By: Ashlyn Hauser
American poet and writer, Helen Hunt Jackson, is currently making history with her recent non-fiction book, Century of Dishonor. Her book covers all the terrible injustices the Native Americans had to face with America from the time the revolution took place to 1881 when she published the book. After publishing, she sent a copy to every member in Congress, which called attention to the affairs, causing the creation of the Dawes Act in 1887, an act that separated members of a tribe into individuals.
Later, in 1884, Helen Hunt published her second book, Ramona, a romance novel about an orphaned Native American girl and a wealthy owner of a sheep ranch. Although it sounds sweet, the novel emphasizes the government’s mistreatment of the Native Americans after the
Mexican-American wars in South Carolina.
Born on October 15, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, Helen Fiske was born into a rich and religious family, her father being a professor. She was well educated, better than most women of her time, having been exposed to mathematics, science, and philosophy. As a child, she was described as a high-spirited, and fun-loving child; however, Helen ended up having a difficult childhood, for she was orphaned at 14 from the death of her mother through tuberculosis when Helen was 11, and her father dying only three years later.
In 1852, Helen Fiske married Edward Bissell Hunt, a mechanical engineer in the U.S.
Army. His constant changes in stations gave her the chance to connect with many writiers of her time. With Edward, she has two sons, who both sadly passed away, one in infancy and the other during his childhood. In 1863, Edward Bisell Hunt was killed in a military accident. This is when
Helen fully turned to writing for comfort and her main source of income.
Throughout all of her writings, Helen used a pseudonym, using many names such as
“Marah”, “Rip Van Winkle”, “Saxe-Holm”, but after the death of her first husband, Edward
Bissell Hunt and her two sons, mainly used H.H. Jackson. She attended a lecture in Boston in
1879 where their head chief, Standing Bear, discussed with Helen all of the tragic things happening to his tribe, and she was shocked at this mistreatment. She then began talking to the
Ute tribe in Colorado, and while many didn’t like her connections with the Indians, she continued on with her research.
Before publishing Century of Dishonor, Helen married William Shapless Jackson, founding father of Colorado and a respected banker. A year after writing Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson passed away August 12, 1885, at 54. Her impact on the Native Americans truly changed a lot since she started devoting her life to changing the lives of many Natice Americans.
Sources:
Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830-1885), writer and reformer
Helen Hunt Jackson
Century of Dishonor Published