SOURCE: “The Indian Matter of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona: From Fact to Fiction,” in American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter, 1975, pp. 331-46.

[In the following essay, Byers discusses how Helen Hunt Jackson took the factual information from her report on the Mission Indians of California and fashioned it into the novel Ramona.]

In 1881 Helen Hunt Jackson published her A Century of Dishonor, one of the most scathing indictments of the United States Government on the treatment of the Indian population, or on any other charges, ever put forth. The work was the outgrowth of a rising feeling, beginning in 1872 when she traveled in California and shortly afterwards to Colorado where she finally made her home, that the American Indian was in worse shape than the slave had been.¹ Mrs. Jackson became extremely conscious of the fact that, according to the surrounding white population, the Indian had no rights whatever and that governmental concern was practically nil. The actual catalyst to her work for the Indians was a lecture in 1879 in Boston, where she heard “Standing Bear” and “Bright Eyes,” whom she later met in New York, tell their tales of the mistreatment of the Poncas.² After months of gruelling research in the Astor Library in New York, she saw her work come from the press. So great was her faith in the book and so intense were her feelings on the subject that she presented at her own expense a copy to each member of Congress.³ The indictment did not, however, accomplish what she desired; the situation remained unchanged.

Although Congress did not take any sort of action on Mrs. Jackson's treatise, the Department of the Interior, in 1882, did honor her by appointing her and Mr. Abbot Kinney of Los Angeles to investigate the conditions and needs of the Mission Indian of California. For Mrs. Jackson this appointment was a remarkable opportunity to further her work. To the reading public the appointment was also important, for the record of her travels was to be eventually the source for one of the most popular pieces of literature ever published in America, the novel Ramona.⁴

During the spring of 1883, Mrs. Jackson and Mr. Kinney visited most of the tribes of the Mission Indians. They moved from village to village, often into the mountains, to observe the Indians in their daily life, to hear their stories of woe, and to investigate their treatment by the whites. Sometimes they talked with whole tribes; sometimes with a group of chiefs; sometimes with only individuals. In a few short months they were able to collect enough data to write a comprehensive report. It is a business-like document, filled with cold facts, impressions, descriptions of various sorts, short episodes, and suggestions; and, more important, it is interesting simply as a piece of literature. A quality unusual in a report, it is well-written, being not merely the findings of a person intent on accumulating facts. For Mrs. Jackson, who is said to have written practically the whole report,⁵ this was one of the most important tasks in her life. This was the first time that she had worked from primary sources; therefore, she wanted her work to achieve its purpose.

Such, however, was not the case. A new Secretary of the Interior had entered office, and, unfortunately for Mrs. Jackson, he believed in the rapid exploitation of the Western resources. Her report was quietly laid away and forgotten.⁶ For the second time, she saw her work fail. Still determined, however, she began another project—to create a work of fiction using her California Indian report as a basis.

When Mrs. Jackson began on December 1, 1883, to write her Ramona, she was as one possessed. She had a mission to accomplish, and that mission was to lay before the American public, not just a group of legislators, the many and great wrongs done to the American Indian. So burning was this sense of duty and so well did she have the story transfixed in her mind, that she wrote on February 5, 1884, “As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough. In spite of myself, I write faster than I would write a letter. I write two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it. It racks me like a struggle with an outside power.”⁷ And later, from her deathbed in 1884, 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.”⁸

Although Mrs. Jackson said that she “did not write Ramona,” the statement is not completely true, because she had written only six months earlier in her Mission Indian report the seeds for the whole story as it is found in the novel. The relationship between the novel Ramona⁹ and the “Report of the Conditions and Needs of the Mission Indians of California, made by Special Agents Helen Jackson and Abbot Kinney, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,”¹⁰ is, indeed, a close one.

Mrs. Jackson's “Report” is fifty-six ordinary pages in length. The first part (sixteen pages) is the main body of the document, being a history of the Mission Indians, the location of various tribes, their position under both the Mexican and American governments, the general nature of the people, recommendations concerning education, divisions of reservations, rights, agencies, and the purchase of specified tracts of land. In this section Mrs. Jackson presents an overall picture of the Indians, generalizing a great deal and treating individuals only rarely. There are few descriptions of places and almost no definite incidents of mistreatment on the part of the whites. It is as if she had intentionally made this section of the document as cold as possible, as if she had consciously kept out any undue amount of sentimentality.

