Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Today we are going to talk about Sarah Winnemucca, who was Northern Paiute and was born not long before her band had their first contact with people of European descent. That happened in the middle of the nineteenth century, which means that she lived through a lot, and a lot of what she lived through was violent and horrifying. She spent a lot of her adult life trying to advocate for the Northern Piute. Although her legacy in that regard has some complexities, there's enough that happened and enough complexities that this blossomed into a two part episode. Sarah Winnemaka's name in the Northern Paiute language was Tony Tonige and that means shellflower, and she published her book under the name Sarah Winnemaca Hopkins, which was her married name at the time. The name Winnamacca means giver, and in addition to her use of it as a surname, it was also used by multiple men in her family, including her grandfather, father, and brother. So to try to avoid confusion, we are going to refer to her mostly as Sarah, to her father as Winnemacca, and to her grandfather and brother as other names that they were also known by, and those are Trucky for her grandfather and Natchez for her brother. Both of those are probably nicknames that were given to them by white people. Trucky probably came from a Northern Payte word meaning alright, was something that they heard him say a lot, and the Natchez came from the northern Payete word for boy, because that was how his father would refer to him in front of white people and be like, Okay, you can talk to my boy about that. They are also though names that Sarah used for them in her book and other writings. The term Piute is used to describe multiple distinct Numic speaking peoples from the Great Basin region of western North America. That's the watersheds surrounded by mountains and plateaus that includes most of what is now Nevada, as well as adjacent parts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, California, and northwestern Mexico. The name Piute comes from Spanish, possibly from the same origins as the word Ute, which is used for another Numic speaking people of this region and is also the origin of the name Utah. The Northern and Southern Piute are two distinct peoples, and multiple Northern and Southern Pyute bands still exist today. Although Piute isn't the name these bands and tribes chose for themselves, it is one that many of them use. The Northern Piute referred to themselves as Nimah, meaning the People. Their ancestral homeland includes what's now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeastern Oregon. Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake in what's now Nevada around eighteen forty four, although she wasn't sure exactly when. At that time, Mexico claimed most of the territory where her people lived. In her book Life among the Piutes, Their Wrongs and Claims, she describes the Northern Piute as scattered all over what is now known as Nevada before she was born. Much of the beginning of the book is about the Northern Piute's first encounters with white people, which started when she was still a baby. These were not the first white people ever to arrive in the Great Basin that had happened at least twenty years before, but they were the first ones her grandfather, known as Tracy mentioned earlier as Trucky or Old Winnemucca, personally saw. In her words quote, my grandfather was chief of the entire Piute nation and was camped near Humboldt Lake with a small portion of his tribe when a party traveling eastward from California was seen coming. When the news was brought to my grandfather, he asked what they looked like. When told that they had hair on their faces and were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together and cried aloud. My white brothers, My long looked for white brothers, have come at last. This description of her grandfather as the chief of the entire Piute nation doesn't really capture the full story. The Northern Piute were made up of bands of families, with each band having a headman. The headman made some decisions along with a council of elders, but often the consensus of the entire band was involved. Different people also served as leaders for different specific functions, like being the leader of a h hunting party, or in the time of war. Sometimes, if there was a reason for multiple bands to come together, someone might act as the primary mediator and counselor among them, but that responsibility lasted only as long as it needed to. It was not a permanent situation. White newcomers to the area, on the other hand, expected there to be some kind of centralized leadership governing an entire tribe, so they assumed Trucky was chief or king of all the Northern Piutes. That fed into white people seeing Trucky and his whole family as authority figures, which then affected their relationship with the rest of their tribe. So we don't fully know Sarah Winnemucka's thought process behind describing her grandfather in this way like he was important, she gave him a different degree of importance than really he would have had among the Northern Piute, And there were definitely people who thought it was really self serving and self for grandizing. But this book, along with all of Sarah Winnemucca's other writing and speeches, was created with the goal of getting white people's support to help her tribe. Describing herself and her family in this way suggested to her audience that she deserved their respect and their admiration, or at the very least, their interest, and it suggested that she had the kind of status that would allow her to speak on her people's behalf.

Today we are going to talk about Sarah Winnemucca, who was Northern Paiute and was born not long before her band had their first contact with people of European descent. That happened in the middle of the nineteenth century, which means that she lived through a lot, and a lot of what she lived through was violent and horrifying. She spent a lot of her adult life trying to advocate for the Northern Piute. Although her legacy in that regard has some complexities, there's enough that happened and enough complexities that this blossomed into a two part episode. Sarah Winnemaka's name in the Northern Paiute language was Tony Tonige and that means shellflower, and she published her book under the name Sarah Winnemaca Hopkins, which was her married name at the time. The name Winnamacca means giver, and in addition to her use of it as a surname, it was also used by multiple men in her family, including her grandfather, father, and brother. So to try to avoid confusion, we are going to refer to her mostly as Sarah, to her father as Winnemacca, and to her grandfather and brother as other names that they were also known by, and those are Trucky for her grandfather and Natchez for her brother. Both of those are probably nicknames that were given to them by white people. Trucky probably came from a Northern Payte word meaning alright, was something that they heard him say a lot, and the Natchez came from the northern Payete word for boy, because that was how his father would refer to him in front of white people and be like, Okay, you can talk to my boy about that. They are also though names that Sarah used for them in her book and other writings. The term Piute is used to describe multiple distinct Numic speaking peoples from the Great Basin region of western North America. That's the watersheds surrounded by mountains and plateaus that includes most of what is now Nevada, as well as adjacent parts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, California, and northwestern Mexico. The name Piute comes from Spanish, possibly from the same origins as the word Ute, which is used for another Numic speaking people of this region and is also the origin of the name Utah. The Northern and Southern Piute are two distinct peoples, and multiple Northern and Southern Pyute bands still exist today. Although Piute isn't the name these bands and tribes chose for themselves, it is one that many of them use. The Northern Piute referred to themselves as Nimah, meaning the People. Their ancestral homeland includes what's now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeastern Oregon. Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake in what's now Nevada around eighteen forty four, although she wasn't sure exactly when. At that time, Mexico claimed most of the territory where her people lived. In her book Life among the Piutes, Their Wrongs and Claims, she describes the Northern Piute as scattered all over what is now known as Nevada before she was born. Much of the beginning of the book is about the Northern Piute's first encounters with white people, which started when she was still a baby. These were not the first white people ever to arrive in the Great Basin that had happened at least twenty years before, but they were the first ones her grandfather, known as Tracy mentioned earlier as Trucky or Old Winnemucca, personally saw. In her words quote, my grandfather was chief of the entire Piute nation and was camped near Humboldt Lake with a small portion of his tribe when a party traveling eastward from California was seen coming. When the news was brought to my grandfather, he asked what they looked like. When told that they had hair on their faces and were white, he jumped up and clasped his hands together and cried aloud. My white brothers, My long looked for white brothers, have come at last. This description of her grandfather as the chief of the entire Piute nation doesn't really capture the full story. The Northern Piute were made up of bands of families, with each band having a headman. The headman made some decisions along with a council of elders, but often the consensus of the entire band was involved. Different people also served as leaders for different specific functions, like being the leader of a h hunting party, or in the time of war. Sometimes, if there was a reason for multiple bands to come together, someone might act as the primary mediator and counselor among them, but that responsibility lasted only as long as it needed to. It was not a permanent situation. White newcomers to the area, on the other hand, expected there to be some kind of centralized leadership governing an entire tribe, so they assumed Trucky was chief or king of all the Northern Piutes. That fed into white people seeing Trucky and his whole family as authority figures, which then affected their relationship with the rest of their tribe. So we don't fully know Sarah Winnemucka's thought process behind describing her grandfather in this way like he was important, she gave him a different degree of importance than really he would have had among the Northern Piute, And there were definitely people who thought it was really self serving and self for grandizing. But this book, along with all of Sarah Winnemucca's other writing and speeches, was created with the goal of getting white people's support to help her tribe. Describing herself and her family in this way suggested to her audience that she deserved their respect and their admiration, or at the very least, their interest, and it suggested that she had the kind of status that would allow her to speak on her people's behalf.

