Jackson: it has made your heart ache

When Atlantic editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich praised the novel Ramona, author Helen Hunt Jackson was not satisfied. The novel was not intended to entertain, but to draw attention to the plight of Native Americans. In a letter to Aldrich dated December 1, 1884, she wrote: "I am not satisfied till you say, it has made your heart ache, as well as given your ear pleasure." The book was a bait and switch; it started as a fairly traditional novel, and she admitted her hope was that readers would become so invested in the characters, they would not realize she had ulterior motives. He would not realize right away he had "swallowed a big dose of information on the Indian Question, without knowing it."

Ramona was inspired by several true events, but Jackson encompassed the negative realities of Native American culture within a work of fiction because her other writings on the "Indian Question" remained controversial. But she was empowered by the undertaking. As she told Aldrich, she normally wrote at the rate of 700 to 1000 words in a morning; for Ramona, she wrote 3000 to 4000 words in four hours. "I am not without my superstition about it," she admitted. Her next goal was to write a story on a similar theme for the Youth's Companion and its half million readers.

Ramona told the love story of the half-Indian title character and a full-blooded Indan named Alessandro. Throughout lies the struggle of identity, be it Native American, Mexican, Californian, or American, as well as the negative influence of poverty and crime on the culture of these people. A scene from the first volume of Ramona:

"Heavens, Senorita!" [Alessandro] cried, "have you not heard? Do you not know what has happened?"

"I know nothing, love," answered Ramona. "I have heard nothing since you went away. For ten days I have been sure you were dead; but to-night something told me that you were near, and I came to meet you."

At the first words of Ramona's sentence, Alessandro threw his arms around her again. As she said "love," his whole frame shook with emotion.

"My Senorita !" he whispered, " my Senorita! how shall I tell you! How shall I tell you!"

"What is there to tell, Alessandro? " she said. "I am afraid of nothing, now that you are here, and not dead, as I thought."

But Alessandro did not speak. It seemed impossible. At last, straining her closer to his breast, he cried: "Dearest Senorita! I feel as if I should die when I tell you, — I have no home; my father is dead; my people are driven out of their village. I am only a beggar now, Senorita; like those you used to feed and pity in Los Angeles convent!" As he spoke the last words, he reeled, and, supporting himself against the tree, added: "I am not strong, Senorita; we have been starving."

*Further reading: The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879-1885 (1998), edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes.

Jackson and the condition of the Mission Indians

Though mostly recognized for her short stories, Helen Hunt Jackson turned her writing to concerns over the affairs of Native Americans (culminating in a novel). In late 1882, she traveled to Southern California specifically to witness, as she wrote, "the condition of the Mission Indians" there as an official agent of the Department of the Interior. "I shall visit every Indian village in the Southern counties," she promised, "and make an exhaustive examination of their condition."

Her intention was to reveal to the public how impoverished Native Americans had become. To accomplish this, she proposed a series of six articles to the New York Independent; the series was so important to her, she sold all six in advance for the usual price she received for a single article. The final in the series, "The Temecula Exiles," was published on November 29, 1883.

Jackson was shocked almost immediately after her arrival in California. She found right away that one of the villages she intended to visit was in the process of being forcibly removed by the government, despite the people having tilled the land there for generations, and having already been previously displaced.

For her work with the Interior Department, as well as for her articles, Jackson demanded and examined various legal documents, land deeds, and other records. At least one colleague in the Bureau of Indian Affairs questioned if Jackson overstepped her role, or if she had the appropriate background for such work. Undaunted, she sought legal representation on behalf of Native Americans who wanted to defend their claims against the government, made official recommendations to remove white trespassers, reassert land rights, and fund better schools and welfare programs. Versions of a bill inspired by her reports was finally passed, after several controversial failures, in 1891 — six years after Jackson's death. Towards the end of her life, Jackson referred to the majority of her writing as merely a woman's hobby but noted, "nothing looks to me of any value, except the words I have spoken for the Indians."

*For information in this post, I turned to The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879-1885 (1998), edited by Valerie Sherer Mathes.

Death of Jackson: How she loved us!

Helen Hunt Jackson turned to writing after the death of her first husband and their son. Many of her stories were published under pseudonyms (usually "H.H." or "Saxe Holm") but, by the end of her life, she had turned political. Her interest in the maltreatment of Native Americans culminated in a book, A Century of Dishonor (1881), a copy of which was sent to each sitting Congressman. It made little difference, and she was criticized for her negativity.

After moving to California, she re-shaped her thinking. Knowing that a serious book would get less attention, she decided that the best way to stir people's hearts was in the form of a novel. She published Ramona in 1884 with the hope that it "would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro." Unfortunately, though the book sold exceptionally well, its subject matter was overshadowed in the form of fiction.

On her deathbed, as she lay dying of stomach cancer, Jackson wrote a letter to President Grover Cleveland asking him to read A Century of Dishonor. In severe pain, she was administered morphine and her family knew she was "sinking to final rest." She died in San Francisco on August 12, 1885, and was buried in Colorado. At her simple funeral, her poem "Last Words" was read:

Dear hearts, whose love has been so sweet to know,
That I am looking backward as I go,
Am lingering while I haste, and in this rain
Of tears of joy am mingling tears of pain;
Do not adorn with costly shrub, or tree,
Or flower, the little grave which shelters me.
Let the wild wind-sown seeds grow up unharmed,
And back and forth all summer, unalarmed,
Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep;
Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep;
And when, remembering me, you come some day
And stand there, speak no praise, but only say,
"How she loved us! 'Twas that which made her dear!"
Those are the words that I shall joy to hear.

Jackson/Holm: a mild form of hysteria

The publishing company founded in 1846 in New York as Baker & Scribner. After the death of Isaac Baker, his partner, Charles Scribner, bought the rest of the company. From then on, it was a family business. But, it was not until July 18, 1879 that a published book included the inscription of "Charles Scribner's Sons."

That first book was Saxe Holm's Stories (second series) by an anonymous writer, later revealed as Helen Hunt Jackson. Jackson typically used the pseudonym of "H.H." — though her true identity was not a secret by 1879 — and tried to keep "Saxe Holm" a distinct character.

Jackson's first stories as Holm were written while living in the same boardinghouse in Colorado as Thomas Wentworth Higginson and his wife. Jackson claimed that Higginson even helped edit or write a few of them. But Jackson wanted to keep her identity as Holm a secret from the public, confessing to Charlotte Cushman that she would stop writing if the secret was revealed. Cushman called her hypocritical and told her, "You have virtually drawn it upon yourself."

Jackson was so adamant about keeping Holm a secret in an attempt to disassociate herself from her more autobiographical or more politically-charged works as H.H. The author's own growing doubts about her ability as a writer were also a factor. The second series stories published by Scribner's had an additional problem: many featured a man and a woman who fell in love after one or the other was already married. Jackson felt some guilt about the close relationship she shared with Higginson at the time (who also introduced her to Emily Dickinson; both women were born in Amherst, Massachusetts).

The concern may have been irrelevant, as Holm's popularity was sinking as of this second series. One critic noted they seemed "as if recited by a person laboring under a mild form of hysteria."

Charles Scribner's Sons eventually became Simon and Schuster.

*Some information for this post comes from Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life by Kate Phillips. The image above shows Jackson circa 1875, courtesy of the Tutt Library at Colorado College.