Life Among the Piutes: The First Autobiography of a Native American Woman. Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins

killed. The wife of the young man threw herself down on his dead body. Such weeping was enough to make the very mountains weep to see them. They would take the dead bodies in their arms, and they were all bloody themselves. I ran to Mrs. Ormsbey crying. I thought my poor heart would break. I said to her, "I believe those Washoe women. They say their men are all innocent. They say they were not away from their camp for a long time, and how could they have been the men that killed the white men?" I told her all I had heard the women say, and I said I believed them. Mrs. Ormsbey said, –

      "How came the Washoe arrows there? and the chief himself has brought them to us, and my husband knows what he is doing."

      I ran back to see what they were going to do with the dead bodies, as I had heard my people say that the Washoes were like the Digger Indians, who burn their dead. When I got there the Washoe chief was talking to my brother. I did not know what he said before I came, but I know from what I heard that he had been making confession. He said, pointing down to the men that were innocently killed, –

      "It is true what the women say, – it is I who have killed them. Their blood is on my hands. I know their spirits will haunt me, and give me bad luck while I live."

      This was what the Washoe chief said to my brother. The one that was wounded also died, and the sister and the mother it was dreadful to see. The mother cried out, –

      "Oh, may the Good Spirit send the same curse upon you! You may all live to see the day when you will suffer at the hands of your white brothers, as you call them." She said to her girl, –

      "My child, you have no brother now, – no one to love you, no one to come with game and say, 'Here, sister, here is game for you.' You are left all alone. Oh, my sweet son, – gone, gone!"

      This was the first trouble the poor Washoes had with white people, and the only one they ever did have with them.

      So the day passed away, and the two dead Washoes were taken away, and their bodies were burned. That is their custom. The other was taken to California. My poor little sister made herself sick she cried so much that day.

      Two days afterwards Major Ormsbey sent his men home; so he did my cousin, who is called young Winnemucca, and brother staid longer for us, because we had been with Major Ormsbey a long time, and we could talk very well. My poor little sister was so very sick it was two weeks before we could go to our mother. When we got home it was winter. There was so much snow that we staid in the mountains where now stands the great city called Virginia City. It was then our Pine-nut mountains. Some time during the winter the Washoe chief came and told us that the white men who killed McMullen and MacWilliams were caught. My brother Natchez said, –

      "Oh, have they been caught?" "Yes, that is what Major Ormsbey said; so did all the others." The Washoe chief went on and said, "I have come to ask you to pay me for the loss of the two men. The white men have brought back the other men, and they say that they have hung two men." My brother told the Washoe chief that his people had nothing to do with what the white people had done. "It is you who ought to pay the poor mother and sister and wife of your own tribe, because you gave them up yourself, therefore you must not blame us. We only did our duty, and we all know that the white men did nothing to us, and we did no more than what they would do for us." Next day my brother went to see for himself. He gave the Washoe chief a horse to go with him, for the poor Washoes had never owned a horse in their lives. Ten men went with my brother.