SOURCE: "Three Nineteenth-Century American Indian Autobiographers," in Redefining American Literary History, edited by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., The Modern Language Association of America, 1990, pp. 251-69.

In the following excerpt, Ruoff evaluates Life among the Piutes by comparing it to other American Indian autobiographies and slave narratives of the same period.

One of the few Indian autobiographies published during the last half of the nineteenth century was Sarah Winnemucca's Life among the Piutes. The fiery Winnemucca (Thocmetony; Paiute; 1844-91) was the first Indian woman writer of personal and tribal history. Like the slave narrators of the second half of the century, Winnemucca abandons the strongly Christian flavor of earlier personal narratives; unlike [William] Apes and [George] Copway, she does not pattern her narrative after spiritual confessions and missionary reminiscences. Her emphasis on personal experience as part of the ethnohistory of her tribe owes more...