Click for printable version
Click to send to a friend

Friday, March 08, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Sarah Winnemucca to be honored with statue

RENO -- When Sarah Winnemucca's statue is raised in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, her grand-niece plans to be there in her fringed buckskin dress.

"At last somebody's recognizing her," said Louise Tannheimer, 83, of Portola, Calif.

Winnemucca, a 19th-century Nevada Paiute woman who worked for peace between American Indians and the newly arrived settlers welcomed by her grandfather, Chief Truckee, will be memorialized by decree of the Nevada Legislature with the second statue from Nevada.

The first, placed in Statuary Hall in 1960, was of U.S. Sen. Patrick McCarran.

"She was a lady before her time. She did many outrageous things, but she always believed in herself," Tannheimer told the Reno-Gazette Journal.

Wearing her mother's colorful beaded moccasins and a necklace of beads and shells made by a Nixon Paiute woman, Tannheimer was the guest of honor at a dinner this week at the Siena Spa Resort in Reno sponsored by the Nevada Women's History Project and the American Association of University Women. Her maternal grandmother, Gracie Winnemucca, was Sarah Winnemucca's younger sister.

Though she never met her famous ancestor, Tannheimer is proud of her and her family.

Of the 97 state statues in the House of Representatives, six depict women, but none of the women was American Indian, said Carrie Townley Porter, director of the Nevada Women's History Project, the group charged with raising $150,000 for the Winnemucca statue.

North Dakota, one of three states still eligible to contribute a second statue, has chosen Sacajawea, the Indian woman who guided Lewis and Clark on their voyage of discovery of the Northwest U.S., as its second statue, Porter said.