It has been suggested that the preliminary step to such abolition must be to make public the history of this Ring, whose action from its beginning has been for the general removal of the tribes from their several original localities; revealing the secret of the Florida War, and other operations,—among its most subtle ones being its apparently friendly co-operation and hypocritical flatteries of the various organizations for educating and christianizing Indians. Such a history would explain their motives in making Sarah Winnemucca “a suspect” in the eyes of just those who should have received in generous faith this champion of her people’s right and opportunity freely to select the best things in civilization,—the principal one being, as she intuitively saw and everybody is at length convinced, the individual versus communal tenure of land,—while they are also free to retain whatever of the inherited tribal customs she also sees intuitively are necessary to preserve their social life heart-whole, though open to inspiration for individual self-development.
In her “Life among the Piutes,” which every one should make it a matter of conscience to read before making up his mind upon the character and aims of this most remarkable woman, it will be seen how naturally and inevitably she incurred the enmity of the several agents to whom has been traced directly every slander, especially that of Rinehart.
The sixth chapter of that book gives an appreciative account of the only agent among seventeen that had been sent out to the Piutes since they were known to the whites, who was not a calamity to them. This man, Samuel Parish by name, by his disinterestedness, honesty, and the simple humanity of his arrangements, demonstrated that there need be no difficulty with the Indians if they are treated fairly, and that with the same chances the Piutes at least can become as prosperous and rich as the white settlers, instead of being the burden that all Indians have seemed to be during the “Century of Dishonor,” so faithfully represented by “H. H.” in the book of that name, and later in the wonderful story of “Ramona,” which is gradually doing for the Indian what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for the negro. But it would take a volume even larger than Mr. Tibbles’ book upon the “Hidden Power” to give in detail even the history of this persecution of Sarah, which has been traced out in all its subtleties by many of her friends, who consist, I may truly say, of all the hundreds of audiences whom her artless addresses took captive, between her arrival at Boston in the spring of 1883 and her departure to the West from Baltimore in the August of 1884. I have never seen or heard of one person of all those who themselves heard her speak in public (after the first lecture that she gave in Boston),[2] who was in the slightest degree affected by accusations that answered themselves in every person’s mind who had been under the spell of the simple statement of facts that she made with names and dates, and defied the world to prove one of them false. I myself heard her speak in public in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania as many as thirty times, in which she never repeated or contradicted herself once, though it was obvious that except in the choice of some particular subject to be made her theme, she took no previous thought as to what she should say, but trusted that the right words would be given her by the “Spirit Father,” whose special messenger she believed herself to be, and impressed her audiences to believe that she was.
She got thousands of signatures to her petitions, made friends for herself, and interested the most excellent members of Congress to present her petitions, and the Senate did, on July 6, 1884, pass a bill which by implication abolished the agency of Pyramid Lake,—for it proposed to give the reservation to Winnemucca’s and Leggins’ bands in severalty of lands. And so I content myself with what will give to any person of common sense and candid heart the above hints by which they may estimate the intrinsic worth, or rather worthlessness, of the slanderous rumors which Gibson has lately succeeded in impressing upon the minds of a few persons who ought to be her coadjutors, and whom she could aid in her turn in carrying out their own good intentions to the Indians, if it were not for the unhappy misconception of her which prevented their making acquaintance with herself personally. “There is nothing so sad in the records of experience as that the children of light should misunderstand each other;” nor is anything so disastrous as a mistake made by the good-intentioned, because their impressions are not questioned but swallowed incontinently, without investigation. Could I have had a personal interview with those persons, I feel sure they never would have given publicity to their mistake, for which I hold only Gibson morally responsible; but this interview they did not seek, having jumped to the conclusion that I was passively deluded. They did not know that I had been a student of Indian history for more than seventy years, having, as early as seven years old, taken my first impression from my own mother’s enthusiasm for another “Indian princess” whom a great-uncle of mine, one of the generals in our Revolutionary War, married in Northern Michigan, where he went to settle after the war, and whose half-breed descendants, by the name of Hunt, are valuable citizens of that State. It was the first impression of the noble domestic education this Indian princess gave her children, followed up by hearing my father read to my mother, before I was ten years old, the Moravian Heckerwelder’s “History of the North American Indians,” which goes into the details of the tribal mode of training the children to habits of reverence for elders, truthfulness with each other, and a majestic self-respect, that gave me a key to the characteristic Indian virtues, and enabled me to read “Hubbard’s Indian Wars,” with open eyes to see that the white race was more responsible than the Indians for the cruelties which transpired on both sides. Ever after I was an omnivorous reader of everything I could find about Indians, whether from ethnologists or travellers or residents, among them,—like Catlin, for instance; so that H. H.’s “Century of Dishonor” told me nothing that I did not know before. Besides this, I learned from William B. Ogden[3] the history of the origin and action of the Indian Ring from its beginning with the fur-traders; and studied the secret history of the Florida war, with officers of the army engaged in it, who revealed to me its persistence in the interests of the civil service under Governor Duval. All this, and acquaintance with the half-breed Chippewa missionary Tanner, who thirty years ago made in Boston precisely the same explanatory criticism on the vicious principle of all the missionary work for Indians that Sarah Winnemucca does,[4] prepared me to appreciate and understand the first lecture I heard from her, which she addressed “exclusively to women,” in which she unfolded the domestic education given by the grandmothers of the Piute tribe to the youth of both sexes, with respect to their relations with each other both before and after marriage,—a lecture which never failed to excite the moral enthusiasm of every woman that heard it, and seal their confidence in her own purity of character and purpose.
