Why Did She Change?

 Post by Doris McCraw

writing fiction as Angela Raines

The author in costume as Helen

We all know Helen, at the end of her life, devoted herself to the cause of the American Indian. Yet, how did she come to take on what she called 'a hobby'?

In her essay 'From Chicago to Ogden' published in 1878 in the book "Bits of Travel at Home",  she describes an Indian woman in non-flattering terms:

Toward night of this day, we saw our first Indian woman. We were told it was a woman. It was, apparently, made of old India-rubber, much soaked, seamed, and torn. It was thatched at top with a heavy roof of black hair, which hung down from a ridge-like line in the middle. It had sails of dingy-brown canvas, furled loosely around it, confined and caught here and there irregularly, fluttering and falling open wherever a rag of a different color could be shown underneath. It moved about on brown, bony, stalking members, for which no experience furnishes name; it mopped, and mowed, and gibbered, and reached out through the air with more brown, bony, clutching members; from which one shrank as from the claws of a bear. “Muckee! muckee!” it cried, opening wide a mouth toothless, but red. It was the most abject, loathly living thing I ever saw. I shut my eyes, and turned away.

How did Helen change her views? There has been much written about her hearing Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca tribe speak in Boston in 1879. But was that enough to cause her reversal? 

Over the last twenty years that Helen has been my 'companion' I have thought a lot about that question. I do believe Helen was empathic, that she could understand another's pain and joy. You cannot write as she did and not feel. But, was that enough to wrought such a change? 

Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca's
from Wikipedia

Although I don't have definitive proof, I believe that Helen's own childhood, one of being sent to friends and relatives when her mother wasn't feeling well, allowed her to sympathize with Standing Bear's desire to return to his land. He'd lost family much like she had. Standing Bear and his compatriots were also strikingly good-looking people. Although his plight was the talk of Boston when Helen had gone to see her publisher and visit with her in-laws from her first marriage, the vision and eloquence of the speakers I believe touched her as no other incident might have. When I look at Helen's past and her change of thought, it makes sense to me. 

Susette La Flesche Tibbles
image from Wikipedia
Suzette traveled with Standing Bear during his travels.

If you wish to read the complete essay, here is a link: http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/bits_of_travel_at_home/bits_of_travel_at_home.pdf

Post (c) 2021 Doris McCraw