Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (AmazonClassics Edition)

The first known autobiography by a Native American woman, Life Among the Paiutes is an eye-opening hybrid of history and memoir by a pioneering activist who witnessed firsthand the impact of the US’s westward expansion.

For Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, straddling “American” and Native customs was a complex and often dispiriting process. With her mastery of English, she was able to work as a scout, messenger, and translator between two cultures. But as government promises went unfulfilled and injustices against her people escalated, so did Hopkins’s advocacy for Native American rights, for reform, and for the preservation of Paiute traditions.

Frequently utilized by scholars, Life Among the Paiutes was hailed by anthropologist Omer Stewart as “one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian.”