To return to what Tracy read just a moment ago, Trucky saw the newcomers not only as brothers, but brothers whose arrival he had been eagerly anticipating. Sarah described him telling a story about their people's origins involving two boys and two girls, one of each dark and the other white. In the context of this story, Trucky thought the arrival of white people to what's now Nevada was going to heal an ancient wound between the descendants of these two pairs. Trucky met and made friends with people like Captain John Fremont, who was on an expedition to map the Great Basin region. Trucky and eleven other Payute men went with him into Mexican Territory to support a group of Americans in a rebellion against Mexican authorities, which came to be known as the Bear Flag Revolt. He returned to Pyute Territory after the Mexican American War with stories of how beautiful California was, and he also carried a letter of introduction from Fremont, which he used to basically open doors for himself and his people when he encountered white authority figures. Later on in her book, Sarah described this as a talking paper and Trucky called it his rag friend. Not long after rejoining his band, Trucky returned to California with about thirty families. While he was gone, words started to spread among the Northern Pyute and other tribes about grit groups of white people who were coming through and killing anyone who got in their way. Indigenous people started fleeing into the mountains to try to stay safe. At one point, Trucky's band heard that there were white people coming, and Sarah described trying to run away with her mother and her aunt, along with her baby sister and a cousin. But Sarah and her cousin just couldn't keep up. Sarah really was too terrified to even move, so her mother and aunt decided to bury the girls up to their necks and cover their faces with sagebrush to hide them and protect them from the sun. And Sarah's words quote, oh can anyone imagine my feelings, buried alive, thinking every minute that I was to be unburied and eaten up by the people that my grandfather loved so much. Eventually, they thought the danger had passed, and Sarah's mother and aunt came back to retrieve her and her cousin. But then they learned that white people had found and burned their winter supplies. Quote. My father took some of his men during the night to try and save some of it, but they could not. It had burnt down before they got there. These were the last white men that came along that fall. My people talked fearfully that winter about those they called our white brothers. My people said they had something like awful thunder and lightning, and with that they killed everything that came in their way. In Sarah's account, her father, Winnemucca, was filling the role of chief in Trucky's absence, and he started to have prophetic dreams about white people coming and killing them all. A lot of people were afraid not just of being killed, but also, as I alluded to earlier, of being eaten. That possibly came from stories of the Donner Party, which had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada in October of eighteen forty six. Eventually, Winnemaca recommended that their band moved the mountains where they would usually go in the spring and summer to gather pine nuts, and they would wait there until Trucky returned. When Trucky got back, he continued to insist that the white people were their brothers, even after a group of white men killed several of their tribe while they were fishing. Eventually, Trucky decided to return to California, this time taking most of his family with him. Sarah was probably about seven at that point. This was a time when a lot more white people were coming to and through the area, thanks in part to the California Gold Rush. By her own account, Sarah was absolutely terrified of all the white people they encountered along the way. In addition to the traumatic experiences she'd already had, She thought their wide eyes and facial hair made them look like owls. Her feelings on this only started to change a little after she got very sick and was nursed back to health by a white woman. At first, Sarah thought that her illness came from eating a sugary bread that some white people had given to her, but it turned out that she had gotten into some poison oak. This was something that did not grow where she was from, but it's native to the part of California that they were traveling through. She was really miserable and her eyes were swollen shut. Sarah never really trusted white people in the way that her grandfather did, but after this experience, she did start to become more comfortable around them. At this point, there is a six year gap in Sarah's account. Then, in eighteen fifty seven, she and her sister went to work for Major William Ormsby, who was an agent of the Carson Valley Stage Company in Genoa in what is now Nevada. She doesn't say which sister this was, but it was probably her younger sister, Elma. Sarah would have been about thirteen and her sister a couple of years younger. They were hired to be companions for William's daughter, Lizzy, and they probably also did some domestic work. They may have been allowed to sit in with Lizzie on her lessons, which would mean that this was when Sarah learned to read and write. This also may have been when she started going by the name Sarah rather than Tony Taniga, although it's not really clear when that happened.

