Some of the women said, “Oh, our children will surely die of hunger.”
I said, “We will wait and see what he will do.”
Oytes said, “Let us go and tell our soldier-fathers about him!”
I said, “No, we must wait.”
The next day was Sunday, and there was nothing to do. Some of my people came to make a home with us who were never on the reservation before. I went to them, and they said,—
“We have come to make a home with you. We heard that your white father was so good to all, so we thought we would come here.”
I said, “Our good father has gone away, and there is another one here, and I don’t know what he is going to do for us.”
They said, “We have nothing to eat.”
I said, “Today is the day when people don’t work. It is called Sunday. It is the day when the white people talk with the Spirit-Father, and the agent told me to tell my people never to come for anything on Sunday. Tomorrow is ration-day. I will go and see him, anyhow.”
I went to him and said, “Mr. Reinhard, some of my people have come here to make a home with us. They were never here before. They say they have nothing to eat. This is why I came to speak to you. Excuse me for coming on Sunday to tell of my people’s wants.”
He told me to say to them that he was not going to issue any more rations to them.
I said, “Very well, I will tell them.”
I went and got my horse and told one of my cousins to saddle it while I went to tell Jarry, my cousin, my father’s sister’s son. Our agent and he were talking about me. I heard him say, “I shall have her go away, and if you want to be my friend, I will give you a good living if you Will do as I want you to.”
I heard my cousin say, “I will do whatever you say.”
I did not go in, but went back and got upon my horse and went to the Oytes camp, and told them what the agent told me to say to them. We all went then to the sub-chief’s camp and told them. I said, “You can talk it over amongst yourselves, and think what it is best to do.”
Egan told some of the young men to go with me and tell Jarry to come. Jarry was his son-in-law. After I got home, as I was sitting in the doorway, I heard such a scream! I looked round, and to my horror saw our agent throw a little boy down on the ground by his ear and kick him. I did not go to the rescue of the little boy, but sat still. At last the boy broke from him and ran, and the agent ran after him round the house. But the little boy outran him. He looked over at me and saw me looking at him. He then came towards me. I hung my head, and did not look up. He said, “Sarah, that little devil laughed at me, because I asked him to go and tell Jarry that I wanted him to come to my house. I will beat the very life out of him. I won’t have any of the Indians laughing at me. I want you to tell them that they must jump at my first word to go. I don’t want them to ask why or what for. Now, do you understand what I am saying?” I said, “Yes, sir, I will tell them.” I said, “Mr. Reinhard, that little boy never meant to laugh at you. He thought you were saying something nice to him, and another thing, he cannot understand the English language. I am your interpreter. Whatever you say to me I am always ready to do my duty as far as it goes.” After he went away my cousin Jarry came to me and said, “Sister, I don’t think it right that you should always tell everything to our people.” I said, “Dear brother, I have not told anything but what I was told to tell them.”
We Indians always call our cousins brother and sister, just as if they were our own fathers’ sons and daughters. Although we are savages, we love one another as well as the fairest of the land. My cousin said, “My father-in-law and all the men are coming to talk to the agent, and don’t you say a word.” I said, “Very well.” “They are going to ask him for the grain, but don’t tell anybody about Reinhard’s doings. What do we care whether he gives our people anything or not, so long as he gives us something to live on? What do you think our people care for us? Let them go wherever they like.”
I said, “Dear brother, I am ashamed of you, you talk so heartlessly. I am going to see my people dealt rightly by, and to stand by them, and I am going to talk for them just as long as I live. If you want to see your people starve, that is your own business. I am going to see that they get their wheat, and I am going to get mine too; that is, if he will give it to us. I am here to work for my people, and I am going to my work.” Just then the mother of the little boy came crying as if her heart would break. “Oh, my poor child,” she was saying, “he will die,—the only child I have left out of four.”
I said nothing. I was feeling badly for the little boy and his mother, too. Jarry asked her what was the matter. She told him all, and said the little boy’s ear was swelling badly, and it was black and the boy would not speak. “Oh, I am so afraid he is going to die. I have come to see if the white doctor will come and do something for him.” I said, “Come with me, “and went for the doctor. There were a great many there to see the boy. Two sub-chiefs were there, and Oytes was laying hands on him as we got there.