The second part of the “Report” is made up of what Mrs. Jackson called “Exhibits.” There are eighteen of these exhibits, lettered “A” through “R.” The divisions, whose average length is from two to four pages, treat the various tribes or groups of importance that Mrs. Jackson and Mr. Kinney visited. Included in these sections are descriptions of particular tribal locations, of villages, and individuals, and, most important of all, definite examples of mistreatment. It is chiefly, then, in these exhibits, which are treated in a much more emotional manner than the first sections, that the novel Ramona was born.

Ramona itself may, in general, be divided into two main scenes of action. The first scene is the ranch of Senora Moreno. It introduces the main characters, presents the basic conflict between races, describes life on one of the few remaining old Spanish haciendas, and prepares the way for the second part. Although this section is an essential part of the novel, it contributes almost nothing toward the campaign that caused Mrs. Jackson to write her masterpiece.

The second part becomes more involved. It deals with the flight of the Indian Alessandro, whose name was probably taken from the main body of the “Report” (p. 468), and the half-Scottish, half-Indian Ramona. In their flight and search for security the couple visits the Temecula village, the Pachanga cañon, San Pasquale, the village of Saboba, and finally the secluded cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains. For Mrs. Jackson this part of the novel is her final and best work on behalf of the Indians. Here she succeeded where earlier she had failed.

Since the first half of the novel treats only slightly Mrs. Jackson's problem, it is the second part which is her chief concern.

The misfortunes of Alessandro and Ramona begin when the two vow to become man and wife, and Senora Moreno, although she is a friend of the Indians, forbids the marriage. The couple cannot be dissuaded, and their elopement will take place as soon as Alessandro returns from the home in the Temecula village. He is delayed, however, and upon returning relates his tragic story. It is told in a passionate manner, but still truthfully as Mrs. Jackson knew it.

“Dearest Senorita! I feel as if I should die when I tell you,—I have no home; my father is dead; my people are driven out of their village. I am only a beggar now, Senorita. …”

(Ramona, p. 236).

“There was no battle. There would have been, if I had had my way; but my father implored me not to resist. He said it would only make it worse for us in the end. The sheriff, too, he begged me to let it all go on peacably, and help him keep the people quiet. … They thought there would be trouble; and well they might,—turning a whole village full of men and women and children out of their houses, and driving them off like foxes.”

(Ramona, p. 237).

“[The sheriff] said the judge had said he must take enough of our cattle and horses to pay all it had cost for the suit up in San Francisco. They didn't reckon the cattle at what they were worth, I thought; but they said cattle were selling very low now. There were not enough in all the village to pay it, so we had to make it up in horses; and they took mine.”

(Ramona, p. 240)

Mrs. Jackson had written earlier in her “Report” concerning the Pachanga Indians who had been evicted from their old homes:

This little band of Indians is worthy of a special mention. They are San Luisenos, and formerly lived in the Temecula Valley, where they had good adobe houses and a large tract of land under cultivation. The ruins of these houses are still standing there, also their walled graveyard full of graves. There had been a settlement of Indians in this Temecula Valley from time immemorial, and at the time of the Secularization of the missions many of the neophytes of San Luis Rey returned thither to their old homes.

(“Report,” Exhibit M, p. 504)

And farther on she says in the “Report”:

In 1873 a decree of ejectment against these Indians was obtained in the San Francisco courts without the Indians” knowledge. The San Diego Union of September 23d, 1875, says on the subject:

“For forty years these Indians have been recognized as the most thrifty and industrious Indians in all California. For more than twenty years past these Indians have been yearly told by the United States commissioners and agents, both special and general, as well as by their legal counsel, that they could remain on these lands. Now, without any previous knowledge by them of any proceedings in court, they are ordered to leave their lands and homes. The order of ejectment has been served on them by the sheriff of San Diego County. He is not only commanded to remove these Indians, but to take of their property whatever may be required to pay the costs incurred in the suit.”

(“Report,” Exhibit M. p. 505).

