Jim Devine wrote:
It's true about Baum. He was a populist (favoring a bimetallic
monetary system) and 19th & 20th century populism had major baggage,
such as so-called "nativism," which involved racist attitudes toward
the real natives.
Not everybody felt that way. I have recently discovered the work of
Helen Hunt Jackson.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hunt_Jackson
In 1879 her interests turned to the plight of the Native Americans after
attending a lecture in Boston by Ponca Chief Standing Bear, who
described the forcible removal of the Ponca Indians from their Nebraska
reservation. Jackson was angered by what she heard regarding the unfair
treatment at the hands of government agents and became an activist. She
started investigating and publicizing the wrongdoing, circulating
petitions, raising money, and writing letters to The New York Times on
behalf of the Poncas. She also started writing a book condemning the
Indian policy of the government and the history of broken treaties.
Because she was in poor health at the time, she wrote with desperate
haste. A Century of Dishonor, calling for change from the contemptible,
selfish policy to treatment characterized by humanity and justice, was
published in 1881. Jackson then sent a copy to every member of Congress
with an admonishment printed in red on the cover, "Look upon your hands:
they are stained with the blood of your relations." But, to her
disappointment, the book had little impact.
She then went to southern California to take a much needed rest. She had
become interested in the area's missions and the Mission Indians on an
earlier visit, and now she began an in-depth study. While in Los
Angeles, California, she met Don Antonio Coronel, a former mayor and
city councilman who had also served as State Treasurer. He was a
well-known authority on early Californio life in the area and was also a
former inspector of missions for the Mexican government. Don Antonio
described to Jackson the plight of the Mission Indians after 1833, when
secularization policies led to the sale of mission lands and the
dispersal of their residents.
Many of the original Mexican land grants had clauses protecting the
Indians on the lands they occupied. But when Americans assumed control
of the southwest after the Mexican-American War, they ignored Indian
claims to these lands, which led to mass dispossessions. In 1852, there
were an estimated fifteen thousand Mission Indians in Southern
California. But, because of the adverse impact of dispossessions by
Americans, by the time of Jackson's visit they numbered less than four
thousand.
The stories told by Don Antonio spurred Jackson into action. Her efforts
soon came to the attention of the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
Hiram Price, who recommended she be appointed an Interior Department
agent. Jackson's assignment was to visit the Mission Indians and
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 criss-crossed Southern California and
documented the appalling conditions she saw. At one point, she hired a
law firm to protect the rights of a family of Saboba Indians facing
dispossession of their land at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains.
During this time, Jackson read an account in a Los Angeles newspaper
about a Cahuilla Indian who had been shot and killed. His wife, it
turned out, was named Ramona. On one excursion, Jackson was escorted by
wagon to Santa Barbara and stopped off at Rancho Camulos in the Santa
Clara River Valley, where she visited the adobe of the del Valle family.
But the Señora del Valle was not home the day Jackson was there. And at
the Mission Santa Barbara, Jackson made the acquaintance of Father
Sanchez, a source of great inspiration.
In 1883, she completed her fifty-six page report, which called for a
massive government relief effort ranging from the purchase of new lands
for reservations to the establishment of more Indian schools. A bill
embodying her recommendations passed the U.S. Senate but died in the
House of Representatives.
Jackson, however, was not discouraged by this Congressional rejection.
She decided to write a novel that would depict the Indian experience "in
a way to move people's hearts." An inspiration for the undertaking,
Jackson admitted, was Uncle Tom's Cabin written years earlier by her
friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
"If I can do one-hundredth part for the Indian that Mrs. Stowe did for
the Negro, I will be thankful," she told a friend. Jackson was
particularly drawn to the fate of her Indian friends in the Temecula
area of Riverside County and decided to use the story of what happened
to them in her novel. She began writing the outline for her novel while
staying at the Grapevine Inn in San Gabriel, but it wasn't till December
1883 that she actually started to write the novel in her New York hotel
room, with an original title of In The Name of the Law, and completed
the manuscript in slightly over three months. The result was her classic
novel Ramona about a part-Indian orphan raised in Spanish Californio
society and her Indian husband, Alessandro, which was published in
November 1884 and achieved almost instant success.
Encouraged by the popularity of her book, Jackson planned to write a
children's story on the Indian issue. But less than a year after the
publication of Ramona, while she was examining the condition of the
California Indians as a special government commissioner, she died of
cancer in San Francisco, California.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
