Ramona

Summary

Ramona is a novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, serialized in the Christian Union and published as a book by Roberts Brothers in 1884. Jackson wrote it after years of campaigning for Native American rights, and she hoped it would move readers to sympathy for the Indians of Southern California much as Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for enslaved people. The story is set in the years after the Mexican-American War, when California has passed to the United States. On the rancho of the proud Señora Moreno lives Ramona, a beautiful foster daughter of mixed Scottish and Native American parentage, whom the Señora raises out of duty but never loves. The Señora's gentle son Felipe loves Ramona. At sheep-shearing time Alessandro, a young Luiseño man from the village of Temecula and son of its leader, comes to the rancho with the shearing band, and he and Ramona fall in love. When the Señora forbids the marriage and reveals Ramona's Indian ancestry, Ramona elopes with Alessandro. They find Temecula destroyed, its people evicted by American settlers who have bought the land. The couple settle at San Pasquale and later in the San Jacinto valley and the mountains, but each time American settlers or land claims drive them on. Their first child dies after the Indian Agency doctor refuses to make the journey to see her. Alessandro, worn down by grief and loss, suffers spells of mental confusion, and in one of them he rides off on a settler's horse; the owner, Jim Farrar, shoots him dead and is acquitted. Ramona, ill and grieving, is cared for by a kindly Tennessee woman, Aunt Ri Hyer. Felipe, who has searched for her since his mother's death, finds her and brings her home. They later marry and move to Mexico. The novel was enormously popular. Its romantic picture of the old California ranchos and missions helped create a tourist industry in Southern California, while its account of Native families driven from their land reached a wide audience.

Top Lessons

• Land and eviction

  Jackson shows how legal title, purchase and force removed Native communities from lands they had long farmed. Students can connect the novel to the history of land claims in California.

• Fiction as advocacy

  Jackson wrote the novel to win sympathy for a cause. Readers can consider how a love story carries a political message.

• Prejudice and identity

  The Señora's treatment of Ramona changes once her ancestry is known. The novel asks how prejudice shapes family and community.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The Indian Agency doctor refuses to travel to treat Ramona and Alessandro's sick baby, who dies, an episode Jackson uses to show federal neglect of Native health; Alessandro's grief and losses end in spells of mental confusion that lead to his death. Felipe's fever and recovery early in the novel are a lighter strand.

• Chapter XXIII

  The Agency doctor refuses to make the journey, and the baby dies.

• Chapter XXIV

  Alessandro's mind gives way before he is shot.

• Chapter XXII

  Aunt Ri describes the government doctor for Indians, and the family seek medicine at the Agency.