To return to what Tracy read just a moment ago, Trucky saw the newcomers not only as brothers, but brothers whose arrival he had been eagerly anticipating. Sarah described him telling a story about their people's origins involving two boys and two girls, one of each dark and the other white. In the context of this story, Trucky thought the arrival of white people to what's now Nevada was going to heal an ancient wound between the descendants of these two pairs. Trucky met and made friends with people like Captain John Fremont, who was on an expedition to map the Great Basin region. Trucky and eleven other Payute men went with him into Mexican Territory to support a group of Americans in a rebellion against Mexican authorities, which came to be known as the Bear Flag Revolt. He returned to Pyute Territory after the Mexican American War with stories of how beautiful California was, and he also carried a letter of introduction from Fremont, which he used to basically open doors for himself and his people when he encountered white authority figures. Later on in her book, Sarah described this as a talking paper and Trucky called it his rag friend. Not long after rejoining his band, Trucky returned to California with about thirty families. While he was gone, words started to spread among the Northern Pyute and other tribes about grit groups of white people who were coming through and killing anyone who got in their way. Indigenous people started fleeing into the mountains to try to stay safe. At one point, Trucky's band heard that there were white people coming, and Sarah described trying to run away with her mother and her aunt, along with her baby sister and a cousin. But Sarah and her cousin just couldn't keep up. Sarah really was too terrified to even move, so her mother and aunt decided to bury the girls up to their necks and cover their faces with sagebrush to hide them and protect them from the sun. And Sarah's words quote, oh can anyone imagine my feelings, buried alive, thinking every minute that I was to be unburied and eaten up by the people that my grandfather loved so much. Eventually, they thought the danger had passed, and Sarah's mother and aunt came back to retrieve her and her cousin. But then they learned that white people had found and burned their winter supplies. Quote. My father took some of his men during the night to try and save some of it, but they could not. It had burnt down before they got there. These were the last white men that came along that fall. My people talked fearfully that winter about those they called our white brothers. My people said they had something like awful thunder and lightning, and with that they killed everything that came in their way. In Sarah's account, her father, Winnemucca, was filling the role of chief in Trucky's absence, and he started to have prophetic dreams about white people coming and killing them all. A lot of people were afraid not just of being killed, but also, as I alluded to earlier, of being eaten. That possibly came from stories of the Donner Party, which had become stranded in the Sierra Nevada in October of eighteen forty six. Eventually, Winnemaca recommended that their band moved the mountains where they would usually go in the spring and summer to gather pine nuts, and they would wait there until Trucky returned. When Trucky got back, he continued to insist that the white people were their brothers, even after a group of white men killed several of their tribe while they were fishing. Eventually, Trucky decided to return to California, this time taking most of his family with him. Sarah was probably about seven at that point. This was a time when a lot more white people were coming to and through the area, thanks in part to the California Gold Rush. By her own account, Sarah was absolutely terrified of all the white people they encountered along the way. In addition to the traumatic experiences she'd already had, She thought their wide eyes and facial hair made them look like owls. Her feelings on this only started to change a little after she got very sick and was nursed back to health by a white woman. At first, Sarah thought that her illness came from eating a sugary bread that some white people had given to her, but it turned out that she had gotten into some poison oak. This was something that did not grow where she was from, but it's native to the part of California that they were traveling through. She was really miserable and her eyes were swollen shut. Sarah never really trusted white people in the way that her grandfather did, but after this experience, she did start to become more comfortable around them. At this point, there is a six year gap in Sarah's account. Then, in eighteen fifty seven, she and her sister went to work for Major William Ormsby, who was an agent of the Carson Valley Stage Company in Genoa in what is now Nevada. She doesn't say which sister this was, but it was probably her younger sister, Elma. Sarah would have been about thirteen and her sister a couple of years younger. They were hired to be companions for William's daughter, Lizzy, and they probably also did some domestic work. They may have been allowed to sit in with Lizzie on her lessons, which would mean that this was when Sarah learned to read and write. This also may have been when she started going by the name Sarah rather than Tony Taniga, although it's not really clear when that happened.

In her book, Sarah describes this as a community in which white and Indigenous people loved one another without any violence or theft. Sarah considered Ormsby and his family to be friends, especially after her parents joined the rest of the family at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, which is northeast of what's now Reno. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had set aside land for a reservation for the Northern Piute at Pyramid Lake. This happened a few years after the reservation system was first established under the Indian Appropriations Act of eighteen fifty one, although the reservation wasn't formally surveyed or like formally established until much later than this.

In her book, Sarah describes this as a community in which white and Indigenous people loved one another without any violence or theft. Sarah considered Ormsby and his family to be friends, especially after her parents joined the rest of the family at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, which is northeast of what's now Reno. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had set aside land for a reservation for the Northern Piute at Pyramid Lake. This happened a few years after the reservation system was first established under the Indian Appropriations Act of eighteen fifty one, although the reservation wasn't formally surveyed or like formally established until much later than this.

But that piece she described did not last, and we will get to that after we pause for a sponsor break. While Sarah Winnemucca and her sister were living with Major William Ormsby, two white men from Genoa were robbed and murdered while they were on their way to California to buy supplies for the winter. The culprits stuck arrows into the victim's wounds to try to make it look like indigenous people had done it. Because Major Ormsby had a trusting relationship with Trucky's Northern Paiute band, he summoned several of them, including Sarah's brother and her cousin, to identify the arrows. Sarah's account describes her cousin as war chief and her brother as peace chief. During this time, her cousin said the arrows were a type that was used by the Washows, which is a tribe whose homelands are in the region around Lake Tahoe. The Washo leader, who spoke on their behalf, said that these were the Washo's arrows, but that no one from his tribe could have killed the two men because he knew where they all were and no one was unaccounted for. But after this, three Washo men were taken prisoner and then were shot by white men as they tried to flee. Two of them died of their injuries. Later on, after Sarah and her sister had returned to their family, they learned that the actual white perpetrators had been caught and hanged.

But that piece she described did not last, and we will get to that after we pause for a sponsor break. While Sarah Winnemucca and her sister were living with Major William Ormsby, two white men from Genoa were robbed and murdered while they were on their way to California to buy supplies for the winter. The culprits stuck arrows into the victim's wounds to try to make it look like indigenous people had done it. Because Major Ormsby had a trusting relationship with Trucky's Northern Paiute band, he summoned several of them, including Sarah's brother and her cousin, to identify the arrows. Sarah's account describes her cousin as war chief and her brother as peace chief. During this time, her cousin said the arrows were a type that was used by the Washows, which is a tribe whose homelands are in the region around Lake Tahoe. The Washo leader, who spoke on their behalf, said that these were the Washo's arrows, but that no one from his tribe could have killed the two men because he knew where they all were and no one was unaccounted for. But after this, three Washo men were taken prisoner and then were shot by white men as they tried to flee. Two of them died of their injuries. Later on, after Sarah and her sister had returned to their family, they learned that the actual white perpetrators had been caught and hanged.

This whole situation led to conflict between Sarah's band and the Washos. As the Washos tried to get some compensation for the Piute's involvement in those two men's deaths. Sarah's brother Natchez, said that they hadn't had anything to do with the white people's actions, but he did eventually give the washos All horse. In June of eighteen fifty nine, a rich deposit of silver was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada, which came to be known as the Comstock Load. This led to a huge influx of white people into and through Northern Pyute territory and increasing tensions and violence. Newcomers also started clearing the native pinion trees to use them for lumber and fuel. The nuts from these trees were a staple food for the Northern Pyute and other indigenous people of the region. White farmers also brought in pigs, which ate root vegetables that the Northern Pyute and other indigenous peoples depended on. The Winter of eighteen fifty nine to eighteen sixty was brutal for the indigenous peoples of the region, both because of the weather and because of the loss of those critical food sources. Then, in May of eighteen sixty two, Piute people were attacked by white men at Williams Station, which was one of the Nevada stops for the Pony Express. The Piutes rallied a force to retaliate, which led Major Ormsby to muster a force of his own in response. This was later known as the Pyramid Lake War, and on May twelfth of eighteen sixty, the Piutes defeated Ormsby's force, and Ormsby himself was killed. Additional Federal forces were sent into the area, but the Piute bands were able to hide in the desert canyons and other places they were familiar with that the white soldiers didn't really know how to reach. The Pyramid Lake War temporarily forced the Pony Express to suspend service between Carson City and Salt Lake City. In October of eighteen sixty, Sarah's grandfather, Truckee, got sick and died, possibly as the result of a tarantula bite. At his request, his funeral and burial rights combined both Pyute and White Christian practices. One of his final wish was also for Sarah and her sister Elma to be sent to a convent school in San Jose, California. They went briefly, but after a few weeks, they were sent home because white parents complained about their children being in school with two Indigenous girls. It's possible that around this time Sarah got married to a white man known as Snyder, who was the person Truckie had entrusted with escorting her and her sister to the convent school. Sarah would have been about sixteen, which was considered to be a marriageable age. She does mention Snyder in her book and in other writings, but she really does not say anything to suggest that she was married to him, although there are some other contemporary accounts that did. In September of eighteen sixty four, when she was about twenty, Sarah went with her father and brother to Virginia City, Nevada, to try to raise money. Her father spoke about their plight in the Northern Pyute language, and she transfer for him. They managed to raise about twenty five dollars, and this is when people started to call her things like Princess Sarah. At various points after this, she her father, and her brother did speaking engagements and public performances to try to raise enough money for their band to survive. In eighteen sixty six, a different Northern Paiute band was accused of stealing cattle. In response, Captain Almond Wells arrived and surrounded a group from Sarah's band who were fishing at Mud Lake, which is also called Winnemucca Lake. According to Wells, the people who were fishing shot at him and he returned fire. But according to Sarah's account, her father had taken all the young men hunting, so the only people at Mud Lake at that time were elderly people, women and babies. Wells's men killed twenty nine Payutes and the only person to escape was Sarah's sister Mary, who fled on horseback. Her mother and a baby were killed. The account of this massacre in life among the Piutes is flatly horrifying, and Sarah describes it as almost killing her father win Amaca when he learned about it, and while her sister Mary escaped the attack, she died later on that winter in eighteen sixty eight, Sarah received a written message from Lieutenant Aaron Jerome of the eighth Cavalry, ordering her and her brother.

