According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a red-haired band of cannibalistic giants. The Si-Te-Cah and the Paiutes were at war, and after a long struggle a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aflame. The Si-Te-Cah were annihilated.
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca, wrote about what she described as “a small tribe of barbarians” who ate her people in her book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims – she wrote that “after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means “enemy.” “My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with the reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family.”