TY - JOUR AU - Sneider, Leah. AB - leah sneider Arming themselves with "manifest destiny" rhetoric, which claimed divine Anglo-Saxon superiority as justification for the conquest of Indigenous and Mexican peoples and the land they occupied, white settlers forcefully pushed into California territory. The two-year-long MexicanAmerican War resulted in the acquisition of the present-day states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. However, Native tribes and landed Mexicans continued to stand in the way of not only "civilized progress" but the vast riches that gold and the California soil offered the ever-growing numbers of US citizens. Relationships with the Paiute Nation became key to movement into the area as their lands stood directly in the path of settlers and miners moving toward California through the Sierra Nevada.1 Paiutes were subject to various methods of removal and attempts at assimilating or civilizing the Indian, then became wards of the state through the Indian Appropriation Act of 1871. Daughter to the chief, Sarah Winnemucca witnessed and engaged in her tribe's struggles to remain in their ancestral lands and maintain sovereignty while attempting to build balanced relationships with their white relatives according to her cultural traditions. Her Life among the Piutes, Their Wrongs and Claims (1883) is the first TI - Gender, Literacy, and Sovereignty in Winnemucca’s Life among the Piutes JF - The American Indian Quarterly DA - 2012-10-05 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/university-of-nebraska-press/gender-literacy-and-sovereignty-in-winnemucca-s-life-among-the-piutes-j06fuCLDVd SP - 257 EP - 287 VL - 36 IS - 3 DP - DeepDyve ER -