Divinely Guided: The California Work of the Women's National Indian Association

Founded in Philadelphia in 1879, the Women's National Indian Association devoted seventy years to working among Native women. Bucking society's narrow sense of women's appropriate sphere, WNIA members across the U.S. built Indian homes, missionary cottages, schools, and chapels; supported government teachers and field matrons; and funded physicians--all with a strong dose of Christianity. Though goals of forced assimilation were as unrealistic as they were unsuccessful, WNIA's contributions to the welfare of Native women were hardly insignificant, especially in California. In the north, they worked at the Round Valley and Hoopa Reservations and realized their most unusual undertaking--the funding of the Greenville Indian Industrial School. In the south they worked with the Native mission populations, where cultural similarities and greater proximity fostered unprecedented cooperation among WNIA workers. Amelia Stone Quinton, longtime WNIA president and editor of The Indian's Friend, provides a consistent narrative thread, as does Helen Hunt Jackson in the chapters on Southern California. Even after Jackson's death, her spiritual presence and the impact of her novel Ramona guided WNIA membership. Mathes's recovery of WNIA history, supported by a wealth of documentation, reveals much about an era's sense of sphere, service, and sisterhood. Also 04 Activeable in cloth, 978-0-89672-726-7, $65.00

Author: Valerie Sherer Mathes
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Published: 04/15/2012
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780896727458

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2012

About the Author
Valerie Sherer Mathes teaches history at City College of San Francisco. She is also the author of Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy, coauthor (with Richard Lowitt) of The Standing Bear Controversy: Prelude to Indian Reform, and editor of The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson.