Confined to a barren prison camp in Washington, the
displaced Paiute Indians were dying. The Interior Department had promised to
send rations, but they never arrived. After being exposed to the elements
during the winter of 1880, fifty-eight of them had died – including thirty
children -- and many more were seriously
ill.
James
Wilbur, the pious fraud who served
as Indian Agent at Fort Simcoe, wouldn’t exert himself to see that his
prisoners were cared for, and wouldn’t permit them to migrate to more
hospitable surroundings.
Sarah
Winnemucca, daughter of the renowned Paiute chief of the same name, had
gone to Washington to lobby Interior Secretary Carl Schurz for relief. In May
she returned with a written promise that the department would arrange
for the Paiutes to relocate to Lovelock, Nevada, where they could at least
obtain food. When she arrived in Yakima, however, Sarah was informed that
Wilbur had received no instructions from Washington.
Sarah called a public meeting in which she recited, in
detail, the broken promises that had been made to her. In short order Sarah was
summoned to a second meeting with Wilbur, who intended to slap her down for impudently
assuming that a promise to an Indian meant something.
“Your people were content here until you came back and
stirred them up,” Wilbur insisted, condescendingly rebuking Sarah of “putting
the devil into their heads.”
That accusation came from a well-fed hypocrite who – in the classic
“Indian
Ring” tradition – was growing wealthy by embezzling money and supplies
promised to the pitiful, dying people over whom he presided.
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