This Halloween, you’ll notice a phenomenon that occurs every few years or so. The second full moon of the month, a blue moon, will glow in the night sky.
Will the moon be blue? Possibly. As everyone knows, anything can happen in 2020. The moon can appear blue under certain circumstances, such as when ash is present in the atmosphere from fires or volcanic eruptions.
But, the name does not refer to the moon’s color. It comes from an Old English word meaning “betrayal” because the extra full moon betrays the usual limit of one full moon per month.
There was no blue moon the night of Winnesheika’s murder on April 30, 1891 – only a slim crescent. But there were many betrayals. They led to the last execution of a so-called witch in the United States. It happened in what is known today as Lovelock, Nevada. Back then, people called the village “Lovelock’s” after its benefactor, George Lovelock.
Winnesheika was a Shoshone medicine woman. The day’s newspapers are sketchy about why she chose to live among the Northern Paiutes. Some mention her adopted niece, Lizzie, 12.
Nearly all the papers describe Winnescheika as a woman who seemed to glide rather than walk.
“She was a bright Indian woman of 35 summers, prepossessing in appearance and manner,” observed one reporter after her death.
Winnesheika spoke English fluently enough to care for some of the town’s white movers and shakers. In her eyes, all were equal.
On the night of the murder, conspirators lured Winnesheika to the home of Paiute Susie and Bungy Jim by telling her that Susie needed help. Winnesheika had cared for Susie before, but something felt wrong to Lizzie. She decided to follow along. She peered into the cabin through a window.
Lizzie never forgot what she saw. She froze, as rooted to the desert ground as the sagebrush she hid behind until the next day.
At first, Paiute Susie screamed so loudly the jackrabbits ran for cover. Susie thrashed like a wildcat in a snare. Her husband and three other women stood by, one wrapped in a wool blanket although the night was warm. Later, Lizzie learned her name – Jennie Massa.
Winnesheika glided to the sickbed to check her patient for fever. Could it be the pox? Poisoning? Suddenly, in one fluid movement, Jennie Massa pulled an axe from under her blanket and struck the medicine woman’s skull. Winnesheika crumpled to the floor. A second blow glanced off the side of her head.
The man finished the job with a hunting knife, slicing Winnesheika’s throat. Lizzie watched the red ribbon of blood spurt and flow. She tried to scream but no sound came.
The women hacked at Winnesheika’s body, stuffing the pieces into barley bags, the age-old method of disposing of a witch. They must take steps to prevent her return.
Meanwhile, the man hitched up his wagon. He didn’t notice the girl hiding behind the brush, although her heart beat like a drum.
Lizzie smelled smoke and guessed its source. The home she shared with Winnesheika was on fire. In the eyes of Winnesheika’s neighbors, every last rattle, feather and talisman must burn to ashes. It was for the good of the tribe. Otherwise, she’d return and haunt them. The girl felt the loss in the pit of her stomach.
The killers drove to Medicine Rock, north of the Leonard Rock Shelter, ten miles southeast of Lovelock, tossed the barley bags in a pit and covered them with dirt. They arrived back in town by sunrise.
In the next days, the town grew quiet and morose. Nobody would speak Winnesheika’s name.
But Deputy Sheriff Fellows heard rumors. He started asking around. A Paiute man showed him the gravesite and led him to Lizzie. With her help, the deputy found three of the executioners. They admitted the deed but felt no guilt. Everyone knew Winnesheika was a witch, they said.
There was plenty of evidence. When she doctored ponies, their stable-mates got sick and ran into gopher holes at full gallop, splintering their forelegs. Two of Lovelock’s most revered citizens, both white, died under her care.
Farmers found their cows drained of milk in the morning. Someone heard she killed five Indian babies in Austin. And what about those eight Paiutes at Stillwater in Churchill County? Didn’t they all die at her hands?
Since she’d been around, crops failed. Hunters came home empty-handed. Besides, she cheated at cards.
Fellows bound the killers over to the grand jury in Winnemucca. Lovelock’s didn’t incorporate as a city until 1917. It didn’t have a courthouse until two years later when it became the Pershing County seat, Lovelock.
The miscreants stood trial in Judge Cheney’s Humboldt County district court. Within an hour, the jury found Susie, Jim and Jennie Massa guilty.
“The three Indians convicted of murder in the second degree for killing the witch at Lovelock’s were sentenced today by Judge Cheney to ten years in the state prison,” reported the Nevada State Journal on June 20, 1891.
A first-degree verdict would have meant hanging or life sentences. “And, after all she was a witch,” observed one of the jurors.
Fellows escorted the prisoners to Carson City to begin their sentences on June 22, 1891.
Public opinion favored the inmates. The Bureau of Indian Affairs took no interest in the case since neither the killers or Winnesheika were “reservation Indians.” However, Chief Naches and Captain Dave of the Pyramid Lake Reservation petitioned the governor. Many of the townspeople saw the killers as heroes.
The State Board of Pardons set Winnesheika’s killers free on July 14, 1892, one year and 21 days from the start of their sentences. Each faded into obscurity. But Winnesheika’s blood flows through her descendant’s veins like a red ribbon.
Sources:
The San Francisco Examiner, May 13, 1891, page 9
“Indians murder a Shoshone squaw suspected of witchcraft”
The Nevada State Journal, May 17, 1891, page 3
“The Indian Witch Murder”
The Nevada State Journal, Feb. 25, 1973, page 93
“The doctor’s patients began to die: Nevada Indian ‘executioners’ disposed of suspected witch