I said, “Here is the white doctor; maybe he can do something for him.”
Egan said, “No; the white people hate us; he might poison him.” His whole head and face and neck were swollen.
I said, “They don’t want you to do anything for him.” The doctor asked me what was the matter with him. I did not say anything, for he knew well enough what it was. He asked again.
I said, “You know; why do you ask? You saw your Christian and your praying man take him by his ear and throw him to the ground.” He said, “Is that the boy?”
This doctor’s name is Shoemaker. He lived fat while he was there. He had all the fire-water he wanted to drink, which was sent there under the pretense that it was sent there for the benefit of my sick people. This doctor was there when our agent Parrish was still with us. I had a room next to the doctor’s office, and could hear everything that was said in there.
One morning, just before Mr. Parrish knew he was going away, he came into the office and I heard him say, “Doctor, how much wine and liquor have you on hand? The doctor said, “I have but a very little brandy left, and I have not any wine.” “Why, doctor, what has become of it all? I had so much of it for my sick Indians; it was here for that purpose, and I know my men don’t drink; if I knew they did I would not have them stay here.” The doctor said, “I used the wine for my table, and since the wine ran out we had to use the other.” “What are you going to do if an inspecting officer comes here?
“Oh, well, I will make some more. I have alcohol, and I know how to make all kinds of liquor.” I heard all this.
The next day was ration day. Many of my people came to get their rations. I saw our agent Reinhard and Jarry going here and there, and talking together. I went to see the farmer’s wife, who is a clear, good, Christian lady. She and her husband and son often said to me, “Our hearts ache for your people.” She said she should not stay there. I told her everything. That afternoon there came some more of my people; among them was my brother, Lee Winnemucca. They had come from Pyramid Lake Reservation. It was a long way and they were hungry, but I could do nothing for them. I had to buy everything I ate, and I told them our agent had stopped issuing rations to all. Brother said, “Is there anything we can buy?” I said, “Yes, I will go and see him.” I went to see him, and said to Mr. Reinhard, “My brother Lee is here with ten men, and they have nothing to eat. Will you sell some flour and other things to them?” He said, “Where is Johnny?” That was an Indian boy who could talk a little English. I said, “I will go for him.” So I ran and soon found him, and we went to see what the agent wanted. He came to meet us and said, “Johnny, go and get some beef; here is the key.” Johnny started off; he got only a little way when the agent called him back, but Johnny kept on. He called him again and again, and at last was so angry he ran after him. But the boy would not stop. He looked back and saw him coming; he turned round and said these words, “What in hell do you want?” He ran up to him and took him by his hair,
but the boy was too quick for him and got away, the agent after him saying, “Stop, or I will shoot you.” But Johnny ran all the faster and got away from him. I went back to where brother Lee and the rest were standing. They all laughed and made all kinds of fun of the agent. He came to me and said, “Sarah, I am going to shoot him. He shan’t live to see another day.” “Mr. Reinhard,” I said, “why do you ask me? Why tell me what you are going to do?” He walked off at that. The rest of the white people were looking on. He went to the house, got his pistol, and came back and said, “Sarah, shall I shoot him? I never had any one talk to me in that way. If a white man talked to me like that, I would kill him right off.” I said, “You know best what to do.” My brother then spoke and said, “We have come a long way to hear good things from the Good Spirit man. Why talk of killing? Is that the kind of good man Mr. Parrish told us of? Of course, that is the kind of men that are called good,—men who talk to the Spirit Father three times a day, but who will kill us off as they would kill wild beasts.”
