Warfare and Mourning in Captain Truckee’ Death

This section had some interesting parts in it. Structurally, I thought
that the description of how the white men had been gambling and had
killed the two Indians for money was a little out of place. The chapter
starts out with Captain Truckee, takes a slight detour to the story of
the white men gambling, and then returns to center on the grandfather.
For me, it was a little awkward. I also thought it was interesting that
the man who was taking care of her grandfather before his death was a
doctor and not a medicine man, although the doctor speaks of entering the
Spirit land as well as entering into Heaven. This points to the idea that
the grandfather had taken it upon himself to absorb some of his ‘white
brother’s’ ways. This is really random, but I also thought that the idea
of the Spirit land itself was really cool. I’ve never heard of a religion
in which there is no punishment or reward for the good and bad done
during someone’s life.

The grandfather’s death itself was also notable. The narrator’s distress
at her grandfather’s death was of course understandable, but it was also
a departure from her stoicism and anger at having to encounter the white
man on his behalf. She even says  “I had father, mother brothers, and
sisters; it seemed I would rather lose all of them than my poor grandpa.”
To her, Captain Truckee was not just a grandfather but a “great man”; he
was what bound together the tribes and was her foundation. His delusion
kept her family moving, and with his death so died the veneer of
friendship with the whites. In addition, the mourning by his family was
also touching, even if unhygienic.

The chapter ends with descriptions of two different wars. In one, the
whites take prisoner two young Indian girls and tie them up in their
basement while feigning innocence. This is not the first time that whites
have preyed on young Indian girls in the story, and the young Sara
Winnemucca must have had even more reason to be terrified of the whites
after hearing such stories of kidnapped girls. After the girls’ tribe
takes them back and murders the two white men, they are called
bloodthirsty savages and a war begins between the Piutes and the whites.
The Piutes are “victorious”. In the next battle sequence, the Piutes wage
war against an enemy tribe that dug holes in order to capture tired
Piutes at night in order to eat them. They end up chasing the remainder
of the enemy tribe into a cave and setting them on fire, after many
attempts to have them assimilate into their own tribe. I’m not sure what
the connection between these two tales of warfare is. Perhaps the whites
are supposed to be compared to the bloodthirsty cannibal tribe in the way
that they as a country literally feed upon the land and wealth of the
Indian nation? Either way, the very last paragraph was littered with tiny
facts and reminiscences that were abrupt after a long winding story. I’m
not sure if the idea of her having reddish hair on her head, as well as
on a dress, is supposed to be significant here, and if so in what way?