Helen Hunt Jackson’s passionate crusade for Indian rights comes to life in this collection of more than 200 letters, most of which have never been published before. With Valerie Sherer Mathes’s helpful notes, the letters reveal the behind-the-scenes drama of Jackson’s involvement in Indian reform, which led her to write A Century of Dishonor and her protest novel, Ramona. Ralph Waldo Emerson described Jackson as the "greatest American woman poet." These stirring letters will intrigue anyone interested in Indian affairs, nineteenth-century women’s studies, or the social history of Victorian America, where Jackson made her mark despite the restrictions on women. Among her correspondents were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Moncure D. Conway, Henry B. Whipple, Henry L. Dawes, Henry Teller, Carl Schurz, and of course, commissioners of Indian affairs and such prominent editors as Whitelaw Reid, Charles Dudley Warner, and Richard Watson Gilder. The letters are presented in sections on the Ponca and Mission Indian causes, allowing readers to focus on the time period and Indian group of choice.

Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy is a detailed account of the last six years of Jackson's life (1879-1885), when she struggled to promote the rights of American Indians displaced and dispossessed by the U.S. government. Valerie Sherer Mathes places Jackson's work within the larger nineteenth-century Indian rights movement and details her crusade of traveling, writing, and lobbying government officials. Jackson's efforts culminated in the publication of A Century of Dishonor, an indictment of the government's Indian policy, and the novel Ramona, a sympathetic portrayal of the plight of California's Mission Indians. Her influence was felt immediately in the actions of subsequent reform workers in the Women's National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association, and the Lake Mohonk Conference.

Ramona, continuously in print for over a century, has become a cultural icon, but Jackson's prolific career left us with much more, notably her achievements as a prose writer and her work as an early activist on behalf of Native Americans. This long-overdue biography of Jackson's remarkable life and times reintroduces a distinguished figure in American letters and restores Helen Hunt Jackson to her rightful place in history.".

First published in 1984, Robert Utley's The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, is considered a classic for both students and scholars. For this revision, Utley includes scholarship and research that has become available in recent years. What they said about the first edition: "[The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890] provides an excellent synthesis of Indian-white relations in the trans-Mississippi West during the last half-century of the frontier period." - Journal of American History "The Indian Frontier of the American West combines good writing, solid research, and penetrating interpretations. The result is a fresh and welcome study that departs from the soldier-chases-Indian approach that is all too typical of other books on the topic." - Minnesota History "[Robert M. Utley] has carefully eschewed sensationalism and glib oversimplification in favor of critical appraisal, and his firm command of some of the best published research of others provides a solid foundation for his basic argument that Indian hostility in the half century following the Mexican War was directed less at the white man per se than at the hated reservation system itself." - Pacific Historical Review Choice Magazine Outstanding Selection

Journalist, novelist, and scholar Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) remains one of the most influential and popular writers on the struggles of American Indians. This volume collects for the first time seven of her most important articles, annotated and introduced by Jackson scholars Valerie Sherer Mathes and Phil Brigandi. Valuable as eyewitness accounts of Mission Indian life in Southern California in the 1880s, the articles also offer insight into Jackson’s career. The articles served as the basis for Jackson’s 1884 romantic novel, Ramona, still popular among Americans today. Jackson journeyed to Southern California in the 1880s to learn firsthand how Indians there lived. She found them in a demoralized state, beset by failed government policies and constantly threatened with losing their lands. The numerous articles and editorial responses she penned made her a leading voice in the fight for American Indian rights, a role she embraced wholeheartedly. As this collection also shows, Jackson’s fondness for Old California helped shape the region’s mythology and tourist culture. But her most important work was her influence in getting reservations set aside for the beleaguered Southern California tribes. Although her recommendations were not implemented until after her death, Helen Hunt Jackson’s stark and revealing portrait drew national attention to the effects of white encroachment on Indian lands and cultures in California and inspired generations of reformers who continued her legacy. This unprecedented collection offers fresh insight into the life and work of a well-known and influential writer and reformer.