SOURCE: “Helen Hunt Jackson: Docudramatist of The American Indian,” in The Markham Review, Vol. 10, Fall, 1980, pp. 15-19.

In the following essay, Marsden presents a brief overview of Jackson's life and works and comments that it wasn’t until Jackson became involved with Native American affairs that her remarkable writing abilities found an adequate outlet.

To The Memory of Helen Hunt Jackson: The Most Brilliant, Impetuous and Thoroughly Individual Woman of American Literature

What songs found voice upon those lips,           What magic dwelt within the pen, Whose music into silence slips,           Whose spell lives not again! 

For her the clamorous to-day           The dreamful yesterday became; The brands upon dead hearths that lay           Leaped into living flame. 

Clear ring the silvery Mission bells           Their calls to vesper and to mass; O’er the vineyard slopes, thro’ fruited dells,           The long processions pass. 

The pale Franciscan lifts in air           The cross...