Helen Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson (born Helen Maria Fiske, 1830 to 1885) was a US poet and author who campaigned to improve the treatment of Native Americans by the US government. She described the negative impact of government policies in her history titled A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona (1884) provided a narrative of the federal government's general mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California after the Mexican–American War, which drew much attention to her cause. Whilst commercially popular and reprinted 300 times, a majority of readers were drawn to its romantic and picturesque qualities rather than the political message. Many tourists were drawn to Southern California because they wanted to see places described in the book.