This whole situation led to conflict between Sarah's band and the Washos. As the Washos tried to get some compensation for the Piute's involvement in those two men's deaths. Sarah's brother Natchez, said that they hadn't had anything to do with the white people's actions, but he did eventually give the washos All horse. In June of eighteen fifty nine, a rich deposit of silver was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada, which came to be known as the Comstock Load. This led to a huge influx of white people into and through Northern Pyute territory and increasing tensions and violence. Newcomers also started clearing the native pinion trees to use them for lumber and fuel. The nuts from these trees were a staple food for the Northern Pyute and other indigenous people of the region. White farmers also brought in pigs, which ate root vegetables that the Northern Pyute and other indigenous peoples depended on. The Winter of eighteen fifty nine to eighteen sixty was brutal for the indigenous peoples of the region, both because of the weather and because of the loss of those critical food sources. Then, in May of eighteen sixty two, Piute people were attacked by white men at Williams Station, which was one of the Nevada stops for the Pony Express. The Piutes rallied a force to retaliate, which led Major Ormsby to muster a force of his own in response. This was later known as the Pyramid Lake War, and on May twelfth of eighteen sixty, the Piutes defeated Ormsby's force, and Ormsby himself was killed. Additional Federal forces were sent into the area, but the Piute bands were able to hide in the desert canyons and other places they were familiar with that the white soldiers didn't really know how to reach. The Pyramid Lake War temporarily forced the Pony Express to suspend service between Carson City and Salt Lake City. In October of eighteen sixty, Sarah's grandfather, Truckee, got sick and died, possibly as the result of a tarantula bite. At his request, his funeral and burial rights combined both Pyute and White Christian practices. One of his final wish was also for Sarah and her sister Elma to be sent to a convent school in San Jose, California. They went briefly, but after a few weeks, they were sent home because white parents complained about their children being in school with two Indigenous girls. It's possible that around this time Sarah got married to a white man known as Snyder, who was the person Truckie had entrusted with escorting her and her sister to the convent school. Sarah would have been about sixteen, which was considered to be a marriageable age. She does mention Snyder in her book and in other writings, but she really does not say anything to suggest that she was married to him, although there are some other contemporary accounts that did. In September of eighteen sixty four, when she was about twenty, Sarah went with her father and brother to Virginia City, Nevada, to try to raise money. Her father spoke about their plight in the Northern Pyute language, and she transfer for him. They managed to raise about twenty five dollars, and this is when people started to call her things like Princess Sarah. At various points after this, she her father, and her brother did speaking engagements and public performances to try to raise enough money for their band to survive. In eighteen sixty six, a different Northern Paiute band was accused of stealing cattle. In response, Captain Almond Wells arrived and surrounded a group from Sarah's band who were fishing at Mud Lake, which is also called Winnemucca Lake. According to Wells, the people who were fishing shot at him and he returned fire. But according to Sarah's account, her father had taken all the young men hunting, so the only people at Mud Lake at that time were elderly people, women and babies. Wells's men killed twenty nine Payutes and the only person to escape was Sarah's sister Mary, who fled on horseback. Her mother and a baby were killed. The account of this massacre in life among the Piutes is flatly horrifying, and Sarah describes it as almost killing her father win Amaca when he learned about it, and while her sister Mary escaped the attack, she died later on that winter in eighteen sixty eight, Sarah received a written message from Lieutenant Aaron Jerome of the eighth Cavalry, ordering her and her brother.