The words in Mrs. Jackson's “Report,” “The ruins of these houses are still standing here, also their walled graveyard full of graves,” show to what extent she kept her feelings under control for the purely factual document. In the novel, however, she allowed her emotions to run freely. Of Alessandro's arrival at Temecula, she wrote:

There Allessandro saw the roofless houses, and the wagons being loaded, and the people running about, the women and children wailing; and then they showed him the place where his father lay on the ground, under the tule … (Ramona, pp. 250-251) … he turned their horses' heads in the direction of the graveyard. It was surrounded by a low adobe wall, with one small gate of wooden paling. As they reached it, Alessandro exclaimed, “The thieves have taken the gate!” (Ramona, p. 286). The graves were thick, and irregularly placed, each mound marked by a small wooden cross. … When they reached the corner, Ramona saw the fresh-piled earth of the new grave. Uttering a wailing cry, Carmena, drawing Ramona to the edge of it, pointed down with her right hand, then laid both hands on her heart, and gazed at Ramona piteously. Ramona burst into weeping, and again clasping Carmena's hand, laid it on her own breast, to show her sympathy. Carmena did not weep.

(Ramona, pp. 287-288).

Earlier, on their way to Temecula, Alessandro and Ramona spend two idyllic days in a small hidden cañon that Mrs. Jackson depopulated for the two days. The essential descriptive elements can be located in two brief passages. They are:

Alessandro had decided to hide for the day in a cañon he knew, from which a narrow trail led direct to Temecula,—a trail which was known to none but Indians. Once in this cañon, they would be safe from all possible pursuit. (Ramona, pp. 265-266). The cañon at its head was little more than a rift in the rocks, and the stream which had its rise in it was only a trickling spring at the beginning. It was this precious water, as well as the inaccessibility of the spot, which had decided Alessandro to gain the place at all hazards and costs.

(Ramona, p. 266).

This scene Mrs. Jackson was completely familiar with. After having observed the Los Coyotes Indians in their secluded home, she wrote in her “Report:”

Five miles up from the head of the San Ysidro Cañon, to be reached only by a steep and narrow trail, lies a small valley on the desert side of the mountains. It is little more than a pocket on a ledge. … Few white men have ever penetrated to it, and the Indians occupying it have been hitherto safe, by reason of the poverty and inaccessibility of their home.

(“Report,” Exhibit F, p. 490).

Upon finding his home destroyed and his father dying Alessandro assumes the leadership of the tribe and suggests that they move to the Pachanga cañon. Part of the tragedy lies with Carmena, whose husband is buried in the Temecula graveyard and whose child Alessandro helps to bury at Pachanga. In relating the incident after Ramona's question, he describes the place with a hopeless air:

“Where is Pachanga?” asked Ramona.

“About three miles from Temecula, a little sort of cañon. I told the people they'd better move over there; the land did not belong to anybody, and perhaps they could make a living there. There isn't any water; that's the worst of it.”

(Ramona, p. 242).

Concerning the Indians following their removal, Mrs. Jackson wrote briefly and with no show of emotion in her “Report” the whole sorrowful story:

A portion of these Temecula Indians, wishing to remain as near their old homes and the graves of their dead as possible, went over in the Pachanga cañon, only three miles distant. It was a barren, dry spot; but the Indians sunk a well, built new houses, and went to work again.

(“Report,” Exhibit M, p. 505).

From the Temecula episode Alessandro and Ramona move to San Pasquale, the second of the settings in the flight portion of the novel. In introducing the village for the first time to the reader of Ramona, Mrs. Jackson commented:

San Pasquale was a regularly established pueblo, founded by a number of the Indian neophytes of the San Luis Rey Mission at the time of the breaking up of the Mission.

(Ramona, pp. 272-273).

Mrs. Jackson, feeling that the San Pasquale situation was of such importance (the village had suffered the same fate as Temecula), treated this location in the main body of the “Report.” In describing the settlement for the Department of the Interior, she used almost the same words:

This San Pasquale village was a regularly organized Indian pueblo, formed by about one hundred neophytes of the San Luis Rey Mission, under and in accordance with the provisions of the Secularization Act in 1834.

(“Report,” Main body, 460).

For the purpose of the novel, in picturing a romantic little village, Mrs. Jackson goes into great detail, filling the passage with lyric beauty:

When they rode down into the valley, the whole village was astir. The vintage-time had nearly passed; everywhere were to be seen large, flat baskets of grapes drying in the sun. Old women and children were turning these, or pounding acorns in the deep stone bowls; others were beating the yucca-stalks, and putting them to soak in water; the oldest women were sitting on the ground, weaving baskets. There were not many men in the village now; two large bands were away at work,—one at the autumn sheep-shearing, and one working on a large irrigating ditch at San Bernardino.

In different directions from the village slow-moving herds of goats or of cattle could be seen, being driven to pasture on the hills; some men were ploughing; several groups were at work building houses of bundles of the tule reeds.

