HELEN MARIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON.
“THE FRIEND OF THE RED MAN.”
NE of the sights pointed out to a traveler in the West is Cheyenne Canyon, a wild and weird pass in the Rocky Mountains a short distance from Colorado Springs. Some years ago the writer, in company with a party of tourists, drove as far as a vehicle could pass up the mountain-road that wound along a little stream which came tumbling down the narrow ravine splitting the mountain in twain. Soon we were compelled to abandon the wagon, and on foot we climbed the rugged way, first on one side and then on the other of the rushing rivulet where the narrow path could find space enough to lay its crooked length along. Suddenly a little log-cabin in a clump of trees burst on our view. A boy with a Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder met us a few rods from the door and requested a fee of twenty-five cents each before permitting us to pass.
“What is it?” inquired one of the party pointing at the cabin. “This is the house Helen Hunt lived in and away above there is where she is buried,” answered the boy. We paid the fee, inspected the house, and then, over more rocky steeps, we climbed to the spot indicated near a falling cataract and stood beside a pile of stones thrown together by hundreds of tourists who had preceded us. It was the lonely grave of one of the great literary women of our age. We gathered some stones and added them to the pile and left her alone by the singing cataract, beneath the sighing branches of the firs and pines which stood like towering sentinels around her on Mount Jackson—for this peak was named in her honor. “What a monument!” said one, “more lasting than hammered bronze!” “But not moreso,” said another, “than the good she has done. Her influence will live while this mountain shall stand, unless another dark age should sweep literature out of existence.” “I wonder the Indians don’t convert this place into a shrine and come here to worship,” ventured a third person. “Her ‘Romona,’ written in their behalf, must have been produced under a divine inspiration. She was among all American writers their greatest benefactor.”
Helen Maria Fiske was born in Amherst, Mass., October 18, 1831. She was the daughter of Professor Nathan Fiske of Amherst College, and was educated at [♦]Ipswich (Mass.) Female Seminary. In 1852 she married Captain Edward B. Hunt of the U. S. Navy, and lived with him at various posts until 1863, when he died. After this she removed to Newport, R. I., with her children, but one by one they died, until 1872 she was left alone and desolate. In her girlhood she had contributed some verses to a Boston paper which were printed. She wrote nothing more until two years after the death of her husband, when she sent a number of poems to New York papers which were signed H. H. and they attracted wide and favorable criticism. These poems were collected and published under the title of “Verses from H. H.” (1870). After the death of her children she decided to devote herself to literature, and from that time to the close of her life—twelve years later—her books came in rapid succession and she gained wide distinction as a writer of prose and verse. Both her poetry and prose works are characterized by deep thoughtfulness and a rare grace and beauty of diction.
[♦] ‘Ipswick’ replaced with ‘Ipswich’
In 1873 Mrs. Hunt removed to Colorado for the benefit of her health, and in 1875 became the wife of Wm. S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado Springs; and it was in this beautiful little city, nestling at the foot of Pike’s Peak, with the perpetual snow on its summit always in sight, that she made her home for the remainder of her life, though she spent considerable time in traveling in New Mexico, California and the Eastern States gathering material for her books.
Briefly catalogued, the works of Helen Hunt Jackson are: “Verses by H. H.” (1870); “Bits of Travel” (1873); “Bits of Talk About Home Matters” (1873); “Sonnets and Lyrics” (1876); “Mercy Philbrick’s Choice” (1876); “Hettie’s Strange History” (1877); “A Century of Dishonor” (1881); “Romona” (1884).
Besides the above, Mrs. Jackson wrote several juvenile books and two novels in the “No Name” series; and that powerful series of stories, published under the pen-name of “Saxe Holme,” has also been attributed to her, although there is no absolute proof that she wrote them. “A Century of Dishonor” made its author more famous than anything she produced up to that time, but critics now generally agree that “Romona,” her last book, is her most powerful work, both as a novel and in its beneficent influence. It was the result of a most profound and exhaustive study of the Indian problem, to which she devoted the last and best years of her life. It was her most conscientious and sympathetic work. It was through Helen Hunt Jackson’s influence that the government instituted important reforms in the treatment of the red men.