Searching for words to review this biography, Sarah Winnemucca (2001), written by the political historian Sally Zanjani, was hard, due to my superficial grasp of the Native American plight.

Born around 1844 within the Paiute in western Nevada, she was named Thocmentony, meaning Shell Flower. During her early years, she thrived upon the four-thousand-year mythology, traditions, and customs of this desert tribe, roaming in bands, ever in search of food: its focus led to their peaceful and generous nature.

What gives depth to this narrative is the author’s use of primary materials that activated my imagination. I was privy to the dismemberment of an ancient spiritual culture with the encroachment of Anglo-American settlers, of prospectors searching for gold, and agents from the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bloody skirmishes abound. Even Thocmentony was renamed Sarah because no one could not pronounce her name, a name, however that gave her access to the white world.

Fluent in English, Spanish, and three native dialects, the Paiutes, the U. S. Army, as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs sought Sarah’s services as interpreter and as messenger. But her interventions did not curtail continuous bloodshed among the Paiutes and the settlers, a lei-motif of this tragic story. Occasional glimpses of Sarah’s notorious sharp tongue and wit and her love of performance as a circuit speaker in the northeast did afford me breathing space.

This biography, Sarah Winnemucca, has roused my compassion for the Native Americans who used to roam the hills and woodlands and waterways of Missouri where I was born. It’s time I learned about them.