Presenter: Augustine Beard
Faculty Mentor: Kevin Hatfield, Jennifer O’Neal
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Humanities
Major: History
After the Bannock-Paiute ended in 1878, General Howard and the US army led approximately 550 Northern Paiute Indians on a trail of tears from Oregon Great Basin to the Yakima Reservation in southern Washington with intent for them to remain there permanently as prisoners of war. While at Yakima, the Northern Paiutes faced discrimination from the Yakima Indians as well as mistreatment by Indian Agency that failed to provide them with adequate food, shelter, and clothing. The Northern Paiutes refused to accept internment in Yakima and engaged in resistance, primarily through civil disobedience, in attempt to return home to Oregon. This paper investigates the nature of the Northern Paiutes’ resistance while at Yakima between their arrival in 1878 and departure in 1882. The current understanding of this history focuses on Sarah Winnemucca’s lectures and activism, and the role of the individuals in the Department of War and Department of Interior in advocating for the Northern Paiutes. I demonstrate that the Northern Paiutes refused to be passive victims, and that their resistance was one of the primary reasons for their return home as well as the Yakima Indian Agent James Wilbur’s resignation. I introduce a resistance network framework, which better accounts for the plurality of actors and motives. I use primary sources mostly in the form of correspondence between government officials, and partly from the existing body of secondary literature. Additionally, I draw upon sources from “resistance studies,” a critical theory on non-revolutionary acts of resistance, for an understanding of how resistance is typically discussed in history and anthropology.