Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy
is a detailed account of the last six years of Jackson’s life (1879–1885), when she struggled to promote the rights of American Indians displaced and dispossessed by the U.S. government. Valerie Sherer Mathes places Jackson’s work within the larger nineteenth-century Indian rights movement and details her crusade of traveling, writing, and lobbying government officials. Jackson’s efforts culminated in the publication of
A Century of Dishonor,
an indictment of the government’s Indian policy, and the novel
Ramona,
a sympathetic portrayal of the plight of California’s Mission Indians. Her influence was felt immediately in the actions of subsequent reform workers in the Women’s National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association, and the Lake Mohonk Conference.