(Ramona, p. 327).

Describing the village in the “Report,” she used only one sentence stripped of all literary merit, but the facts are the same.

These Indians had herds of cattle, horses, and sheep; they raised grains, and orchards and vineyards.

(“Report,” Main body, p. 460).

Alessandro and Ramona live happily for awhile at San Pasquale, but their happiness is not to be enjoyed for long. The storm clouds begin to gather. This time, Mrs. Jackson does not, however, let the couple suffer the mistreatment; it is Ysidro, their friend, who is the victim of the whites.

Ysidro, it seemed, had the previous year rented a cañon, at the head of the valley, to one Doctor Morong. It was simply as beepasture that the Doctor wanted it, he said. He put his hives there, and built a sort of hut for the man whom he sent up to look after the honey. Ysidro did not need the land, and thought it a good chance to make a little money. He had taken every precaution to make the transaction a safe one. … Now, the time of the lease having expired, Ysidro had been to San Diego to ask the Doctor is he wished to renew it for another year; and the Doctor had said that the land was his, and he was coming out there to build a house, and live.

(Ramona, p. 345).

Ysidro had gone to Father Gaspara for help, and Father Gaspara had had an angry interview with Doctor Morong; but it had done no good. The Doctor said the land did not belong to Ysidro at all, but to the United States Government; and that he had paid the money for it to the agents in Los Angeles. …

(Ramona, pp. 300-301).

Mrs. Jackson seems to have created this incident from two separate incidents that she had included in her “Report.” She borrowed slightly from the section on the San Ysidro Indians, in which a cañon is wrested from them by a man named Chatham Helm and which is ultimately used for a bee business (“Report,” Exhibit E, p. 489). The main source, however, is an incident which happened on the Cahuilla Reservation and which Mrs. Jackson heard when she visited that place. The incident, as related in the report, reads:

A few rods from the hot spring there stood a good adobe house, shut up unoccupied. The history of this house is worth telling, as an illustration of the sort of troubles to which Indians in these remote regions, unprotected by the Government, and unable to protect themselves, are exposed. Some eight years ago the Cahuillas rented a tract of their land as pasture to two Mexicans named Machado. These Machados, by permission of the Indians, built this adobe house, and lived in it when looking after their stock. At the expiration of the lease the house was to be the property of the Indians. When the Machados left they said to the Cahuilla captain, “Here is your house.” The next year another man named Thomas rented a pasture tract from the Indians and also rented this house, paying for the use of it for two years six bulls, and putting into it a man named Cushman, who was his overseer. At the end of the two years Thomas said to the Cahuillas, “Here is your house; I now take my cattle away.” But the man Cushman refused to move out of the house; said it was on railroad land which he had bought of the railroad company. In spite of the Indians' remonstrances he lived on there for three or four years. Finally he died. After his death his old employer, Thomas, who had once rented this very house from the Indians, came forward, claimed it as his own, and has now sold it to a man named Parks. Through all this time the Indians committed no violence on the trespassers. They journeyed to Los Angeles to find out from the railroad company whether Cushman owned the land as he said, and were told that he did not. They laid the matter before their agent, but he was unable to do anything about it.

(“Report,” Exhibit C, 482).

Treating the incident in Ramona, Mrs. Jackson, here, has turned her wrath not upon the Indian agents, but directly upon the government in Washington. Of the agents she said in the novel:

They were not inhuman, and they felt sincere sympathy for this man, representative of two hundred hard-working, industrious people, in danger of being turned out of house and home. … These officials had neither authority nor option in the matter. They were there simply to carry out instructions, and obey orders.

(Ramona, p. 348).

After the Ysidro episode it is not long before Alessandro and Ramona are caught in the middle of the storm. A white man comes into the valley and says to Alessandro who is ploughing an extra field in hopes of harvesting a larger crop:

“Look here! Be off, will you? This is my land, I'm going to build a house here.”

Alessandro had replied, “This was my land yesterday. How comes it yours to-day?”

Something in the wording of this answer, or something in Alessandro's tone and bearing, smote the man's conscience, or heart, or what stood to him in the place of conscience and heart, and he said: “Come, now, my good fellow, you look like a reasonable kind of a fellow; you just clear out, will you, and not make me any trouble. You see the land's mine. I've got all this land round here;” and he waved his arm, describing a circle; “three hundred and twenty acres, me and my brother together, and we're coming in here to settle. We got our papers from Washington last week. It's all right, and you may just as well go peaceably, as make a fuss about it. Don't you see?”

