Sarah was a wild little girl, fighting with her grandfather when he took them with him to work on a ranch in Stockton. “I cannot make friends with the white people,” she told him. “They are so much like owls with their big, white eyes.” She did get used to them, however. The whites paid Sarah and her family in horses and money for their work when they went back to Nevada. In her book, Sarah tells us much about the Piutes’ customs and their thinking. “My own people are kind to everyone who does not do them harm,” she said. "There is never any quarreling in the tribe, only friendly counsels. The sub-chiefs are appointed by the great chief for special duties. There is no quarreling about that, for neither sub-chief or great chief has any salary. It is this which makes the tribe so united and attached to each other, and makes it so dreadful to be parted. They would rather all die at once than be parted."
At 14, Sarah and her sister were taken into the house of Major William Ormsby near Carson City as companions to his daughter. Here Sarah learned English and to read and write. Though she does not mention it in her book, her family traveled and performed as Piute royalty for the next few years. At the deaths of her mother, sister and grandfather, Sarah lived with her brother Natchez and began interpreting between the whites and native Americans.
In the next few years Sarah traveled between reservations set up for the native Americans, often under the protection of the U.S. army against white settlers. The Piutes liked the military men, as they understood discipline. The agents, however, who were supposed to be representatives of the U.S. government, usually enriched themselves, taking advantage of the native Americans. Sarah is especially dismissive of “Christian” agents who have no real regard for those on the reservation.
In 1875, Sarah was invited as interpreter to the Malheur agency in Oregon by Sam Parrish and his wife. Parrish was not a Christian, but he treated the native Americans fairly, showing them how to farm. They built a dam and irrigation trenches as well as a mill. His wife started a school at which Sarah taught. Sarah and her family clearly thought assimilation the best course for native Americans and willingly participated when treated well.
After four years, however, the Parrishes were replaced with an agent named Reinhard who was their opposite. “I have to do the government’s will,” he said while deducting payments for food and clothing from their pay. Sarah was discharged for reporting Reinhard. People at the agency were starving and expected food and clothing from the government, as they did from their own chiefs.
By 1878, the Bannock native Americans went on the warpath in Oregon. Some of the Piutes joined them. Sarah agreed to try and talk to them. Given the command of two men by General Oliver Howard, she said to them: “It is no use to be afraid; we have come to see them and see them we must, and if they kill us we have to die and that is all about it, and now we must have something to eat.” She felt the Piutes were prisoners of the Bannocks. She went back to General Howard, begging him to save her people. Acting as scout, translator and messenger, Sarah tells this part of her life as if it were an adventure story.
A year later, the Piutes were being held at the Yakima reservation as if in a concentration camp. Sarah lectured in San Francisco and other places regarding this. With her father and brother, she went to Washington, D.C., to intercede for her people. “Don’t lecture,” she was told. Her powers of persuasion were well known! Sarah met with the secretary of the interior, Carl Schurz, who gave her a piece of paper allowing her people to go back to their home and guaranteeing them land of their own. When she got back, however, the agent, James Wilber, would not let them go. “You have put the devil in your people’s heads,” he told her. She did not hear more from Schurz.
Feeling she had betrayed her people, Sarah went back to lecturing about their plight. She married Frank Hopkins in 1881. In 1883, with help from Mary Peabody Mann and Elizabeth Peabody whom she met on her tours, Sarah published Life Among the Piutes. She started the Peabody school near Lovelock, Nevada. After Frank’s death from tuberculosis in1887, Sarah lived with her sister in Idaho until her own death of the same disease in 1891.
Dynamic and known all over the west, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’ honesty was respected by all who worked with her. Some native Americans disagreed with her about assimilation to the white culture, but like her grandfather, Sarah believed in education. Sarah’s book is an adventure story in which she is the hero, while at the same time relaying much about the way the native Americans felt during this fraught period.
