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SARAH WINNEMUCCA’S
PRACTICAL SOLUTION OF THE INDIAN
PROBLEM.
A LETTER TO DR. LYMAN ABBOT
OF THE “CHRISTIAN UNION.”
BY
ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.
CAMBRIDGE:
JOHN WILSON AND SON.
University Press.
1886.
SARAH WINNEMUCCA’S
PRACTICAL SOLUTION OF THE INDIAN PROBLEM.
To Dr. Lyman Abbot, Editor of the Christian Union:—
Because you so cordially announced Sarah Winnemucca’s“New Departure,” a year or more ago,as the Christian Union’s solution of the Indian problem,I send you this Report that I am now desirousto make to the public, unofficial and official, of herprogress. The distinguishing characteristic of thisNew Departure is that, instead of being, as usual, apassive reception of civilizing influences proffered bywhite men who look down upon the Indian as aspiritual, moral, and intellectual inferior, it is a spontaneousmovement, made by the Indian himself, fromhimself, in full consciousness of free agency, for theeducation that is to civilize him.
Sarah Winnemucca’s idea is an inheritance fromthat remarkable chief of the Piutes, Captain Truckee,who in 1848, for the first time, discovered that therewere white men in the world! In the first chapterof her “Life among the Piutes”[1] Sarah tells of hismeeting with General (then Captain) Fremont in themountains of Nevada, who accepted his proffered[4]guidance on the unaccustomed way, and with whomhe and a dozen of his braves went down to California,where the wonders of civilization burst uponhim, firing his imagination, before his self-respect hadbeen wounded and his heart discouraged, as is theusual Indian experience, with an unquenchable ardorto share these glories.
He and his braves were able to do Fremont servicein the affair of Mariposa and the immediately followingconquest of California, for which they weredecorated, and so respectfully and kindly treated byFremont that the old chief’s heart was completelywon; and he clung to his “white brothers,” as hepathetically called them, to the end of his life, althoughimmediately on his return to Nevada he wastold of those terrible emigrations that had rushedacross it “like a roaring lion,” as Sarah phrases it,striking terror into the souls of the women and evenof the brave men, who could not understand thewanton and unprovoked cruelty with which thesewhite savages shot all Indians down as soon as theywere s