The faith that she then inspired in me has grown by everything else I have known her to say and do in a more than three years’ intimacy in which my life has been bound up in hers; yet my faith and confidence in her do not rest exclusively on her own eloquent ipse dixit and practical consistency with it, far less on my own subjective impressions, which I am fully aware can be no evidence to other people, but on collateral evidence that has been continually pouring in upon me, that I am ready to give viva voce to other people, but much of which cannot, with propriety, be put into public print, as it involves a story of private trials of her own that are sacred to those who know them in all their particulars. This collateral evidence consisted, in addition to what is published in the Appendix to “Life among the Piutes” (see the “Letter of Roger Sherman Day, unsolicited”), of the testimony of persons unknown to Sarah Winnemucca, who unexpectedly arose in her audiences to confirm what she said and declare it was not exaggerated,—such persons as the Rev. Edwin Brown of the first Church in Providence, Professor Brewer of New Haven, Father Hughes of St. Jerome Convent in New York, and a French priest for whom he spoke, and who he said was in Yakima when she was, all of whom gave personal indorsement to her statements; also correspondents of mine in Nevada and California, one of whom furnished the following slips from the California newspapers of 1879, confirming her statements about Rinehart and Scott.
“In addition to what Princess Sarah Winnemucca said during her lecture the other evening about one Rinehart (the Indian agent at the Malheur Reservation), to the effect that not an Indian remains on the reservation at that place, additional statements come by way of Walla Walla. These reports say that there has not been a single Indian at that agency for over a year, and yet supplies are being constantly sent thither by the Government. The agent (Rinehart) himself has tried, and sent his emissaries all over the country, even unto Nevada, to bribe the Piutes to return. But in vain. Those poor Indians have had a taste of his brutality, and they want no more of it. So it seems that Sarah knew what she was talking about, and knew the facts. She said that this pet of the Indian Ring had promised pay to the Indians for working; and when they applied for their wages, his course toward them was such that they declined further peonage of that kind.
“Then he assumed the character of the bully, and with pistol in hand attempted to force them to work for him. Now, allowing the one concession that the Piutes are men, it is perfectly natural that they should have left him and the reservation. Had he been a man of honesty and honor, he would have informed the Government of the exact condition of things, and thus have prevented the Government from still forwarding supplies for that agency. Not an Indian is within two hundred miles of the agency, and not one can be bribed to return. Yet the Government still sends the supplies. What becomes of them? Perhaps Rinehart could tell; and perhaps Commissioner Hoyt could tell—if he would. Under such circumstances, no wonder the question is asked why Rinehart is still kept in office under salary, for performing duties that do not exist. It is suggested that the reservation lands be sold for the benefit of the Indians. The question is asked, says the despatch, for what Indians? There are none within two hundred miles.”
Here is another newspaper slip of this date, headed “A Model Representative of the Indian Bureau:”
“Two or three weeks since, a fellow named J. W. Scott, who pretends to be acting for the Interior Department, arrived here from Oregon. His threats created considerable alarm among the Indians, who congregated here from all parts of the country to hear what he had to say. Natches and Winnemucca say that at the time of the outbreak at the Malheur Reservation, a year ago last summer, this man Scott, who they state had a beef contract at the reservation, had a talk with the Indians at Crowley’s ranch. They told him that if he would state their grievances on paper and send the document to Washington, they would return to the reservation. The chiefs dictated and Natches interpreted what he should write. When they finished, not having very much confidence in his integrity, they took the paper from him and gave it to G. B. Crowley to read. In this way they ascertained that he had not written what they dictated, and instead of stating the fact that they were being starved at the reservation and were driven to desperation by the treatment they received, he painted the Indians as demons and the agent as an angel. This infuriated the savages, and Natches and Winnemucca could hardly restrain the reservation Indians from scalping Scott right then and there. Knowing that he had played the Indians false at that time, Natches and Winnemucca were afraid to trust him at the council held here upon his arrival from Malheur a short time ago, and they asked a few white men—among them the writer—to be present. What occurred at the council was truthfully reported in these columns at the time. Scott, it appears, does not like the truth; so he reported to Natches yesterday that the ‘Silver State’ stated a few days ago that he (Natches) and Jerry Long, the interpreter, were the most notorious liars in the country. What object the fellow could have in telling such a lie to the Indians, the writer cannot surmise, unless it was for the purpose of making them distrustful of those who tell the truth about the Malheur Agency. An acquaintance of many years with many of the Piutes of Humboldt County warrants the writer in saying that so far as his experience extends, they are generally truthful and reliable; while respectable white men who knew Scott in Plumas County, California, before he went to Malheur, say the records of the courts in that county will show that decent men testified that they would not believe him under oath. Surely the Interior Department ought to send a man with a better reputation as its representative to hold councils with the Indians, and keep Mr. Scott at Malheur to take the census of the Indians and make affidavit to the quantity of beef and blankets distributed at a reservation where there has not been an Indian since a year ago last June.”
To these slips I might add most curious letters that I have received from both Democrats and Republicans of Virginia City and Reno, who, supposing me to be sister of the millionnaire banker, wrote to induce me to serve their political interests with money and influence,—some praising and some abusing Sarah, and both enlightening me.
Hoping that I shall be pardoned for the inevitable egotism of making this special plea for my reliability as a witness in this case, I conclude to add to the report of the claims of her school what has transpired even since I began writing this Postscript.