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Founded in Philadelphia in 1879, the WNIA devoted seventy years to
working among Native women. Bucking society's narrow sense of
women's appropriate sphere, WNIA members across the U.S. built
homes, missionary cottages, schools, and chapels, and sponsored
teachers and physicians-all with a strong dose of Christianity.
Though goals of forced assimilation were as unrealistic as they
were unsuccessful, WNIA's contributions to the welfare of Native
women were hardly insignificant, especially in California. In the
north, they worked at the Round Valley and Hoopa Reservations and
realized their most unusual undertaking-the funding of the
Greenville Indian Industrial School. In the south they worked with
the Native mission populations, where cultural similarities and
greater proximity fostered unprecedented cooperation among WNIA
workers. Amelia Stone Quinton, longtime WNIA president and editor
of The Indian's Friend, provides a consistent narrative thread, as
does Helen Hunt Jackson in the chapters on Southern California.
Even after Jackson's death, her spiritual presence and the impact
of her novel Ramona guided WNIA membership. Mathes's recovery of
WNIA history, supported by a wealth of documentation, reveals much
about an era's sense of sphere, service, and sisterhood.
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.
Helen Hunt Jackson's passionate crusade for Indian rights comes to
life in this collection of more than 200 letters, most of which
have never been published before. With Valerie Sherer Mathes's
helpful notes, the letters reveal the behind-the-scenes drama of
Jackson's involvement in Indian reform, which led her to write A
Century of Dishonor and her protest novel, Ramona. Ralph Waldo
Emerson described Jackson as the ""greatest American woman poet.""
These stirring letters will intrigue anyone interested in Indian
affairs, nineteenth-century women's studies, or the social history
of Victorian America, where Jackson made her mark despite the
restrictions on women. Among her correspondents were Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Moncure D. Conway, Henry B.
Whipple, Henry L. Dawes, Henry Teller, Carl Schurz, and of course,
commissioners of Indian affairs and such prominent editors as
Whitelaw Reid, Charles Dudley Warner, and Richard Watson Gilder.
The letters are presented in sections on the Ponca and Mission
Indian causes, allowing readers to focus on the time period and
Indian group of choice.
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Sonoma Valley (Hardcover)
Valerie Mathes, Diane Smith, Valerie Sherer Mathes
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R842
R691
Discovery Miles 6 910
Save R151 (18%)
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Charles Cornelius Coffin Painter (1833-89), clergyman turned
reformer, was one of the foremost advocates and activists in the
late-nineteenth-century movement to reform U.S. Indian policy. Very
few individuals possessed the influence Painter wielded in the
movement, and Painter himself published numerous pamphlets for the
Indian Rights Association (IRA) on the Southern Utes, Eastern
Cherokees, California Indians, and other Native peoples. Yet this
is the first book to fully consider his unique role and substantial
contribution. Born in Virginia, Painter spent most of his life in
Great Barrington, Massachusetts, commuting to New York City and
Washington, D.C., initially as an agent of the American Missionary
Association (AMA), later as an appointed member of the Board of
Indian Commissions (BIC), and, most significant, as the Indian
Rights Association's D.C. agent. In these capacities he lobbied
presidents and Congress for reform, conducted extensive
investigations on reservations, and shaped deliberations in such
reform bodies as the BIC and the influential Lake Mohonk
conferences. Mining an extraordinary wealth of archival material,
Valerie Sherer Mathes crafts a compelling account of Painter as a
skilled negotiator with Indians and policymakers and as a tireless
investigator who traveled to far-flung reservations, corresponded
with countless Indian agents, and drafted scrupulously researched
reports on his findings. Recounted in detail, his many adventures
and behind-the-scenes activities-promoting education, striving to
prevent the removal of the Southern Utes from Colorado,
investigating reservation fraud, working to save the Piegans of
Montana from starvation-afford a clear picture of Painter's
importance to the overall reform effort to incorporate Native
Americans into the fabric of American life. No other book so
effectively captures the day-to-day and exhausting work of a single
individual on the front lines of reform. Like most of his fellow
advocates, Painter was an unapologetic assimilationist, a man of
his times whose story is a key chapter in the history of the Indian
reform movement.
