SOURCE: "Sarah Winnemucca: Northern Paiute, ca. 1844-1891," in American Indian Intellectuals, edited by Margot Liberty, West Publishing Co., 1976, pp. 32-42.

In the following essay. Fowler offers an ethnological study of Winnemucca as a figure who attempted to assimilate with white culture.

Sarah Winnemucca is a historical figure whose life and works have had more direct impact on the course of 19th century United States Indian policy than on the discipline of anthropology. In the latter half of the 19th century, she wrote a book (Hopkins 1883: Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims) and at least one article (Winnemucca 1882) detailing the harried course of Northern Paiute-White relations to that time. She also lectured extensively in the far West and in the East on reservation conditions, inequities in federal Indian policy and government agent corruption. Her book and speeches lent direct support to the passage of the controversial "lands...