(Ramona, p. 354).

The man is embarrassed by Alessandro's plight and says:

“Of course, I know it does seem a little rough on fellows like you, that are industrious, and have done some work on the land. But you see the land's in the market; I've paid my money for it.”

(Ramona, p. 355).

He does agree to pay two hundred dollars for the crops and farm equipment. Alessandro accepts the pittance and with a breaking heart prepares to leave.

In creating this incident Mrs. Jackson has again borrowed from two separate incidents. The matter of the two hundred dollars is probably taken from her record of the Indians living in Los Coyotes Valley, which she had used earlier as the small cañon to which Alessandro and Ramona first fled. She reported:

About three weeks before our arrival at Warner's Ranch a man named Jim Fane, a comrade of Helm, who usurped the San Ysidro Cañon, having, no doubt, learned through Helm of the existence of the Los Coyotes Valley, appeared in the village and offered the Indians $200 for their place. They refused to sell, upon which he told them that he had filed on the land, should stay in any event, and proceeded to cut down trees and build a corral.

(“Report,” Exhibit F, p. 491).

The characterization, however, comes from the main body of the “Report,” which in one instance concerns the San Pasquale tribe:

In 1873 one of these special agents, giving an account of the San Pasquale Indians, mentioned the fact that a white man had just pre-empted the land on which the greater part of the village was situated. He paid the price of the land to the register of the district land office, and was daily expecting his patent from Washington. “He owned,” the agent says, “that it was hard to wrest from the well disposed and industrious creatures the homes they had built up; but” said he, “if I had not done it, somebody else would; for all agree that the Indian has no right to public lands.”

(“Report,” Main body, pp. 459-460).

From San Pasquale, then, Alessandro, Ramona, and their child move on, this time toward the San Jacinto Mountains. At this point in the novel, Mrs. Jackson must have decided that she had not given full rein to her feelings. The only way in which she could do this was to create a special character whose main duty would be to feel sympathy for the Indians and disgust for the whites. Therefore, she created Aunt Ri, who at first has the typical white attitude toward the couple, but who is won over by the blue-eyed child and who in time comes to love the couple and to begin her personal fight for the Indians. Aunt Ri is undoubtedly Mrs. Jackson, but she also resembles a Mrs. Gregory who is mentioned briefly in the section on the Conejos Indians.

About Mrs. Gregory nothing is presented except her last name, the fact that the Indians were often in the habit of consulting her when they were in trouble, and that she would often ride horseback nine miles to be present at one of their councils. Then follows one of these councils in which a young Indian is being tried by the members of his tribe for having stabbed a white man who had attempted to take the young man's wife by force. Mrs. Gregory at the council presents an interesting picture; she expresses sentiments remarkably like those of Aunt Ri:

Recounting the facts, the captain said to Mrs. Gregory, “Now what do you think I ought to do?” “Would you think he deserved punishment if it were an Indian he had stabbed under the same circumstances?” asked Mrs. Gregory. “Certainly not,” was the reply, “we should say he did just right.” “I think so too,” said Mrs. Gregory; “the Irishman deserved to be killed.” But the captain said the white people would be angry with him if no punishment were inflicted on the young man; so they whipped him and banished him from the rancheria for one year. Mrs. Gregory said that during the eleven years that they had kept their cattle ranch in the neighborhood of this village, but one cow had ever been stolen by the Indians; and in that instance the Indians themselves assisted in tracking the thief, and punished him severely.

(“Report,” Exhibit K, p. 501).

The families of Alessandro and Aunt Ri journey toward the San Jacinto Mountains and finally settle at the village of Saboba where Aunt Ri continues to extol the virtues of the Indians and to condemn the actions of the United States Government much as Mrs. Gregory had done earlier in the “Report.” Alessandro describes the situation at the village:

“There is Saboba,” he said, “at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountain. … Majella [Ramona] would not like to live in it. Neither do I believe it will long be any safer than San Pasquale. There was a kind, good old man who owned all that valley,—Senor Ravallo; he found the village of Saboba there when he came to the country. It is one of the very oldest of all; he was good to all Indians, and he said they should never be disturbed, never. He is dead, but his three sons have the estate yet, and I think they would keep their father's promise to the Indians. But you see, tomorrow, Majella, they may die, or go back to Mexico. …”

(Ramona, pp. 377-378).