Natchez to meet with him to discuss the deaths of two soldiers and reports of Piutes stealing horses. In Sarah's account, This started after Indian agent Hugh Nugent had illegally sold gunpowder to a Piute man who had then been killed for possessing that gunpowder. Natchez was away when she got the message, so the other Piutes wanted her to write back rather than just sending a verbal message. She didn't have anything to write with, so she improvised with a sharpened s and fish blood for ink. After Natchez returned, both of them went to meet with Captain Jerome. They told him about what had happened with Nugent and the gunpowder. They reassured him that they were not involved in stealing any horses. Not long after that, Jerome came to them again, this time asking where Winnemucca was. Sarah explained that her father had not been back to Pyramid Lake since the massacre at Mud Lake had killed so many of his family. Jerome asked them to bring Winnemaca to Camp McDermott, which was near the border between Nevada and Oregon, and there he said the army would offer him protection and supply him with provisions. This led to Sarah and her brother Natchez, going to Camp McDermott and eventually convincing Winnemaca to go as well, along with about five hundred Northern Paiutes. Sarah was hired as an official government interpreter for the camp, and she was paid sixty five dollars a month. Her brother also worked for the army as a scout, and sometimes she worked with him. Jerome does seem to have been sympathetic to the Paietes after their experiences with Nugent, and he's one of the white authority figures that Sarah generally trusted and believe treated her people fairly. It does seem like they had more food and other resources at McDermott than they had at Pyramid Lake, but this was also a strategic move that was connected to a more overarching US policy, as the federal government tried to force all indigenous people to live on reservations. Warfare was ongoing between the United States and a number of indigenous nations, including the Bannock tribe, which has a lot of cultural, historical, and linguistic connections to the Northern Paiute. In the wake of these wars, people from multiple tribes and nations were all being brought to Camp McDermott until they could be placed on a reservation somewhere else. Some of the chiefs and headmen who had already been brought to camp mc Dermott didn't want to make decisions without Winnemucca there, so while these efforts applied to all of the Northern Paiut, Jerome was also looking for Winnemucca's band specifically. Sarah was skilled and respected as an interpreter. During her lifetime, she became fluent in at least five languages, including Northern Paiut, Shoshone, English, and Spanish, but white people also criticized various aspects of her behavior. At McDermott. She socialized with the soldiers, and sometimes this included drinking and gambling. She also carried a knife to protect herself, something that she had been doing for years, starting after white men had tried to abduct her older sister. At some point, she had heated disputes with other people, and sometimes these disputes escalated into physical brawling. As she became more and more publicly known, newspapers covered these kinds of things with a tone of almost gleeful scandal, and there were some incidents in which she was clearly the victim and things were skewed against her like At one point years later, a man tried to break into her home and she defended herself with her knife, and she was the one who faced charges rather than the man who tried to break in. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, so white society would have considered all of this unacceptable behavior if a white woman was the person doing it, but since it was an Indigenous woman, this was seen with even more suspicion and scrutiny, and it fed into like damaging stereotypes of what white people thought Indigenous women were like. All of this scrutiny and sometimes insulting news coverage increased with Sarah's growing prominence among white people, which we will get into more after a sponsor break. On April fourth, seventeen eighty, Sarah Winnemucca wrote a letter to Major Henry Douglas, Superintendent of Indian Fairs for Nevada. The commander at Camp McDermott had asked her to do this, essentially to bring Douglas up to speed on the Northern Piete. Douglas was impressed with this letter enough that he forwarded it to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington. The letter was also reprinted in a number of newspapers, including in Harper's Weekly, and that prompted other newspapers to print responses that really attacked Sarah's morals and character. In this letter, Sarah again described her father Winnemucca, as the head chief of the whole tribe. She described their time at the Pyramid Lake Reservation, which she calls Trucky River. She wrote, quote, if we had stayed there, it would be only to starve. I think that if they had received what they were entitled to from the agents, they would never have left them. So far as their knowledge of agriculture extends, they are quite ignorant, as they have never had the opportunity of learning. But I think if proper pains were taken that they would willingly make the effort to maintain themselves by their own labor, providing they could be made to believe that the products were their own for their own use and comfort. It is needless for me to enter into details as to how we were treated on the reservation while we were there. It is enough to say that we were confined to the reserve and had to live on what fish we might be able to catch in the river. If this is the kind of civilization awaiting us on the reserves, God grant that we may never be compelled to go on one, as it is much preferable to live in the mountains and drag out in existence in our native manner. So far as living is concerned, the Indians at all military posts get enough to eat and considerable cast off clothing. She went on to ask some really pointed questions about this whole arrangement. Quote, but how long is this to continue? What is the object of the government in regard to Indians? Is it enough that we are at peace? Remove all the Indians from the military posts and place them on reservations such as the Trucke and Walker River reservations as they were conducted, and it will require a greater military force stationed round to keep them within the limits than it now does to keep them in subjection. On the other hand, if the Indians have any guarantee that they can secure a permanent home on their own native soil, and that our white neighbors can be kept from encroaching our rights after having a reasonable share of ground allotted to us as our own and giving us the required advantages of learning. I warrant that the savage, as he has called today will be a thrifty in law, law abiding member of the community fifteen or twenty years. Hence that last sentence sounds as though she's calling for the Northern Piute to assimilate with white culture, but there were limits to how much of that she thought should happen. She considered the English language reading and writing, and European style farming methods to be tools that the Northern Piute could use to improve their own lives and to live in peace with all the non indigenous newcomers who clearly were not going anywhere. But she also advocated for her people to maintain their own culture and their traditional ways of living, not to abandon them to live as white people did. No, and she says thrifty in law abiding member of the community. She's not saying we're going to give up all of our own ways. In eighteen seventy two, Sarah got married to Lieutenant Edward C. Bartlett. This marriage was actually illegal under Nevada's anti missagination laws, so they eloped to Salt Lake City in Utah Territory. Then they were married there by a Justice of the peace. This marriage didn't last long, though, and Sarah later accused Edward of drinking excessively and stealing and pawning her jewelry, Although the relationship itself seems to have ended long before that. They were officially divorced a few years later. In eighteen seventy four, Indian agent Calvin Bateman had Sarah's brother, Natchez, arrested, and the army sent him to Alcatraz. Natchez and a lot of other people had become deeply frustrated over the distribution of winter blankets. The federal government was trying to get Indigenous people to move onto reservation land by distributing supplies to them only at reservations. Natchez had heard that winter blankets were being distributed at Walker River Reservation, so he went there, but the Indian agent there said they actually needed to go to Pyramid Lake. Meanwhile, bait Men, who was the agent at Pyramid Lake, said he had nothing to distribute to them, and he sent them all back to Walker River. Natas had also heard a rumor that all of the Northern Paiut were going to be rounded up and sent to Fort Hall Reservation in what's now Idaho, or to Indian Territory in what's now Kansas. Fort Hall was about five hundred miles away, and Indian Territory was about three times that far. The idea of being forced to move so far from their homeland to a place with a totally different landscape and geography was just It was an ongoing fear at this point for the Northern Paiut. Natas took that rumor to a newspaper called the Humboldt Register, and then after all this, Bateman accused him of intentionally sowing unrest. Bateman had also sought the support of various Indigenous and non Indigenous people who were critical of the Winnemucca family for various reasons, as he made this case that Natchez was causing trouble. Natchez was held for eleven days and released after General John Schofield determined that Bateman's allegations were unfounded. While Natchez had critics that Bateman had called on, he also had supporters who had contacted Schofield and other authorities on his behalf. Bateman faced some criticism over his actions, both from Schofield and from newspapers. All of this was happening under President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy, in which Indian agents, many of whom had been military officers or other officials, were being replaced with Christian missionaries and others who had some kind of religious background. Bateman was one of the agents who had been appointed because of his religious affiliations, so a lot of this criticism questioned his religious character.

