{"id":1664,"date":"2019-08-01T08:41:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1664"},"modified":"2019-08-01T08:41:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T08:41:53","slug":"helen-hunt-jackson-on-a-century-of-dishonor-1881","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/17-conquering-the-west\/helen-hunt-jackson-on-a-century-of-dishonor-1881\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor (1881)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 1881, Helen Hunt\nJackson published A Century of Dishonor, a history of the injustices visited\nupon Native Americans. Exposing the many wrongs perpetrated by her country, she\nhoped “to redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a century\nof dishonor.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are within the limits of the United States\nbetween two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand Indians, exclusive of\nthose in Alaska. The names of the different tribes and bands, as entered in the\nstatistical tables of the Indian Office Reports, number nearly three hundred. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one\nwhich has not suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of\nwhite settlers. The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the band,\nthe more certain the cruelty and outrage to which they have been subjected.\nThis is especially true of the bands on the Pacific slope. These Indians found\nthemselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up in the great influx of\ngold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a\ntidal wave. There was not time for the Government to make treaties; not even\ntime for communities to make laws. The tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the\nmurders of the Pacific-slope Indians in the last thirty years would be a volume\nby itself, and is too monstrous to be believed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes little difference, however, where one opens the\nrecord of the history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark\nstain. The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by differences\nof time and place; but neither time nor place makes any difference in the main\nfacts. Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and\nOhio in 1795; and the United States Government breaks promises now as\ndeftly as then, and with an added ingenuity from long practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of its strongest supports in so doing is the wide-spread\nsentiment among the people of dislike to the Indian, of impatience with his\npresence as a ” barrier to civilization,” and distrust of it as a\npossible danger. The old tales of the frontier life, with its horrors of Indian\nwarfare, have gradually, by two or three generations’ telling, produced in the\naverage mind something like an hereditary instinct of unquestioning and\nunreasoning aversion which it is almost impossible to dislodge or soften.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are hundreds of pages of unimpeachable testimony on\nthe side of the Indian; but it goes for nothing, is set down as sentimentalism\nor partisanship, tossed aside and forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President after president has appointed commission after commission\nto inquire into and report upon Indian affairs, and to make suggestions as to\nthe best methods of managing them. The reports are filled with eloquent\nstatements of wrongs done to the Indians, of perfidies on the part of the Government;\nthey counsel, as earnestly as words can, a trial of the simple and unperplexing\nexpedients of telling truth, keeping promises, making fair bargains, dealing\njustly in all ways and all things. These reports are bound up with the\nGovernment’s Annual Reports, and that is the end of them. It would probably be\nno exaggeration to say that not one American citizen out of ten thousand ever\nsees them or knows that they exist, and yet any one of them, circulated\nthroughout the country, read by the right-thinking, right-feeling men and women\nof this land, would be of itself a “campaign document” that would\ninitiate a revolution which would not subside until the Indians’ wrongs were,\nso far as is now left possible, righted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To assume that it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke\nof legislative policy possible, to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past,\nset the Indian policy of the country right for the future, and make the Indians\nat once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and uninformed judgment. The\nnotion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply to make all\nIndians at once citizens of the United States would be a sovereign and\ninstantaneous panacea for all their ills and all the Government’s perplexities,\nis a very inconsiderate one. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden,\nall round, to all Indians, barbarous and civilized alike, would be as grotesque\na blunder as to dose them all round with any one medicine, irrespective of the\nsymptoms and needs of their diseases. It would kill more than it would cure<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However great perplexity and difficulty there may be in the\ndetails of any and every plan possible for doing at this late day anything like\njustice to the Indian, however hard it may be for good statesmen and good men\nto agree upon the things that ought to be done, there certainly is, or ought to\nbe, no perplexity whatever, no difficulty whatever, in agreeing upon certain\nthings that ought not to be done, and which must cease to be done before the\nfirst steps can be taken toward right ng the wrongs, curing the ills, and wiping out the\ndisgrace to us of the present condition of our Indians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cheating, robbing, breaking promises\u2014these three are clearly\nthings which must cease to be done. One more thing, also, and that is the refusal\nof the protection of the law to the Indian’s rights of property, ” of\nlife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When these four things have ceased to be done, time,\nstatesmanship, philanthropy, and Christianity can slowly and surely do the\nrest. Till these four things have ceased to be done, statesmanship and\nphilanthropy alike must work in vain, and even Christianity can reap but small\nharvest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s\nDealings with Some of the Indian Tribes<\/em> (New York: Harper & Brothers,\n1881), 336-342. Available online via Internet Archive (https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/centuryofdishono00jackrich<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor, a history of the injustices visited upon Native Americans. Exposing the many wrongs perpetrated by her country, she hoped “to redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a century of dishonor.\u201d There are within the limits of the United States between two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1664","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1664\/revisions\/1665"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}