Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Maria Hunt Jackson (October 18, 1830 - August 12, 1885) was an American writer and poet, who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona dramatized the federal government's mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California and attracted considerable attention to her cause, although its popularity was based on its romantic and picturesque qualities rather than its political content.

Early years
Jackson was born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, daughter of Nathan Welby Fiske and Deborah Waterman Vinal. She had two brothers, both of whom died after birth, and a sister named Anne. Her father was a minister, author, and professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College.

Jackson's mother died in 1844 when she was fourteen, and her father three years later. Her father provided for her education and arranged for an aunt to care for her. Jackson attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school run by Reverend J.S.C. Abbott in New York City. She was a classmate of the poet Emily Dickinson, also from Amherst. The two corresponded for the rest of their lives, but few of their letters have survived.

In 1852 at age 22, Jackson married U.S. Army Captain Edward Bissell Hunt. They had two sons, one of whom, Murray Hunt, died as an infant in 1854 of a brain disease. In 1863, her husband died in a military accident. Her second son, Rennie Hunt, died of diphtheria in 1865. She met William Sharpless Jackson, a wealthy banker and railroad executive, while visiting at Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the resort of Seven Falls. They married in 1875. She was a Unitarian.

Career
Jackson began writing after the deaths of her family members. She published her early work anonymously, usually under the name "H.H." Emerson admired her poetry and used several of her poems in his public readings. He included five of them in his anthology Parnassus.

She traveled widely. In the winter of 1873-1874 she was in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in search of a cure for tuberculosis. Over the next two years, she published three novels in the anonymous No Name Series, including Mercy Philbrick's Choice and Hetty's Strange History.

In 1879 her interests turned to Native Americans after hearing a lecture in Boston by Ponca Chief Standing Bear. He described the forcible removal of the Ponca from their Nebraska reservation. Upset about the mistreatment of Native Americans by government agents, Jackson became an activist. She started investigating and publicizing government misconduct, circulating petitions, raising money, and writing letters to the New York Times on behalf of the Ponca.

A fiery and prolific writer, Jackson engaged in heated exchanges with federal officials over the injustices committed against Indians. Among her special targets was U.S. Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz, whom she once called "the most adroit liar I ever knew." She exposed the government's violation of Indian treaties. She documented the corruption of Indian agents, military officers, and settlers who encroached on and stole Indian lands.

She won the support of several newspaper editors who published her reports. Among her correspondents were editor William Hayes Ward of the New York Independent, Richard Watson Guilder of the Century Magazine, and publisher Whitelaw Reid of the New York Daily Tribune.

Jackson also wrote a book, the first work she published under her own name, condemning state and federal Indian policy, detailing the history of broken treaties. A Century of Dishonor (1882) called for significant reform in government policy toward Native Americans. Jackson sent a copy to every member of Congress with a quote from Benjamin Franklin printed in red on the cover: "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations." The New York Times later wrote that she "soon made enemies at Washington by her often unmeasured attacks, and while on general lines she did some good, her case was weakened by her inability, in some cases, to substantiate the charges she had made; hence many who were at first sympathetic fell away."

Jackson went to southern California for respite. Having been interested in the area's missions and the Mission Indians on an earlier visit, she began an in-depth study. While in Los Angeles, she met Don Antonio Coronel, former mayor of the city and a well-known authority on early Californio life in the area. He had served as inspector of missions for the Mexican government. Coronel told her about the plight of the Mission Indians after 1833. They were buffeted by secularization policies of the Mexican government, as well as later U.S. policies, both of which led to their removal from mission lands. Under its original land grants, the Mexican government provided for resident Indians to continue to occupy such lands. After taking control of the territory, the U.S. generally disregarded such occupancy claims. In 1852, there were an estimated 15,000 Mission Indians in Southern California. By the time of Jackson's visit, they numbered fewer than 4,000.

Coronel's account inspired Jackson to action. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hiram Price recommended her appointment as an Interior Department agent. Jackson's assignment was to visit the Mission Indians, ascertain the location and condition of various bands, and determine what lands, if any, should be purchased for their use. With the help of Indian agent Abbot Kinney, Jackson traveled throughout Southern California and documented conditions. At one point, she hired a law firm to protect the rights of a family of Saboba Indians facing dispossession from their land at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains.