Natchez to meet with him to discuss the deaths of two soldiers and reports of Piutes stealing horses. In Sarah's account, This started after Indian agent Hugh Nugent had illegally sold gunpowder to a Piute man who had then been killed for possessing that gunpowder. Natchez was away when she got the message, so the other Piutes wanted her to write back rather than just sending a verbal message. She didn't have anything to write with, so she improvised with a sharpened s and fish blood for ink. After Natchez returned, both of them went to meet with Captain Jerome. They told him about what had happened with Nugent and the gunpowder. They reassured him that they were not involved in stealing any horses. Not long after that, Jerome came to them again, this time asking where Winnemucca was. Sarah explained that her father had not been back to Pyramid Lake since the massacre at Mud Lake had killed so many of his family. Jerome asked them to bring Winnemaca to Camp McDermott, which was near the border between Nevada and Oregon, and there he said the army would offer him protection and supply him with provisions. This led to Sarah and her brother Natchez, going to Camp McDermott and eventually convincing Winnemaca to go as well, along with about five hundred Northern Paiutes. Sarah was hired as an official government interpreter for the camp, and she was paid sixty five dollars a month. Her brother also worked for the army as a scout, and sometimes she worked with him. Jerome does seem to have been sympathetic to the Paietes after their experiences with Nugent, and he's one of the white authority figures that Sarah generally trusted and believe treated her people fairly. It does seem like they had more food and other resources at McDermott than they had at Pyramid Lake, but this was also a strategic move that was connected to a more overarching US policy, as the federal government tried to force all indigenous people to live on reservations. Warfare was ongoing between the United States and a number of indigenous nations, including the Bannock tribe, which has a lot of cultural, historical, and linguistic connections to the Northern Paiute. In the wake of these wars, people from multiple tribes and nations were all being brought to Camp McDermott until they could be placed on a reservation somewhere else. Some of the chiefs and headmen who had already been brought to camp mc Dermott didn't want to make decisions without Winnemucca there, so while these efforts applied to all of the Northern Paiut, Jerome was also looking for Winnemucca's band specifically. Sarah was skilled and respected as an interpreter. During her lifetime, she became fluent in at least five languages, including Northern Paiut, Shoshone, English, and Spanish, but white people also criticized various aspects of her behavior. At McDermott. She socialized with the soldiers, and sometimes this included drinking and gambling. She also carried a knife to protect herself, something that she had been doing for years, starting after white men had tried to abduct her older sister. At some point, she had heated disputes with other people, and sometimes these disputes escalated into physical brawling. As she became more and more publicly known, newspapers covered these kinds of things with a tone of almost gleeful scandal, and there were some incidents in which she was clearly the victim and things were skewed against her like At one point years later, a man tried to break into her home and she defended herself with her knife, and she was the one who faced charges rather than the man who tried to break in. Those charges were ultimately dismissed, so white society would have considered all of this unacceptable behavior if a white woman was the person doing it, but since it was an Indigenous woman, this was seen with even more suspicion and scrutiny, and it fed into like damaging stereotypes of what white people thought Indigenous women were like. All of this scrutiny and sometimes insulting news coverage increased with Sarah's growing prominence among white people, which we will get into more after a sponsor break. On April fourth, seventeen eighty, Sarah Winnemucca wrote a letter to Major Henry Douglas, Superintendent of Indian Fairs for Nevada. The commander at Camp McDermott had asked her to do this, essentially to bring Douglas up to speed on the Northern Piete. Douglas was impressed with this letter enough that he forwarded it to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington. The letter was also reprinted in a number of newspapers, including in Harper's Weekly, and that prompted other newspapers to print responses that really attacked Sarah's morals and character. In this letter, Sarah again described her father Winnemucca, as the head chief of the whole tribe. She described their time at the Pyramid Lake Reservation, which she calls Trucky River. She wrote, quote, if we had stayed there, it would be only to starve. I think that if they had received what they were entitled to from the agents, they would never have left them. So far as their knowledge of agriculture extends, they are quite ignorant, as they have never had the opportunity of learning. But I think if proper pains were taken that they would willingly make the effort to maintain themselves by their own labor, providing they could be made to believe that the products were their own for their own use and comfort. It is needless for me to enter into details as to how we were treated on the reservation while we were there. It is enough to say that we were confined to the reserve and had to live on what fish we might be able to catch in the river. If this is the kind of civilization awaiting us on the reserves, God grant that we may never be compelled to go on one, as it is much preferable to live in the mountains and drag out in existence in our native manner. So far as living is concerned, the Indians at all military posts get enough to eat and considerable cast off clothing. She went on to ask some really pointed questions about this whole arrangement. Quote, but how long is this to continue? What is the object of the government in regard to Indians? Is it enough that we are at peace? Remove all the Indians from the military posts and place them on reservations such as the Trucke and Walker River reservations as they were conducted, and it will require a greater military force stationed round to keep them within the limits than it now does to keep them in subjection. On the other hand, if the Indians have any guarantee that they can secure a permanent home on their own native soil, and that our white neighbors can be kept from encroaching our rights after having a reasonable share of ground allotted to us as our own and giving us the required advantages of learning. I warrant that the savage, as he has called today will be a thrifty in law, law abiding member of the community fifteen or twenty years. Hence that last sentence sounds as though she's calling for the Northern Piute to assimilate with white culture, but there were limits to how much of that she thought should happen. She considered the English language reading and writing, and European style farming methods to be tools that the Northern Piute could use to improve their own lives and to live in peace with all the non indigenous newcomers who clearly were not going anywhere. But she also advocated for her people to maintain their own culture and their traditional ways of living, not to abandon them to live as white people did. No, and she says thrifty in law abiding member of the community. She's not saying we're going to give up all of our own ways. In eighteen seventy two, Sarah got married to Lieutenant Edward C. Bartlett. This marriage was actually illegal under Nevada's anti missagination laws, so they eloped to Salt Lake City in Utah Territory. Then they were married there by a Justice of the peace. This marriage didn't last long, though, and Sarah later accused Edward of drinking excessively and stealing and pawning her jewelry, Although the relationship itself seems to have ended long before that. They were officially divorced a few years later. In eighteen seventy four, Indian agent Calvin Bateman had Sarah's brother, Natchez, arrested, and the army sent him to Alcatraz. Natchez and a lot of other people had become deeply frustrated over the distribution of winter blankets. The federal government was trying to get Indigenous people to move onto reservation land by distributing supplies to them only at reservations. Natchez had heard that winter blankets were being distributed at Walker River Reservation, so he went there, but the Indian agent there said they actually needed to go to Pyramid Lake. Meanwhile, bait Men, who was the agent at Pyramid Lake, said he had nothing to distribute to them, and he sent them all back to Walker River. Natas had also heard a rumor that all of the Northern Paiut were going to be rounded up and sent to Fort Hall Reservation in what's now Idaho, or to Indian Territory in what's now Kansas. Fort Hall was about five hundred miles away, and Indian Territory was about three times that far. The idea of being forced to move so far from their homeland to a place with a totally different landscape and geography was just It was an ongoing fear at this point for the Northern Paiut. Natas took that rumor to a newspaper called the Humboldt Register, and then after all this, Bateman accused him of intentionally sowing unrest. Bateman had also sought the support of various Indigenous and non Indigenous people who were critical of the Winnemucca family for various reasons, as he made this case that Natchez was causing trouble. Natchez was held for eleven days and released after General John Schofield determined that Bateman's allegations were unfounded. While Natchez had critics that Bateman had called on, he also had supporters who had contacted Schofield and other authorities on his behalf. Bateman faced some criticism over his actions, both from Schofield and from newspapers. All of this was happening under President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy, in which Indian agents, many of whom had been military officers or other officials, were being replaced with Christian missionaries and others who had some kind of religious background. Bateman was one of the agents who had been appointed because of his religious affiliations, so a lot of this criticism questioned his religious character.