Brother stopped at that, and I said, “Brother wants to buy some things out of your store.” He took us there to get the things. As I walked along with him, he said, “Sarah, I will give the things to your brother, and you take the money, for they might think hard of me for it. It is not my fault, but the Big Father in Washington tells me to sell everything to your people.” After we went in I told them what he wanted me to do. They all laughed, and I told them when they got all the things, to go right to him and pay him. Brother bought one dollar’s worth of sugar, same of coffee, one sack of flour at two dollars. After they got all they wanted, Lee went to pay him. He took out his money and counted it out to him. When he handed it to him he pointed to me. Brother offered me the money. I said, “I am not the Big Father in Washington. I don’t own anything in the store, and why should I take the money?” At this I went out. I heard him say to brother, “Lee, you take the things; it’s all right.”
The same night he took Johnny and put handcuffs on him, saying, “I will send you to Camp Harney and have the soldiers hang you, for you are a very bad boy.” The boy did not cry or say anything, but his mother ran in crying, and threw her arms round him. She cried so hard I said, “Mr. Reinhard, I don’t know what you are thinking of, by the way you are acting. I think you had better let him go.” Then he took me out and told me that he would put him in the store-house and keep him there all night, and let him out in the morning. He then took him and locked him up. I told his mother what he had said. The next morning all Egan’s and Oytes’ men came to have a talk with him. Egan said,—
“My children are dying with hunger. I want what I and my people have worked for; that is, we want the wheat. We ask for nothing else, but our agent Parrish told us that would be ours.”
The agent said, “Nothing here is yours. It is all the government’s. If Parrish told you so, he told you lies.”
I spoke up and said: “Mr. Reinhard, why did not you tell me right before him when he was telling you about my wheat? If you had then said it did not belong to us, I would not have told my people about it. I told them, for they asked me if Mr. Parrish said anything about our grain.”
“Why, if you take the government wheat, you rob the government,” he said.
I said, “I don’t want to rob anybody.”
Jarry, my cousin, was against us, and said we ought to be ashamed to talk about anything that did not belong to us.
Then Egan got up and said to me, “I want you to tell everything I say to this man.”
I did as he said.
“Did the government tell you to come here and drive us off this reservation? Did the Big Father say, go and kill us all off, so you can have our land? Did he tell you to pull our children’s ears off, and put handcuffs on them, and carry a pistol to shoot us with? We want to know how the government came by this land. Is the government mightier than our Spirit-Father, or is he our Spirit-Father? Oh, what have we done that he is to take all from us that he has given us? His white children have come and have taken all our mountains, and all our valleys, and all our rivers; and now, because he has given us this little place without our asking him for it, he sends you here to tell us to go away. Do you see that high mountain away off there? There is nothing but rocks there. Is that where the Big Father wants me to go? If you scattered your seed and it should fall there, it will not grow, for it is all rocks there. Oh, what am I saying? I know you will come and say: Hey, Indians, go away; I want these rocks to make me a beautiful home with! Another thing, you know we cannot buy. Government gave. We have no way to get money. I have had only two dollars, which I gave you for a pair of pants, and my son-in-law gave you the same for his. That is all the money the government is going to get out of me; and tomorrow I am going to tell the soldiers what you are doing, and see if it is all right.”
He sat down.
Then our agent said, “You had better all go and live with the soldiers. What I have told you is true, and if you don’t like what the government wants you to do, well and good; if I had it my way I could help you, but I cannot. I have to do government’s will.”
We started for Camp Harney the next morning, and arrived there before evening. The distance is twenty miles. We told the commanding officer everything about our Christian agent’s doings, and he told me to write to Washington, and he would do the same. I did as I was told; and when I had written it all the head men of my people signed it, and then our Christian agent discharged me from my office of interpreter, for reporting to the army officers, for which I don’t blame him. After he discharged me I stayed there three weeks. While I was still there, he had another trouble with one of my people. He beat an Indian man almost to death for no cause whatever. He asked him to help him carry a sick woman. The Indian was a little too long getting on his moccasins. The agent knocked him down with a great stick, and beat him so shamefully I ran to him and caught hold of him, saying, “Do not beat him so.” The man rose up, and as he did so, the agent raised the stick again to him. At this the Indian took hold of it; then the agent took out a pistol to shoot him; but white men came to him and said, “Do not shoot him.” After this, my good friend, Mrs. Howell, went away. My cousin, Jarry, had not spoken to me all that time, and I too went away, and had to leave my stove, for which I had given fifty dollars. Mr. Reinhard used it all the time, for which I tried to get paid; but I had to lose it, because he was a Christian man. His men, Frank Johnson, the school-teacher, and his brother, the blacksmith, were the two greatest gamblers that ever lived. They played with my people, and won a great many of their ponies; and they kept the interpreter Jarry losing all the time. They carried cards wherever they went; and when I was going away, Mr. Reinhard said to me, “Sarah, I want you to give this letter to Mr. Maulrick, and he will give Captain Scott whatever he wants out of the store. Captain Scott will go with you.”
