Sarah (née Winnemucca) Hopkins (c. 1844 – October 17, 1891) was a Northern Paiute writer, activist, lecturer, teacher, and school organizer.

"[2] Sarah Winnemucca was born near Humboldt Lake, Nevada, into an influential Northern Paiute family who led their community in pursuing friendly relations with the arriving groups of Anglo-American settlers.

Winnemucca published Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883), a book that is both a memoir and history of her people during their first 40 years of contact with European Americans.

"[4] Anthropologist Omer Stewart described it as "one of the first and one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books written by an American Indian," frequently cited by scholars.

[5] Following the publication of the book, Winnemucca toured the Eastern United States, giving lectures about her people in New England, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. She returned to the West, founding a private school for Native American children in Lovelock, Nevada.

[6] In 2005, the state of Nevada contributed a statue of her by sculptor Benjamin Victor to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.

[11] Winnemucca's grandfather, Tru-ki-zo or Truckee, had established positive relations with the European Americans who started exploring in the area.

Later, Truckee fought in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), earning many white friends and leading the way for his extended family's relationships with European Americans.

In 1857, her grandfather arranged for Winnemucca (then 13) and her sister Elma to live and work in the household of William Ormsby and his wife; he had a hotel and was a civic leader of Carson City, Nevada.

[14] With the decreasing pressure of new migrants in the region attracted to the Washoe silver finds, Old Winnemucca arranged in 1859 to have his daughters returned to him again in Nevada.

[20] For the next five years (1860–1865), Winnemucca and her family frequently traveled away from the reservation, performing on stage, either in Virginia City, Nevada at Maguire's Opera House, or in San Francisco.

Wells led a Nevada Volunteer cavalry in indiscriminate raids across the northern part of the state, attacking Paiute bands.

In 1872, the federal government established the Malheur Reservation in eastern Oregon, designated by President Ulysses S. Grant for the Northern Paiute and Bannock peoples in the area.

She found in observing Parrish that he worked well with the Paiute; he encouraged them in learning some new ways and helped them plant crops that could support the people, establishing a well-managed agricultural program.

In her 1883 book, Winnemucca recounted that Rinehart sold supplies intended for the Paiute people to local whites.

They moved west, raiding isolated white settlements in southern Oregon and northern Nevada, triggering the Bannock War (1878).

During the Bannock War, Winnemucca worked as a translator for General Oliver O. Howard of the U.S. Army, whom she had met during his visit to the reservation; she also acted as a scout and messenger.

Impressed by many of the officers, Winnemucca began to support the U.S. Army's position to have the military take over administration of the Indian reservations, rather than political appointees.

[citation needed][b] Following the Bannock War, the Northern Paiute bands were ordered from Nevada to the Yakama Indian Reservation (in eastern Washington Territory), where they endured great deprivation.

Outraged by the harsh conditions forced on the Paiute, she began to lecture across California and Nevada on the plight of her people.

Knowing the temper of the people through whom they must pass, still smarting from the barbarities of the war two years previous, and that the Paiutes, utterly destitute of everything, must subsist themselves on their route by pillage, I refused permission for them to depart... and soon after, on being more correctly informed of the state of affairs, the Hon.

This was a great disappointment to the Paiutes and the greatest caution and care was necessary in dealing with them.In 1881, General Oliver O. Howard hired Winnemucca to teach Shoshone prisoners held at Vancouver Barracks.

[33] Despite a bequest from Mary Peabody Mann and efforts to turn the school into a technical training center, Winnemucca was struggling financially by the time of her husband's death in 1887.

[34] In 1883, the Hopkinses traveled east, where Winnemucca delivered nearly 300 lectures throughout major cities of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, seeking to heighten awareness of injustice against Native Americans.

When she returned again to Pyramid Lake, she and her brother built a school for Indian children at Lovelock, Nevada, in order to promote the Paiute culture and language.

[5] The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 required allotment of communal lands on reservations to individual households to force assimilation of tribes.