern part of the state, attacking Paiute bands. While Sarah and her father were in Dayton, Nevada, Wells and his men attacked Old Winnemucca's camp, killing 29 of the 30 persons in the band, who were old men, women and children.
  The chief's two wives (including Sarah's mother) and infant son were killed. Although Sarah's sister Mary escaped from camp, she died later that winter due to the severe conditions. Her younger sister Elma was out of the area, as she had been adopted by a French family in Marysville, California. There Elma Winnemucca married John Smith, a white man, and moved with him to a white community in Montana and, later, Idaho.
  In 1868 about 490 Paiute survivors moved to a military camp, which became known as Fort McDermitt, on the Nevada–Oregon border. They sought protection from the US Army against the Nevada Volunteers. In 1872 the federal government established the Malheur Reservation in eastern Oregon, designated by President Ulysses S. Grant for the Northern Paiute and Bannock peoples in the area. Three bands of Paiute moved there at the time. In 1875, Sarah, her brother Natchez and his family, and their father Old Winnemucca moved there, too.
caption: Numaga, or "Young Winnemucca", Sarah Winnemucca's cousin and war leader of the Paiute in the Pyramid Lake War.
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