A Century of Dishonor A sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with some of the Indian Tribes.

New enlarged edition. 8vo. Original green cloth with titles stamped in gilt and red, slightly rubbed, pages evenly browned, a very good copy. x, 514, [4ads]pp. Boston, Roberts Brothers,

After the first edition of 1881, published in New York, and the first Roberts Brothers edition of 1885. This new edition is "enlarged by the addition of the report of the needs of the Mission Indians of California." 

 

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885), American poet, writer, and activist, was born to Unitarian parents in Amherst, where she was a classmate of Emily Dickinson. In 1879 she attended a lecture given by Ponca Chief Standing Bear, which made her aware of the gross injustices of the US Government's treatment of Native Americans. She was so moved by Standing Bear's words that she took it upon herself to lobby Washington, and wrote the present work to highlight and condemn a long history of unjust state and federal Indian policy, forced relocations, and broken treaties. In an attempt to elicit government reform, she sent a copy of the book to every member of Congress.

 

Hoping to garner further readership, in 1884 she followed A Century of Dishonor with a novel titled Ramona. The sentimental tale of a biracial Native orphan girl experiencing the hardships of Mission Indian life in the aftermath of the Mexican American War, it was very much in the vein of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Adding to this association, the present edition of A Century of Dishonor is described in an advert in the back of the volume as "A Key to Ramona". No doubt, Roberts Brothers who first reprinted this work the year after Ramona's release, sought to capitalise on the success of Stowe's non-fiction companion publication A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

Stock Code: 251171