Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson's passionate crusade for Indian rights comes to life in this collection of more than 200 letters, most of which have never been published before. With Valerie Sherer Mathes's helpful notes, the letters reveal the behind-the-scenes drama of Jackson's involvement in Indian reform, which led her to write A Century of Dishonor and her protest novel Ramona. These stirring letters will intrigue anyone interested in Indian affairs, nineteenth-century women's studies, or the social history of Victorian America, where Jackson made her mark despite the restrictions on women. Among her correspondents were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Moncure D. Conway, Henry B. Whipple, Henry L. Dawes, Henry Teller, Carl Schurz, and, of course, commissioners of Indian affairs and such prominent editors as Whitelaw Reid, Charles Dudley Warner, and Richard Watson Gilder.

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) of Amherst, Massachusetts, turned to writing after the death of her first husband in 1863. Her marriage to William Jackson, a wealthy Denver Quaker, brought her to the West in 1875, and she soon became a Native American rights activist. She was sent west as part of a federal commission to investigate conditions among the Mission Indians in 1882, and her experiences as part of that commission inspired her famous 1884 novel Ramona. Glimpses of California (1902) reprints articles Jackson first published in 1883. She offers a narrative history of the California mission system and the early years of Los Angeles as a Hispanic community and the work of Junipero Serra as well as an analysis of the fate of the Mission Indians after those missions were dismantled. This section of the book is followed by a chapter on Southern California's "outdoor industries" -- livestock ranching and farming -- and one on Jackson's visit to Oregon.

"A novel notable for its central character, a strong and independent single woman in a Colorado town"--Bookseller's description

Originally published over 100 years ago, A Century of Dishonor is Helen Jackson’s eye- opening sketch of the U.S. government’s often shameful mishandling of what was called the “Indian problem”. Using official documents as authentic research materials, Jackson asserts that the government and citizens of the United States were the cause of the “problems”, and not the Native peoples.

A New England preacher suffering from asthma moves his family to Colorado. A classic tale illustrating the positive thinking that won the West.