Seth King Humphrey

The Indian Dispossessed (1906) by Seth King Humphrey

Mrs. Jackson devoted a whole year of her life to writing and compiling materials for "A Century of Dishonor," and while thus engaged she mentally resolved to follow it with a story which should have for its motif the cause of the Indian. After completing her "Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians of California" (see Appendix, p. 458) she set herself down to this task, and "Ramona" is the result. This was in New York in the winter of 1883-84, and while thus engaged she wrote her publisher that she seemed to have the whole story at her fingers' ends, and nothing but physical impossibility prevented her from finishing it at a sitting. Alluding to it again on her death-bed, she wrote: "I did not write Ramona;' it was written through me. My life-blood went into it, -all I had thought, felt, and suffered for five years on the Indian question.