{"id":10941,"date":"2016-08-08T13:08:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T19:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=10941"},"modified":"2018-07-20T15:07:34","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T21:07:34","slug":"the-hunt-stops-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2016\/08\/the-hunt-stops-here\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hunt Stops Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tutt Library Stores a Very Special Collection Behind Its Doors<\/h2>\n

Soon Colorado College\u2019s Tutt Library may be known across the country, perhaps even the world, for its groundbreaking environmental capabilities. But when it comes to its basic function as a facility for study and knowledge, it\u2019s already known across the world for a very special reason: holding the most complete collection of letters, diaries, and personal papers from author\/activist Helen Hunt Jackson. Add to that \u201cjust about every edition of \u2018Ramona\u2019 that\u2019s ever been published \u2014 and it\u2019s been continually in print since 1884 to today,\u201d says Special Collections Curator and Archivist Jessy Randall, and it\u2019s understandable why researchers from across the globe make time to trek to Colorado College.<\/p>\n

Jackson moved to Colorado Springs in 1873 for her health. Her first husband, U.S. Army Captain Edward Bissell Hunt, and their two sons had died, and, while in Colorado Springs, she met, and eventually married William S. Jackson. (Randall notes that while today she is often known as Helen Hunt Jackson, she never would have referred to herself that way: \u201cThat\u2019s two married names. She would have been either Helen Hunt or Helen Jackson.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Though Jackson wrote many books, collections of poems, and essays, 1884\u2019s \u201cRamona\u201d is her main claim to fame nowadays. Set in Southern California after the Mexican-American War, the novel tells\u2028the story of a Scots-Native American orphan girl and the discrimination she faces due to her mixed-race background.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cWhen Jackson was alive, and in the decades after her death, it was a hugely popular book,\u201d Randall says. \u201cAt one point it was being advertised as \u2018Everyone has read \u201cRamona.\u201d \u2019 I can\u2019t even think of a book today that would be like that. \u2026 I\u2019ve asked CC students, \u2018Is there a book every single person in the room\u2028has read?\u2019 \u2018Harry Potter\u2019 is the closest we get.\u201d<\/p>\n

What made it that way?<\/p>\n

At the time of the book\u2019s publication, it was political criticism of the mistreatment of Native Americans, but, as Randall explains, it was also just \u201can entertaining yarn, a great love story and all.\u201d And Jackson was a commercial writer who, in Randall\u2019s opinion, was also a very good self-saleswoman who knew how to do her own PR campaigning. \u201cShe talked about writing the book in a way that made it sound very enticing. She said she sat down and she just pretty much wrote the whole book. It flowed out of her pen with hardly any editing, and there it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, if you look at the original handwritten manuscript that now resides at CC, it\u2019s easy to see that wasn\u2019t the case. There are lots of cross-outs, changes, and edits. She even changed the title from \u201cIn the Name of the Law,\u201d to the simpler (and catchier) \u201cRamona.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason that made readers pick it up at the time, today it\u2019s a piece of history that continues to be of scholarly interest.<\/p>\n

Professor of History Doug Monroy says what\u2019s important to know about Jackson was that she was somebody who, in her time, was a true Native American activist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe forget that she was a real radical, if you will, in the sense that she was the second in command of Indian Affairs \u2014 [Special Commissioner] for Indian Affairs in Southern California. Before \u2018Ramona,\u2019 she wrote \u2018A Century of Dishonor\u2019 to expose the evils that white Americans had perpetrated on natives. \u2028She put one copy on every congressperson\u2019s desk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRamona,\u201d he adds, in a way came out of her frustration that nobody paid attention to \u201cA Century of Dishonor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe specifically said when she wrote it that she was trying to do for American Indians what Harriet Beecher Stowe had done for the anti-slavery cause with \u2018Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin,\u2019 \u201d Randall says.<\/p>\n

Some of the researchers who come to CC to study the Jackson collection are interested in Jackson\u2019s activism, but Randall says everyone who comes to dig through the papers comes with a different project in mind. Some choose to look into her connections to other women writers of the time, including Emily Dickinson and Grace Greenwood. Some attempt to suss out the locations that Jackson may have based \u201cRamona\u2019s\u201d setting on. Randall\u2019s own interest in Jackson focuses on book history and how \u201cRamona\u201d has been marketed over time based on the cover images and copy used.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it\u2019s a serious book. Sometimes it\u2019s a super scandalous, mixed-race, fiery, blood passion [novel]. \u2026 There are copies of it that could be Harlequins [romance novels] and then others are clearly scholarly.\u201d She laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s the same book inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever an outside researcher or student studying Jackson for a class needs, they\u2019ve got\u2028a good chance of finding it at CC among what Randall estimates is about 12 linear feet of papers \u2014 all of which is digitized and available online for those who can\u2019t make it to Tutt.<\/p>\n

The only thing they may not find is good old-fashioned gossip. \u201cHer diaries, unfortunately,\u201d says Randall, \u201care not very juicy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tutt Library stores a very special collection of Helen Hunt Jackson\u2019s books, letters, diaries, and personal papers behind its doors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-10941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-august-2016","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2016\/08\/BUL-AUG16-PG15-RamonaDougandJessy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10941"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13200,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10941\/revisions\/13200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}