For the “Report,” Mrs. Jackson presented Saboba as it actually was after the fears that Alessandro held had in reality come true:

Saboba is the name of a village of Indians of the Serrano tribe, one hundred and fifty-seven in number, living in the San Jacinto Valley, at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, in San Diego County. The village is within the boundaries of a Mexican grant, patented to the heirs of J. Estudillo, January 17th, 1880. The greater part of the grant had been sold to a company which, in dividing up its lands, allotted the tract where the Saboba village lies to one Mr. R. Byrnes, of San Bernardino, who proposes to eject the Indians unless the United States Government will buy his whole tract of seven hundred acres at an exorbitant price. … The Indians have lived in the place for over a hundred years.

(“Report,” Exhibit B, p. 479).

Saboba cannot, however, offer Alessandro and Ramona safety for long. They find for awhile an uneasy happiness, but Ramona soon becomes conscious of danger which Alessandro has not been made aware of, the value of the water in the village.

One day she had heard a man say, “If there is a drought we shall have the devil to pay with our stock before winter is over.” “Yes,” said another; “and look at those damned Indians over there in Saboba, with water running all the time in their village! It's a shame they should have that spring!”

When she reached home that day she went down to the spring in the centre of the village, and stood a long time looking at the bubbling water. It was indeed a priceless treasure; a long irrigating ditch led from it down into the bottom, where lay the cultivated fields. …

(Ramona, p. 391).

Mrs. Jackson also took note of these same things in her investigation. She was fully cognizant of the fact that the water actually constituted danger for the Indians. She wrote in the “Report:”

They have adobe houses, fenced fields and orchards, and irrigating ditches. There is in the village a never-failing spring, with a flow of about twenty-five miner's inches. It is claimed by the Indians that the first surveys did not take in their village. This is probably true; the resurveying of grants and “floating” their lines so as to take in lands newly discovered to be worthless, being a common practice in California. In a country where water is gold, such a spring as these Saboba Indians owned could not long escape notice or be left long in the undisturbed possession of Indians.

(“Report,” Exhibit B, p. 479).

After the death of their child, Alessandro and Ramona again flee, this time high into the San Jacinto Mountains, their last hope in the search for security. At last the couple finds a small hidden valley where they build their final home and Ramona gives birth to their second child.

It was a wondrous valley. The mountain seemed to have been cleft to make it. It lay near midway to the top, and ran transversely on the mountain's side, its western or southwestern end being many feet lower than the eastern. Both the upper and lower ends were closed by piles of rocks and tangled fallen trees; the rocky summit of the mountain itself made the southern wall; the northern was a spur, or ridge, nearly vertical, and covered thick with pine-trees.

(Ramona, p. 418).

For the location of this scene Mrs. Jackson has used the information which she collected when she visited the Cahuilla Reservation. She seems to have used not only the description of the main valley in which the Cahuilla village was located, but also, perhaps slightly, a spot where the story from which the death of Alessandro is taken actually happened. The “Report” is as follows:

The Cahuilla Valley is about forty miles from Saboba, high up among the peaks and spurs of the San Jacinto Mountains; a wild, barren, inaccessible spot.

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 481).

Then, relating the incident of the Indian Juan Diego, she wrote:

A Cahuilla Indian named Juan Diego had built for himself a house and cultivated a small patch of ground on a high mountain ledge a few miles north of the village. Here he lived alone with his wife and baby.

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 483).

The characterization of Alessandro, his death, and the situation that follows are taken directly from the story of Juan Diego, the wording sometimes being the same. Of Alessandro, whose mind has been crushed because of his burdens, Mrs. Jackson says:

Slowly, so slowly that Ramona could not tell on what hour or what day her terrible fears first changed to an even more terrible certainty, his brain gave way. … He knew that he suddenly came to his consciousness sometimes, and discovered himself in strange and unexplained situations; had no recollection of what had happened for an interval of time, longer or shorter. But he thought it was only a sort of sickness; he did not know that during those intervals his acts were the acts of a madman; never violent, aggressive, or harmful to any one; never destructive. …

Everybody in the valley knew him, and knew his condition.

(Ramona, pp. 422-423).

The “Report” though presented in a simpler manner is almost as vivid:

He had been for some years what the Indians call a “locoed” Indian, being at times crazy; never dangerous, but yet certainly insane for longer or shorter periods. His condition was known to the agent, who told us that he had feared he would be obliged to shut Juan up if he did not get better. It was also well known throughout the neighboring country, as we found on repeated inquiry. Everybody knew that Juan Diego was “locoed.”