As all of this was happening, the federal government was also continuing its efforts to move Indigenous people onto res According to a census that Natchez carried out after he was released from Alcatraz, there were nearly twenty five hundred Payutes and only two hundred and fifty three were living on reservation. So the government really wanted to do something about all those other people. In eighteen seventy two, the federal government established the Malar Reservation on land in what's now southern Oregon and northern Nevada. It was designated for the quote roving and straggling bands in eastern and southeastern Oregon which can be induced to settle there. That sort of blanket statement was meant to include both Northern Paiute and Bannock peoples.

As all of this was happening, the federal government was also continuing its efforts to move Indigenous people onto res According to a census that Natchez carried out after he was released from Alcatraz, there were nearly twenty five hundred Payutes and only two hundred and fifty three were living on reservation. So the government really wanted to do something about all those other people. In eighteen seventy two, the federal government established the Malar Reservation on land in what's now southern Oregon and northern Nevada. It was designated for the quote roving and straggling bands in eastern and southeastern Oregon which can be induced to settle there. That sort of blanket statement was meant to include both Northern Paiute and Bannock peoples.

Sarah Winnemucca was hired as an interpreter at Malur Reservation in eighteen seventy five, working with Indian agent Samuel B. Parish, and this was someone else that Sarah came to respect and thought treated her people with fairness and empathy. Although her descriptions of their conversations in her book do sound fairly paternalistic. Something she'd noted in her letter to Major Henry Douglas was that the Northern Piute did not know how to farm. They had been a migratory people that hunted, fished, and harvested things like pine nuts and root vegetables. Parish taught them farming and harvesting methods that would work on the reservation's land, and he paid them for the work they did. After about a year, Sarah also started working as a teaching assistant at the reservation school, which was run by Parrish's wife, But in June of eighteen seventy six, Parish was replaced by Major W. V. Reinhardt.

Sarah Winnemucca was hired as an interpreter at Malur Reservation in eighteen seventy five, working with Indian agent Samuel B. Parish, and this was someone else that Sarah came to respect and thought treated her people with fairness and empathy. Although her descriptions of their conversations in her book do sound fairly paternalistic. Something she'd noted in her letter to Major Henry Douglas was that the Northern Piute did not know how to farm. They had been a migratory people that hunted, fished, and harvested things like pine nuts and root vegetables. Parish taught them farming and harvesting methods that would work on the reservation's land, and he paid them for the work they did. After about a year, Sarah also started working as a teaching assistant at the reservation school, which was run by Parrish's wife, But in June of eighteen seventy six, Parish was replaced by Major W. V. Reinhardt.

A number of sources, including Life among the Piutes, say that this was because of Grant's peace policy and its focus on having Christian missions and charitable societies oversee the reservations, but Parish was raised by missionaries, and while I could not find a ton of des detail about Reinhardt's biography, I really didn't find any references to him being affiliated with any kind of Christian or charitable organization. He had served in the US Army during the Civil War, he had run a store and worked as a postmaster. It's possible that Parish was really replaced because of complaints about him by members of the local white community who didn't like what he was doing. Among other things, he had strongly advocated for the reservation's residents during a dispute over the border of the eastern part of the reservation.

A number of sources, including Life among the Piutes, say that this was because of Grant's peace policy and its focus on having Christian missions and charitable societies oversee the reservations, but Parish was raised by missionaries, and while I could not find a ton of des detail about Reinhardt's biography, I really didn't find any references to him being affiliated with any kind of Christian or charitable organization. He had served in the US Army during the Civil War, he had run a store and worked as a postmaster. It's possible that Parish was really replaced because of complaints about him by members of the local white community who didn't like what he was doing. Among other things, he had strongly advocated for the reservation's residents during a dispute over the border of the eastern part of the reservation.

There had already been people who resisted being forced to live on the reservation, but problems really escalated after Reinhardt took over. He claimed that everything on the reservation belonged to the government, including people's crops. He collected the harvest and paid people partially in rations, which meant that people often had less food after being paid than they would have if they had just been allowed to keep what they grew. According to Sarah Winnemuck's account, he also paid them in goods from the reservation storehouse, but the price of those goods was a lot higher than people would have paid elsewhere. If they had actual wages, they could spend as they wanted. Some of the Northern Payute chiefs living at Malheur also accused Reinhart of selling liquor to the people living there. Reinhart also dealt with people through threats and intimidation, and sometimes physical violence, including beating a child that he said had laughed at him. Headman and spiritual leaders who had resisted Parrish's management of the reservation were even more vocal about Rehinehart. Yeah, everyone was having a difficult time, but existing resistance what was going on escalated. Sarah Winnemaka criticized Binhart really openly, and this included traveling to Camp Harney to report what was happening to the military authorities there. She wrote out a whole report that was signed by all the head men who were living at the reservation. In response, Reinhardt fired her as interpreter, banished her from the reservation, and accused her of being a drunken gambler and a sex worker. He vilified her in pretty much every avenue that was available to him, including his public statements, letters, he wrote to the Office of Indian Affairs and newspaper reports. Reinhardt also maintained that he was doing his job as it was expected of him. About seven hundred people were living at the reservation, and he claimed that the government wasn't providing the resources that would be needed to make themselves sufficient. It is true that government funds to the reservation declined while he was there. Also, when white ranchers started encroaching onto the reservation land and their cattle trampled the crops, he couldn't get federal authorities to do much to stop it. But his treatment of the people living there was corol enough that a lot of people thought he was intentionally trying to drive them away from the reservation. According to Sarah Winnemucca, after being presented with all their grievances, he did tell them that if they didn't like what the government wanted them to do on the reservation, they should quote go and live with the soldiers.

There had already been people who resisted being forced to live on the reservation, but problems really escalated after Reinhardt took over. He claimed that everything on the reservation belonged to the government, including people's crops. He collected the harvest and paid people partially in rations, which meant that people often had less food after being paid than they would have if they had just been allowed to keep what they grew. According to Sarah Winnemuck's account, he also paid them in goods from the reservation storehouse, but the price of those goods was a lot higher than people would have paid elsewhere. If they had actual wages, they could spend as they wanted. Some of the Northern Payute chiefs living at Malheur also accused Reinhart of selling liquor to the people living there. Reinhart also dealt with people through threats and intimidation, and sometimes physical violence, including beating a child that he said had laughed at him. Headman and spiritual leaders who had resisted Parrish's management of the reservation were even more vocal about Rehinehart. Yeah, everyone was having a difficult time, but existing resistance what was going on escalated. Sarah Winnemaka criticized Binhart really openly, and this included traveling to Camp Harney to report what was happening to the military authorities there. She wrote out a whole report that was signed by all the head men who were living at the reservation. In response, Reinhardt fired her as interpreter, banished her from the reservation, and accused her of being a drunken gambler and a sex worker. He vilified her in pretty much every avenue that was available to him, including his public statements, letters, he wrote to the Office of Indian Affairs and newspaper reports. Reinhardt also maintained that he was doing his job as it was expected of him. About seven hundred people were living at the reservation, and he claimed that the government wasn't providing the resources that would be needed to make themselves sufficient. It is true that government funds to the reservation declined while he was there. Also, when white ranchers started encroaching onto the reservation land and their cattle trampled the crops, he couldn't get federal authorities to do much to stop it. But his treatment of the people living there was corol enough that a lot of people thought he was intentionally trying to drive them away from the reservation. According to Sarah Winnemucca, after being presented with all their grievances, he did tell them that if they didn't like what the government wanted them to do on the reservation, they should quote go and live with the soldiers.

