The Women’s National Indian Association, formed in response to the chronic conflict and corruption that plagued relations between American Indians and the U.S. government, has been all but forgotten since it was disbanded in 1951. 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. The WNIA was formed in 1879 in reaction to the prospect of opening Oklahoma Indian Territory to white settlement. A powerful network of upper- and middle-class friends and associates, the group soon expanded its mission beyond prayer and philanthropy as the women participated in political protest and organized successful petition drives that focused on securing civil and political rights for American Indians. In addition to discussing the association’s history, the contributors to this book evaluate its legacies, both in the lives of Indian families and in the evolution of federal Indian policy. Their work reveals the complicated regional variations in reform and the complex nature of Anglo women’s relationships with indigenous people.

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.