Helen Hunt Jackson And Essay, Research Paper

Helen Hunt Jackson and

The Campaign for

Ponca Restitution,

1880-1881

by Rosina Villarreal

Writer, poet; born in Amherst, Mass. She was schooled briefly in Massachusetts and New York City, and was a neighbor and good friend of Emily Dickinson. She married Edward Hunt (1852). Following his death (1863), she turned to writing poetry, stories, and essays. She married William Jackson (1875) and they settled in Colorado Springs, Colo. She is best known for her novel Ramona (1884), an indictment of the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans.

I didn’t even know she existed much less she was so willing to help the Ponca Indian. But I can believe the insults from our Government onto the Ponca Indians, but why did they the American Government allow the Sioux Indians to attack the Ponca Indian’s. It pains me to read this article. Our Government was behind so many Indians deaths. Wouldn’t this be considered a Holocaust in the home front?

Helen Hunt Jackson started her fight with merely editorials and soon realized it was not enough. Something more must be done. Jackson wrote a great book based on an Indian girl by the name of Ramona to call attention to the plight of the Mission Indians. Ramona is the story of an orphan, the child of a white father and an Indian mother, who is raised by a foster mother, Se?ora Gonzago Moreno, but kept ignorant of the fact of her parentage. She falls in love with an Indian, a sheepherder, named Alessandro. Se?ora Moreno, who hates Indians, tries to keep the two apart, but they elope and are married by Father Gaspara on San Diego. Ramona must go to live with Alessandro’s people.

Standing Bear and his people we treated so badly. When Standing bear went to take the body of his son home and was arrested what were these white people thinking. I’m glad Nebraska Citizens established Omaha Committee on their defense. For whatever reason they did it for whether it is recognition or just because they felt it was wrong or in the suggestion of General Cook the decision of Standing Bear v Crook declared Indian as a legal person.

It was upset to think Indians had to be ruled first as a legal people. Black people had to be given right as well. The white folk have always placed themselves a step over all other nationality. Always trying to place people in categories them and us.

It took one person with just writing letters to the editor to make such a change. This should inspire us that one voice is enough and people do listen. The Ponca would of never seen the additional funding that was rightfully there’s considering the lost lives and the lost of their home lands.