Helen Hunt Jackson on a century of Dishonor (1881), Module 4
Helen Hunt Jackson published a century of Dishonor, a history of the injustices visited upon Native Americans. She will intend to expose the wrongs that was going on by her country. In the United States it was a limit between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousands Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska. The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the band. The Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up in the great influx of gold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a tidal wave. There was no time for the government to make treaties; not even time for communities to make laws. The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by differences of time and place but neither time nor place makes any difference in the main facts. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden, all round, to all Indians, barbarous, and civilized alike. Cheating, robbing, breaking promi...