Denouncing America's destiny: Sarah Winnemucca's assault on US expansion

The campaign to remove American Indian tribes from the eastern US in the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century had little impact on indigenous communities in the American West. For them, the US invasion did not begin until mid-century, when the press of settlers into Kansas and Nebraska, the discovery of gold in California, and the acquisition of new territories in the northwest and southwest triggered migrations that challenged tribal leaders and threatened their communities’ futures. When newcomers disrupted or destroyed hunting and farming patterns or squatted on tribal land, it was suddenly unclear how Indian families would feed themselves. Their leaders wrestled with how best to confront these disorganized-but well-armedAmericans. Tribal elders struggled to maintain order among their followers while devising new methods of resistance. What military tactic could turn aside such a widespread onslaught? How could public health be protected when new diseases and ailments struck entire villages in rapid succession? Who would protect the children whose parents had disappeared or been disabled? How would the tribes survive?