Praised in the nineteenth century for poetry and prose which has now slipped into obscurity, Helen Hunt Jackson is remembered for her chronicles of the mistreatment of the American Indian, A Century of Dishonor (1881), and the novel Ramona (1884), which remain glowing testaments of her contribution to American history and literature. Both books remain in print one hundred years after publication, and it is difficult to discuss Indian reform without invoking the name of Helen Hunt Jackson.

One of the most prolific women writers in the nineteenth century, with over twenty books and hundreds of poems, book reviews, essays, and travel sketches, Helen Hunt Jackson was born to Nathan Welby and Deborah Waterman Vinal Fiske on 15 October 1830. She was the eldest of two girls; two boys died in infancy. Helen Fiske spent her first fourteen years in Amherst, Massachusetts, where her father taught languages and moral philosophy at Amherst...