Mathes's edited volume, the first book to address the history of the WNIA, comprises essays by eight authors on the work of this important reform group.

This first full account of Amelia Stone Quinton (1833–1926) and the organization she cofounded, the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA), offers a nuanced insight into the intersection of gender, race, religion, and politics in our shared history. Author Valerie Sherer Mathes shows how Quinton, like Helen Hunt Jackson, was a true force for reform and progress who was nonetheless constrained by the assimilationist convictions of her time. The WNIA, which Quinton cofounded with Mary Lucinda Bonney in 1879, was organized expressly to press for a “more just, protective, and fostering Indian policy,” but also to promote the assimilation of the Indian through Christianization and “civilization.” Charismatic and indefatigable, Quinton garnered support for the WNIA’s work by creating strong working relationships with leaders of the main reform groups, successive commissioners of Indian affairs, secretaries of the interior, and prominent congressmen. The WNIA’s powerful network of friends formed a hybrid organization: religious in its missionary society origins but also political, using its powers to petition and actively address public opinion. Mathes follows the organization as it evolved from its initial focus on evangelizing Indian women—and promoting Victorian society’s ideals of “true womanhood”—through its return to its missionary roots, establishing over sixty missionary stations, supporting physicians and teachers, and building houses, chapels, schools, and hospitals. With reference to Quinton’s voluminous writings—including her letters, speeches, and newspaper articles—as well as to WNIA literature, Mathes draws a complex picture of an organization that at times ignored traditional Indian practices and denied individual agency, even as it provided dispossessed and impoverished people with health care and adequate housing. And at the center of this picture we find Quinton, a woman and reformer of her time.

"This is Francis Paul Prucha's magnum opus. It is a great work. . . . This study will . . . [be] a standard by which other studies of American Indian affairs will be judged. American Indian history needed this book, has long awaited it, and rejoices at its publication."-American Indian Culture and Research Journal. "The author's detailed analysis of two centuries of federal policy makes The Great Father indispensable reading for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of American Indian policy."-Journal of American History. "Written in an engaging fashion, encompassing an extraordinary range of material, devoting attention to themes as well as to chronological narration, and presenting a wealth of bibliographical information, it is an essential text for all students and scholars of American Indian history and anthropology."-Oregon Historical Quarterly."A monumental endeavor, rigorously researched and carefully written. . . . It will remain for decades as an indispensable reference tool and a compendium of knowledge pertaining to United States-Indian relations."-Western Historical Quarterly. "Perhaps the crowning achievement of Prucha's scholarly career."-Vine Deloria Jr., America."For many years to come, The Great Father will be the point of departure for all those embarking on research projects in the history of government Indian policy."-William T. Hagan, New Mexico Historical Review. "The appearance of this massive history of federal Indian policy is a triumph of historical research and scholarly publication."-Lawrence C. Kelly, Montana. "This is the most important history ever published about the formulation of federal Indian policies in the United States."-Herbert T. Hoover, Minnesota History. "This truly is the definitive work on the subject."-Ronald Rayman, Library Journal.The Great Father was widely praised when it appeared in two volumes in 1984 and was awarded the Ray Allen Billington Prize by the Organization of American Historians. This abridged one-volume edition follows the structure of the two-volume edition, eliminating only the footnotes and some of the detail. It is a comprehensive history of the relations between the U.S. government and the Indians. Covering the two centuries from the Revolutionary War to 1980, the book traces the development of American Indian policy and the growth of the bureaucracy created to implement that policy.Francis Paul Prucha, S.J., a leading authority on American Indian policy and the author of more than a dozen other books, is an emeritus professor of history at Marquette University.

In this book a distinguished authority in the field presents an account of United States Indian policy in the years 1865 to 1900, one of the most critical periods in Indian-white relations. Francis Paul Prucha discusses in detail the major developments of those years—Grant's Peace Policy, the reservation system, the agitation for transfer of Indian affairs to military control, the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act), Indian citizenship, Indian education, Civil Service reform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the dissolution of the Indian nations of the Indian Territory. American Indian Policy in Crisis focuses on the Christian humanitarians and philanthropists who were the ultimate driving force in the "reform" of Indian affairs. The programs of these men and women to individualize and Americanize the Indians and turn them into patriotic American citizens indistinguishable from their white neighbors are examined at length. The story is not a pretty one, for reformers' changes were often disastrous for the Indians, and yet it is a tremendously important work for understanding the Indians’ situation and their place in American society today. Prucha does not treat Indian policy in isolation but relates it to the dominant cultural and intellectual currents of the age. This book furnishes a view of the evangelical Christian influence on American policy and the reforming spirit it engendered, both of which have a significance extending beyond Indian policy alone. Thorough documentation and an excellent bibliography enhance its value.