As all of this was happening, after the divorce from her previous marriage was formalized, Sarah married a man named Joseph Satwaller. They also were divorced not long afterward, But there's really not much additional detail known about this relationship, Like there's a record that they got married, but almost nothing else about him has survived. There is a bit of a gap in Sarah's account after this marriage. So this is where we're going to pause and we will pick right up next time. I have some listener mail.

As all of this was happening, after the divorce from her previous marriage was formalized, Sarah married a man named Joseph Satwaller. They also were divorced not long afterward, But there's really not much additional detail known about this relationship, Like there's a record that they got married, but almost nothing else about him has survived. There is a bit of a gap in Sarah's account after this marriage. So this is where we're going to pause and we will pick right up next time. I have some listener mail.

Hooray. This listener mail is from Mariam after we had a discussion about places to get jobs for people interested in history or maybe getting history degrees. And this applies more to the US than the UK, which is where the original letter writer was from, but it's still interesting and cool information. So Miriam wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy. First, I'd really like to thank you for the hours I've gotten to spend listening to you too, as I've driven all over the US recently. At the end of the Horace Walpole Part one episode, you discussed job advice for those looking for jobs in historian type careers. I happen to have a piece of advice for folks who love history and love discussing it with people, one that I spent twenty years doing. Try applying to work as a ranger with agencies like the National Park Service. The NPS has many different flavors of rangers, and the majority of park visitors get to interact with interpretive rangers who work with visitors to help them form emotional and intellectual connections to the resources of the NPS units, which in normal people speak means we're the rangers who get to do the ranger hikes, walks, talks, et cetera.

Hooray. This listener mail is from Mariam after we had a discussion about places to get jobs for people interested in history or maybe getting history degrees. And this applies more to the US than the UK, which is where the original letter writer was from, but it's still interesting and cool information. So Miriam wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy. First, I'd really like to thank you for the hours I've gotten to spend listening to you too, as I've driven all over the US recently. At the end of the Horace Walpole Part one episode, you discussed job advice for those looking for jobs in historian type careers. I happen to have a piece of advice for folks who love history and love discussing it with people, one that I spent twenty years doing. Try applying to work as a ranger with agencies like the National Park Service. The NPS has many different flavors of rangers, and the majority of park visitors get to interact with interpretive rangers who work with visitors to help them form emotional and intellectual connections to the resources of the NPS units, which in normal people speak means we're the rangers who get to do the ranger hikes, walks, talks, et cetera.

We're the ones who get to meet in the visitor centers, who can try to answer the questions you have, and who get to swear in all the junior rangers. It's a great way to experience amazing parts of America's history, dive into deep depths, and share that knowledge with people who want to be there and want to learn. State park systems and concessionaires to the National Parks often hire those who have a background in history as well. It's a great option that isn't always discussed as a career in most history majors. As a pet tax, I've attached a couple of picks of the two cats who own the household. There's trouble, our older grand them and Sigfried Akaciggy. Yes, we are a classical music household, so the cats are named for opera characters. Siggy is the most orange of orange tabbys, with the possession of the shared brain cell only rarely, but we love him regardless. Trouble loves to lie and wait in the bathroom for one of us to lift her to the sink for fresh from the fawcet water. Thanks again for the many hours of company and learning, Miriam. Uh, we sure do have a picture of a kiddie cat sitting on the toilet looking like, hey, when can I have the fawcet water and an orange cat asleep in a very adorable pose.

We're the ones who get to meet in the visitor centers, who can try to answer the questions you have, and who get to swear in all the junior rangers. It's a great way to experience amazing parts of America's history, dive into deep depths, and share that knowledge with people who want to be there and want to learn. State park systems and concessionaires to the National Parks often hire those who have a background in history as well. It's a great option that isn't always discussed as a career in most history majors. As a pet tax, I've attached a couple of picks of the two cats who own the household. There's trouble, our older grand them and Sigfried Akaciggy. Yes, we are a classical music household, so the cats are named for opera characters. Siggy is the most orange of orange tabbys, with the possession of the shared brain cell only rarely, but we love him regardless. Trouble loves to lie and wait in the bathroom for one of us to lift her to the sink for fresh from the fawcet water. Thanks again for the many hours of company and learning, Miriam. Uh, we sure do have a picture of a kiddie cat sitting on the toilet looking like, hey, when can I have the fawcet water and an orange cat asleep in a very adorable pose.

I like the Ciggy's place on the timeshare list for the brain cell. Maybe like that paperwork hasn't gone through. Yeah, it sounds like for anybody that doesn't note that is a common joke among orange cat owners that there's one brain cell they all share and they have to pass it around. They have to pass it around. Yeah, thank you so much for this email, Miriam.

I like the Ciggy's place on the timeshare list for the brain cell. Maybe like that paperwork hasn't gone through. Yeah, it sounds like for anybody that doesn't note that is a common joke among orange cat owners that there's one brain cell they all share and they have to pass it around. They have to pass it around. Yeah, thank you so much for this email, Miriam.

I had not even thought of, you know, working as a National park ranger as an option for history minded people, but it totally makes sense, especially since some of the national parks have a big focus on history in terms of their interpretive elements. I imagine a lot of national parks as a place to go outside and hike and explore, but that's not all there is to do there. Well, and we have done shows at parks yeah, and talk to the rangers who are extraordinarily knowledgeable about the history of the area.

I had not even thought of, you know, working as a National park ranger as an option for history minded people, but it totally makes sense, especially since some of the national parks have a big focus on history in terms of their interpretive elements. I imagine a lot of national parks as a place to go outside and hike and explore, but that's not all there is to do there. Well, and we have done shows at parks yeah, and talk to the rangers who are extraordinarily knowledgeable about the history of the area.

So I feel foolish that it never occurred to me either. Yeah.

So I feel foolish that it never occurred to me either. Yeah.

Yeah, they're also specifically national historic parks in the United States, So anyway, things I had never thought of as a career option in that way. I did think of being a park ranger when I was in college, and I worked at a state park for my summer job during college, but like I was thinking about the being outside and hiking and clearing trails and the least favorite part of that job, which is the cleaning of the public restrooms. So uh, anyway, thank you so much, Miriam for this email and the cat pictures. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Yeah, they're also specifically national historic parks in the United States, So anyway, things I had never thought of as a career option in that way. I did think of being a park ranger when I was in college, and I worked at a state park for my summer job during college, but like I was thinking about the being outside and hiking and clearing trails and the least favorite part of that job, which is the cleaning of the public restrooms. So uh, anyway, thank you so much, Miriam for this email and the cat pictures. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.