Journal Entry "Life Among The Piutes"

Stephen Greene

English 48B

January 20, 2011

Journal #6, Sarah Winnemucca

“Oh, can anyone imagine my feelings buried alive, thinking every minute that I was to be unburied and eaten up by the people by the people that my grandfather loved so much? … Oh, how I cried and said: ‘Oh, father, have you forgotten me?  Are you never coming for me?’ I cried so I thought my very heartstrings would break”. (505)

"At the time of her birth her people had only very limited contact with Euro-Americans; however she spent much of her adult life in white society. Like many people of two worlds, she may be judged harshly in both contexts. Many Paiutes view her as a collaborator who helped the U.S. Army kill her people. Modern historians view her book as an important primary source, but one that is deliberately misleading in many instances. Despite this, Sarah has recently received much positive attention for her activism". (Wikipedia, Sarah Winnemucca, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Winnemucca)

            These are the thoughts racing through Sarah Winnemucca’s head as she lies still, buried in the earth.  Her people, the Piutes, had just come down from the mountains to fish in the Humboldt River.  They had received word that white men were coming and everyone ran.  She was stricken with fear and could not run, so her Mother and her Aunt buried their daughters.  They lay them in the earth, planted sage bushes over their heads to protect them from the sun, and instructed them to be quiet.  The two young girls had to silently wait in fear of the white man that they believed would eat them until their mothers could come unbury them.

            The image of Winnemucca being buried in the earth, fearing the arrival of the white man, can be translated as a metaphor for the terrible struggle that all of her people, the Piutes, and all Native Americans went through.  The whites had decided that the ‘savages’ had to be driven out or killed and, in a sense, bound by tradition, ties to the land, and lack of technology, her people were buried and waiting for them to come.  Of course, the whites that came did not eat them, but they did brutally and blindly kill thousands upon thousands of Native Americans and run the rest from their homelands.  They were a people very in touch with the land, living with it, not just on it.  In this way, Winnemucca being buried in the ground is a metaphor for her people’s situation.  They were at once in touch with the land and trapped by it.  They could not leave their hunting grounds or the rivers they knew because these were their sources of food.  They had no guns, no technology, and no knowledge of the white world.  They were stuck, silent as there was no one to hear their calls, waiting for the white man to come and unbury them, uproot them, and destroy their peaceful way of life. 

            In the words above, Sarah is crying to both her literal Father and to a higher power in desperation.  Her people were doing the same.  They cried to the whites, to anyone that could help them, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.  This led to silence and solemn patience, as they lay, buried in their earth waiting to be unburied and eaten up.