In 1883, Jackson completed her 56-page report. It recommended extensive government relief for the Mission Indians, including the purchase of new lands for reservations and the establishment of more Indian schools. A bill embodying her recommendations passed the U.S. Senate but died in the House of Representatives.

Jackson decided to write a novel to reach a wider audience than she had with her historical work. When she wrote Cornonel asking for details about early California and any romantic incidents he could remember, she explained her purpose: "I am going to write a novel, in which will be set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people's hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books." She was inspired by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). "If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life," she wrote.

Although Jackson started an outline in California, she began writing the novel in December 1883 in her New York hotel room, and completed it in about three months. Originally titled In The Name of the Law, she published it as Ramona (1884). It featured a part-Indian orphan raised in Spanish Californio society and her Indian husband, Alessandro, based on some of the people she knew and incidents she had encountered. The book achieved rapid success among a wide public. Thirty years later, a film reviewer noted its popularity critically, calling it "the long and lugubrious romance by Helen Hunt Jackson, over which America wept unnumbered gallons in the eighties and nineties," but complained of "the long, uneventful stretches of the novel."

Encouraged by the popularity of her book, Jackson planned to write a children's story about Indian issues, but did not live to complete it. Her last letter was written to President Grover Cleveland and said: "From my death bed I send you message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country and righting the wrongs of the Indian race." She urged him to read her earlier work A Century of Dishonor. Jackson wrote, "My Century of Dishonor and Ramona are the only things I have done of which I am glad....They will live, and...bear fruit."

Jackson died of stomach cancer in 1885 in San Francisco, California. Her husband arranged for her burial on a one-acre plot on a high plateau overlooking Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her grave was later moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. Her estate was valued at $12,642,<refNew York Times: "Literary Notes," February 7, 1887, accessed February 14, 2011

She used her married names, Helen Hunt and Helen Jackson, but scholars refer to her as Helen Hunt Jackson. The New York Times referred to her as Helen Hunt Jackson in 1885, reporting on her final illness, and in 1886, reporting on visitors to her grave.

In one historian's assessment:

"Ramona may not have been another Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it served, along with Jackson's writings on the Mission Indians of California, as a catalyst for other reformers ....Helen Hunt Jackson cared deeply for the Indians of California. She cared enough to undermine her health while devoting the last few years of her life to bettering their lives. Her enduring writings, therefore, provided a legacy to other reformers, who cherished her work enough to carry on her struggle and at least try to improve the lives of America's first inhabitants."

In reviewing the history of her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, a reviewer noted that she typified the house's success: "Middle aged, middle class, middlebrow." Her friend Emily Dickinson once described her limitations: "she has the facts but not the phosphorescence."

Recognition
Jackson's A Century of Dishonor remains in print, as does a collection of her poetry.

A New York Times reviewer said of Ramona that "by one estimate, the book has been reprinted 300 times." The novel has been adapted for other media, including film, stage, and television.

A portion of Jackson's Colorado home has been reconstructed in the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum and furnished with her possessions.

Memorials

 * The Helen Hunt Jackson Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library is a Mission/Spanish Revival style building built in 1925. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


 * The largest collection of the papers of Helen Hunt Jackson is held at Colorado College.


 * A high school in Hemet, California, and an elementary school in Temecula were named after her.


 * Helen Hunt Falls, located below Seven Falls, was named in her memory.

Publications

 * Bits about Home Matters (1873)
 * Saxe Holm's Stories (1874)
 * Mercy Philbrick's Choice (1876)
 * Hetty's Strange History (1877)
 * Bits of Talk in Verse and Prose for Young Folks (1876)
 * Bits of Travel at Home (1878)
 * Nelly's Silver Mine: A Story of Colorado Life (1878)
 * Letters from a Cat (1879)
 * A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes. New York: Harper, 1881.
 * Ramona (1884)
 * Zeph: A Posthumous Story (1885)
 * Glimpses of Three Coasts (1886)
 * Between Whiles (1888)
 * A Calendar of Sonnets (1891)
 * Ryan Thomas (1892)
 * The Hunter Cats of Connorloa (1894)