Charles Cornelius Coffin Painter (1833-89), clergyman turned
reformer, was one of the foremost advocates and activists in the
late-nineteenth-century movement to reform U.S. Indian policy. Very
few individuals possessed the influence Painter wielded in the
movement, and Painter himself published numerous pamphlets for the
Indian Rights Association (IRA) on the Southern Utes, Eastern
Cherokees, California Indians, and other Native peoples. Yet this
is the first book to fully consider his unique role and substantial
contribution. Born in Virginia, Painter spent most of his life in
Great Barrington, Massachusetts, commuting to New York City and
Washington, D.C., initially as an agent of the American Missionary
Association (AMA), later as an appointed member of the Board of
Indian Commissions (BIC), and most significant, as the Indian
Rights Association's D.C. agent. In these capacities he lobbied
presidents and Congress for reform, conducted extensive
investigations on reservations, and shaped deliberations in such
reform bodies as the BIC and the influential Lake Mohonk
conferences. Mining an extraordinary wealth of archival material,
Valerie Sherer Mathes crafts a compelling account of Painter as a
skilled negotiator with Indians and policymakers and as a tireless
investigator who traveled to far-flung reservations, corresponded
with countless Indian agents, and drafted scrupulously researched
reports on his findings. Recounted in detail, his many adventures
and behind-the-scenes activities - promoting education, striving to
prevent the removal of the Southern Utes from Colorado,
investigating reservation fraud, working to save the Piegans of
Montana from starvation - afford a clear picture of Painter's
importance to the overall reform effort to incorporate Native
Americans into the fabric of American life. No other book so
effectively captures the day-to-day and exhausting work of a single
individual on the front lines of reform. Like most of his fellow
advocates, Painter was an unapologetic assimilationist, a man of
his times whose story is a key chapter in the history of the Indian
reform movement.
This first full account of Amelia Stone Quinton (1833-1926) and the
organization she cofounded, the Women's National Indian Association
(WNIA), offers a nuanced insight into the intersection of gender,
race, religion, and politics in our shared history. Author Valerie
Sherer Mathes shows how Quinton, like Helen Hunt Jackson, was a
true force for reform and progress who was nonetheless constrained
by the assimilationist convictions of her time. The WNIA, which
Quinton cofounded with Mary Lucinda Bonney in 1879, was organized
expressly to press for a "more just, protective, and fostering
Indian policy," but also to promote the assimilation of the Indian
through Christianization and "civilization." Charismatic and
indefatigable, Quinton garnered support for the WNIA's work by
creating strong working relationships with leaders of the main
reform groups, successive commissioners of Indian affairs,
secretaries of the interior, and prominent congressmen. The WNIA's
powerful network of friends formed a hybrid organization: religious
in its missionary society origins but also political, using its
powers to petition and actively address public opinion. Mathes
follows the organization as it evolved from its initial focus on
evangelizing Indian women-and promoting Victorian society's ideals
of "true womanhood"-through its return to its missionary roots,
establishing over sixty missionary stations, supporting physicians
and teachers, and building houses, chapels, schools, and hospitals.
With reference to Quinton's voluminous writings-including her
letters, speeches, and newspaper articles-as well as to WNIA
literature, Mathes draws a complex picture of an organization that
at times ignored traditional Indian practices and denied individual
agency, even as it provided dispossessed and impoverished people
with health care and adequate housing. And at the center of this
picture we find Quinton, a woman and reformer of her time.
Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Women's National Indian
Association was one of several reform associations that worked to
implement the government's assimilation policy directed at Native
peoples. The women of the WNIA combined political action with
efforts to improve health and home life and spread Christianity on
often remote reservations. During its more than seventy-year
history, the WNIA established over sixty missionary sites in which
they provided Native peoples with home-building loans, founded
schools, built missionary cottages and chapels, and worked toward
the realization of reservation hospitals. Gender, Race, and Power
in the Indian Reform Movement reveals the complicated intersections
of gender, race, and identity at the heart of Indian reform. This
collection of essays offers a new interpretation of the WNIA's
founding, argues that the WNIA provided opportunities for
indigenous women, creates a new space in the public sphere for
white women, and reveals the WNIA's role in broader national
debates centered on Indian land rights and the political power of
Christian reform.
Journalist, novelist, and scholar Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-85)
remains one of the most influential and popular writers on the
struggles of American Indians. This volume collects for the first
time seven of her most important articles, annotated and introduced
by Jackson scholars Valerie Sherer Mathes and Phil Brigandi.
Valuable as eyewitness accounts of Mission Indian life in Southern
California in the 1880s, the articles also offer insight into
Jackson's career. The articles served as the basis for Jackson's
1884 romantic novel, Ramona, still popular among Americans today.
Jackson journeyed to Southern California in the 1880s to learn
firsthand how Indians there lived. She found them in a demoralized
state, beset by failed government policies and constantly
threatened with losing their lands. The numerous articles and
editorial responses she penned made her a leading voice in the
fight for American Indian rights, a role she embraced
wholeheartedly. As this collection also shows, Jackson's fondness
for Old California helped shape the region's mythology and tourist
culture. But her most important work was her influence in getting
reservations set aside for the beleaguered Southern California
tribes. Although her recommendations were not implemented until
after her death, Helen Hunt Jackson's stark and revealing portrait
drew national attention to the effects of white encroachment on
Indian lands and cultures in California and inspired generations of
reformers who continued her legacy. This unprecedented collection
offers fresh insight into the life and work of a well-known and
influential writer and reformer.
The Women's National Indian Association, formed in response to the
chronic conflict and corruption that plagued relations between
American Indians and the U.S. government, has been all but
forgotten since it was disbanded in 1951. Mathes's edited volume,
the first book to address the history of the WNIA, comprises essays
by eight authors on the work of this important reform group. The
WNIA was formed in 1879 in reaction to the prospect of opening
Oklahoma Indian Territory to white settlement. A powerful network
of upper- and middle-class friends and associates, the group soon
expanded its mission beyond prayer and philanthropy as the women
participated in political protest and organized successful petition
drives that focused on securing civil and political rights for
American Indians. In addition to discussing the association's
history, the contributors to this book evaluate its legacies, both
in the lives of Indian families and in the evolution of federal
Indian policy. Their work reveals the complicated regional
variations in reform and the complex nature of Anglo women's
relationships with indigenous people.
In the spring of 1877 government officials forcibly removed members
of the Ponca tribe from their homelands in the southeastern corner
of Dakota territory, relocating them in the Indian Territory in
Oklahoma. When Ponca Chief Standing Bear attempted to lead a group
of his people home he was arrested, detained, and put on trial. In
this book Valerie Sherer Mathes and Richard Lowitt examine how the
national publicity surrounding the trial of Chief Standing Bear, as
well as a speaking tour by the chief and others, brought the plight
of his tribe, and of tribespeople across America, to the attention
of the general public, serving as a catalyst for the
nineteenth-century Indian reform movement. As the authors show, the
eventual ramifications of the removal, flight, and trial of
Standing Bear were extensive, and included the rise of an organized
humanitarian reform movement, significant changes in the
administration of Indian affairs, and the passage of the General
Allotment Act in 1887. This is the first full-length study of the
Standing Bear trial and its consequences, and Mathes and Lowitt
draw on a vast array of manuscript, diary, and journalistic sources
in order to chronicle the events of 1877, as well as the effect the
trial had on broader American popular opinion, on the federal
government, and finally on the Native American population as a
whole.
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