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 483).

Concerning the horse taken by Alessandro in a moment of madness, the novel reads:

As he drew near, she saw to her surprise that he was riding a new horse. “Why, Alessandro!” she cried. “What horse is this?”

He looked at her bewilderedly, then at the horse. True; it was not his own horse! He struck his hand on his forehead, endeavoring to collect his thoughts. “Where is my horse, then?” he said.

“My God! Alessandro,” cried Ramona. “Take the horse back instantly. They will say you stole it.”

“I will ride back as soon as I have rested. I am heavy with sleep.”

When she went into the house, Alessandro was asleep.

(Ramona, pp. 426-427).

The “Report” is practically the same:

He came home at night riding a strange horse. His wife exclaimed, “Why, whose horse is that?” Juan looked at the horse, and replied confusedly, “Where is my horse, then?” The woman, much frightened, said, “You must take that horse right back; they will say you stole it.” Juan replied that he would as soon as he had rested; threw himself down and fell asleep.

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 483).

Then follows the murder in the novel:

She was on the point of waking him, when a furious barking from Capitan and the other dogs roused him instantly from his sleep, and springing to his feet, he ran out to see what it meant. In a moment more Ramona followed,—only a moment, hardly a moment; but when she reached the threshold, it was to hear a gun-shot, to see Alessandro fall to the ground, to see, in the same second, a ruffianly man leap from his horse, and standing over Alessandro's body, fire his pistol again, once, twice, into the forehead, cheek. Then with a volley of oaths … he untied the black horse from the post where Ramona had fastened him, and leaping into his saddle again, galloped away, leading the horse.

(Ramona, p. 427).

And in the “Report”:

From his sleep he was awakened by the barking of the dogs, and ran out of the house to see what it meant. The woman followed, and was the only witness of what then occurred. A white man, named Temple, the owner of the horse which Juan had ridden home, rode up, and on seeing Juan poured out a volley of oaths, levelled his gun and shot him dead. After Juan had fallen on the ground Temple rode closer and fired three more shots in the body, one in the forehead, one in the cheek, and one in the wrist, the woman looking on.

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 483).

The incidents after the murder in the novel follow closely the bare outline in the “Report.” Both Ramona and the wife of Juan Diego flee to the Cahuilla village for help. Both Temple and Farrar, the murderer in the novel, turn themselves over to officers of the law, and both swear that the Indian claimed the horse in question and that he brandished a knife. Both juries, called to investigate and pronounce judgment, free the murderer since the only witness to the crime is the murdered man's wife.¹¹

Mrs. Jackson, with her feeling of a crusader, was not, however, content to let the situation remain as it appeared in the novel and thereby pass up such an opportunity for venting her wrath on the whites of the area. She deliberately brings Aunt Ri back into the picture. Thus, Mrs. Jackson's opinions in the “Report” concerning Juan Diego become Aunt Ri's opinions in the novel, but with numerous variations. The author even goes so far as to create a character in the last pages of the book simply to speak a few sentences that she had recorded in her “Report” and to present someone with whom Aunt Ri could argue.

Young Merrill, the newly created character, in justifying the murder, says:

“‘Twas a derned mean thing Jim Farrar did, a firin’ into the man after he was dead. I don't blame him for killin' the cuss, not a bit; I'd have shot any man livin' that 'ad taken a good horse o' mine up that trail. That's the only law we stock men 've got out in this country. We've got to protect ourselves. But it was mean, low-lived trick to blow the feller's face to pieces after he was dead. …

(Ramona, p. 458).

The lines from the “Report” that Mrs. Jackson insisted upon putting into the novel are:

He not only justified Temple's killing the Indian, but said he would have done the same thing himself. “I don't care whether the Indian had a knife or not,” he said; “that didn't cut any figure at all the way I looked at it. Any man that'd take a horse of mine and ride him up that mountain trail, I'd shoot him whenever I found him. Stockmen have just got to protect themselves in this country,” … The utmost concession that he would make was finally to say, “Well, I'll agree that Temple was to blame for firin' into him after he was dead. That was mean, I'll allow.”

(“Report,” Exhibit C, p. 484).