I said, “All right,” and went away; and oh, what a wicked thing I did! I read the letter. It said, “Dear friend, as I have promised you, I will send you all the Indians. You know you are to pay them not in money but in clothes. I have given the bearer of this a thirty-dollar check. Write and tell me what kind of clothing you give, so that I can report that it has been issued to him.” I kept the letter, and when we got there I gave the money-check to him, and he asked me if I wanted anything in his store. I said, “I will see afterwards.” So he gave me the money for the check, and I gave it to Captain Scott. He was so glad to get the money he went back without buying anything. I have often laughed over this. I kept the letter a long time, but I have lost it or I should put it here just as it was. I went back six months afterwards to see my cousin, but the agent sent word to me by his interpreter that he did not want me on the reservation. I said to the interpreter, who was my cousin, “I am only an Indian woman. Why does not he come himself and tell me to go away, and not tell you?” There are only two agents who have been kind to me, Captain Smith, agent at Warm Spring Reservation, and agent Parrish. It was because they did not steal. Captain S
mith is the only agent who can truly say, “I have civilized my Indians.” They are a self-supporting tribe, and very rich. When he first took them they were the poorest kind of Indians. We Piutes call them snake-headed Indians, for their heads are so flat that when they are turned sideways they look just like snakes’ heads. Every year this agent gave from five to ten wagons, and the same number of farming implements, till every one of the Indians had farms. Dear reader, if our agent had done his duty like that one, there would be peace everywhere, on every agency; but almost all the agents look out for their own pockets. Every agent that we Piutes have had always rented the reservation out to cattle men, and got one dollar a head for the cattle, and if my people asked whose the cattle were, he would say they belong to the Big Father at Washington, and then my people would say no more.
CHAPTER VII
THE BANNOCK WAR
In the winter of 1878, I was living at the head of John Day’s river with a lady by the name of Courly. On the 21st of April I had some visitors from the Malheur Agency.
They were my own people. There were three of them, and they said they had come to see their sister. They had had a hard time to get over the mountains. There was a great deal of snow at one place on the summit.
“You see, dear sister,” they said, “don’t we look like men who have lived a long time without eating?” “Yes,” I said, “you look poorly indeed. You had better come in and have something to eat, so that you can talk better.” The good lady got them something to eat. Bread and meat tasted very good indeed. It put one in mind of old times when meat and bread were plenty. One of the men said,—
“We have come to see if you can help us in some way. We know that you are always ready to help your people. We will tell you so that you can judge for yourself. Our agent, Reinhard, has been very unkind to us since you left us. He has not given us anything to eat; he is not issuing rations to us as our father Parrish used to do, and our poor children are crying to us for food, and we are powerless to help our little ones. Some two months ago the agent bought a good many beef cattle, but the cattle were only three days at the agent’s when they ran away, and cannot be found anywhere in the country. So we are really starving over there, and we don’t know what to do. Nor do we get any clothing, as we used to do long ago. They are shooting our ponies down, too, when they break down the fences. The interpreter and the mail carrier go and get everything they want to eat. But poor we! You know, Sarah, there is nothing to be gathered this time of year, so we are at loss to know what will become of us. Oh, dear sister Sadie, go with us to Camp Harney and see the officers there; see if they can help us in some way, or go to Washington in. our behalf.”
Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims Page 12