Ramona is an 1884 American novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson. Set in Southern California after the Mexican–American War and annexation of the territory by the United States, Ramona explores the life of a mixed-race Scottish–Native American orphan girl. The story was inspired by the marriage of Hugo Reid and Victoria Reid.
Originally serialized weekly in the Christian Union, the novel became immensely popular. It has had more than 300 printings, and has been adapted five times as a film. A play adaptation has been performed annually outdoors since 1923. She wanted to arouse public opinion and concern for the betterment of their plight, much as Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for enslaved African Americans. Her success in this effort was limited.
Jackson intended Ramona to appeal directly to the reader's emotions. The novel's political criticism was clear, but most readers were moved by its romantic vision of colonial California under Mexican rule. Jackson had become enamored of the Spanish missions in California, which she romanticized. The story's fictional vision of Franciscan churchmen, señoritas and caballeros permeated the novel and captured the imaginations of readers. Her novel characterized the Americans as villains and the Native Americans as "noble savages".
Many American migrants to California were biased against the Mexicans who lived there. The new settlers from northern and midwestern states disparaged what they considered a decadent culture of leisure and recreation among the elite Mexicans, who held huge tracts of land, lived in a region with prevailing mild weather and unusually fertile soil, and relied heavily on Native American laborers. The new settlers favored the Protestant work ethic. This view was not universal, however.
Many American settlers and readers in other regions were taken by Jackson's portrayal of the California-Mexican society. Readers accepted the Californio aristocracy as portrayed and the Ramona myth was born.
Reception
Ramona was immensely popular almost immediately upon its publication in 1884, with more than 15,000 copies sold in the ten months before Jackson's death in 1885. One year after her death, the North American Review called it "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman" and named it, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, as one of two most ethical novels of the 19th century. By sixty years after its publication, 600,000 copies had been sold. There have been more than 300 reissues to date and the book has never been out of print.
Carobeth Laird, in her 1975 autobiography, Encounter with an Angry God (p. 176), describes the reaction of her Chemehuevi Indian husband to the novel: "... when I tried to read him Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, he grew restless, walked up and down, and finally said that the white woman knew nothing about Indians."
Jackson was disappointed that she was unable to raise public concerns about the struggles of Indians in California, as readers were attracted to the romantic vision of Californio society. Historian Antoinette May argues in her book The Annotated Ramona (1989) that the popularity of the novel contributed to Congress passing the Dawes Act in 1887. <!-- How? to fix Indian problems? -->This was the first American law to address Indian land rights, but it was aimed at the assimilation of Indian families. It forced the breakup of communal lands and the redistribution of allotted acres to individual households. The government defined as "surplus land" any reservation territory remaining, and allowed its sale to non-Native persons. the trip to Camulos became relatively easy and affordable for visitors. Finally, the Del Valle family of Camulos welcomed tourists: they exploited the association in marketing their products, labeling their oranges and wine as "The Home of Ramona" brand.
In contrast, Guajome did not publicly become associated with Ramona until a 1894 article in Rural Californian made the claim. However, as the house was nearly four miles (6 km) from the nearest Santa Fe Railroad station, getting there was not so easy. Additionally, the Couts family, who owned the property, was not eager to have flocks of tourists on the grounds, possibly due to a falling out between author Jackson and Senora Couts. Her life bore some resemblance to that of the fictional Ramona. Sixteen years after Lubo's death, in 1938, local people erected a "Ramona monument" at her gravesite.
Because of the novel's extraordinary popularity, public perception merged fact and fiction. California historian Walton Bean wrote:
:These legends became so ingrained in the culture of Southern California that they were often mistaken for realities. In later years many who visited "Ramona's birthplace" in San Diego or the annual "Ramona Pageant" at Hemet (eighty miles north of San Diego) were surprised and disappointed if they chanced to learn that Ramona was a (fictional) novel rather than a biography.