After a comparison of the descriptions of places, the main actions, and in some instances the conversation in the novel with the “Report,” it is obvious that Mrs. Jackson had the document before her as she wrote Ramona. The “Report,” written to impress upon the minds of Congress the many wrongs done to the Indians, contained, without a doubt, the stories which were best suited to her purpose. One may also assume that the author knew more individual incidents than she chose to include in the document, but in choosing only the more vivid examples of mistreatment she more nearly accomplished the task that she set out to perform, i. e., to speak for the Indians. These vivid examples, then, are almost all transferred to the novel, given highly romantic settings and characters, and aimed at the United States Government whether that body was directly responsible or not.

Perhaps one of the most glittering facets of Mrs. Jackson's artistry lies in the skill with which Alessandro and Ramona are made to represent not simply individuals or even tribes of Indians, but all Indians. In their trials, they become the personification of all the unfortunate wards of the government. It is much as if Alessandro and Ramona had lived in or near all the villages that the author visited during her investigation and had been the principal protagonists in all the stories that she had heard. By placing the suffering on an individual basis, however, Mrs. Jackson has succeeded in making the action more intense and more condemnatory. In each case she has subordinated the total action to the action of one family or even of one man. In the novel the individual is always presented in the foreground, which presentation reduces a much larger wrong to a needle-sharp treatment of that wrong. Constructing her novel in this manner, Mrs. Jackson made it a work that spoke for the Indian as Uncle Tom's Cabin had earlier spoken for the Negro.

In general, the author remained true to her “Report” in all matters of importance. She did, however, modify or illuminate any scene or action that would add to the over-all effect of the novel. Without any hesitation she moved a whole tribe from a valley, because that particular valley was perfect for another scene. She followed the facts of the various incidents, but she had no compunction about shuffling those facts about a bit to obtain the desired picture. Considering the fact that Mrs. Jackson was a woman with a battle to fight, it is to her credit, then, that the story is essentially an accurate account of the Indian in his dealings with the government.

Ramona was an instant success. In 1886 it was declared “the best novel yet produced by an American woman,” and there was doubt “whether in clearness of conception, purity of tone, individuality and pleasing contrast of character and intensity of emotion,” it was excelled by an American writer.¹² Mrs. Jackson had started to write principally a novel with a purpose, or as Aunt Ri said, “… I jest wish the hull world could see what I've seen!” (Ramona, p. 408). Instead, she became known as the author of one of the most moving love stories ever produced with a purely American setting.

Notes

1. Sarah A. Hubbard, “Helen Hunt Jackson,” Dial, 6 (September, 1885), 110.

2. Elizabeth Porter Gould, “The Author of Ramona,” Education, 21 (November, 1900), 182-183.

3. ———, “How Ramona was Written,” Atlantic Monthly, 86 (November, 1900), 712.

4. Publishers' Weekly, 120 (October 10, 1931), 1701-1702, records that Ramona, “since its original publication in 1884, has sold over 400,000 copies, without any low-priced popular editions” and “is still the then thousand per year class.” Carey McWilliams, “Southern California: Ersatz Mythology,” Common Ground, 6 (Winter, 1946), 29-38, cites the effect of the novel on Southern California and notes that between 1884 and 1946 the novel had sold 601,636 copies with the Los Angeles Public Library alone having purchased over a thousand copies. Andrew F. Rolle, ed., “Introduction,” A Century of Dishonor (New York, 1965), xx, notes that Ramona has undergone three hundred printings and “countless stage and screen versions.”

5. ———, “Mrs. Helen Jackson (“H.H.”),” Century Magazine, 31 (December, 1885), 255.

6. Allan Nevins, “Helen Hunt Jackson, Sentimentalist vs. Realist,” American Scholar, 10 (Summer, 1941), 276.

7. Cited in “How Ramona was Written,” Atlantic Monthly, 86 (November, 1900), 713.

8. W. J. Harsha, “How Ramona Wrote Itself,” Southern Workman, 59 (August, 1930), p. 370.

9. Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (Boston, 1885), pp. 1-490. Cited hereafter in the body of this paper.

10. “Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians of California, made by Special Agents Helen Jackson and Abbot Kinney, to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” sent from Colorado Springs, Colorado on July 13th, 1883, appears as Appendix XV in Mrs. Jackson's A Century of Dishonor (Boston, 1890), pp. 458-514. Referred to hereafter as “Report” and cited in the body of the paper.

11. Albion W. Tourgee, “Study in Civilization,” North American Review, 143 (September, 1886), p. 246.

12. Ibid.