Amelia Stone Quinton and the Women's National Indian Association

This first full account of Amelia Stone Quinton (18331926) and the organization she cofounded, the Womens National Indian Association (WNIA), offers a nuanced insight into the intersection of gender, race, religion, and politics in our shared history. Author Valerie Sherer Mathes shows how Quinton, like Helen Hunt Jackson, was a true force for reform and progress who was nonetheless constrained by the assimilationist convictions of her time. The WNIA, which Quinton cofounded with Mary Lucinda Bonney in 1879, was organized expressly to press for a more just, protective, and fostering Indian policy, but also to promote the assimilation of the Indian through Christianization and civilization. Charismatic and indefatigable, Quinton garnered support for the WNIAs work by creating strong working relationships with leaders of the main reform groups, successive commissioners of Indian affairs, secretaries of the interior, and prominent congressmen. The WNIAs powerful network of friends formed a hybrid organization: religious in its missionary society origins but also political, using its powers to petition and actively address public opinion. Mathes follows the organization as it evolved from its initial focus on evangelizing Indian womenand promoting Victorian societys ideals of true womanhoodthrough its return to its missionary roots, establishing over sixty missionary stations, supporting physicians and teachers, and building houses, chapels, schools, and hospitals. With reference to Quintons voluminous writingsincluding her letters, speeches, and newspaper articlesas well as to WNIA literature, Mathes draws a complex picture of an organization that at times ignored traditional Indian practices and denied individual agency, even as it provided dispossessed and impoverished people with health care and adequate housing. And at the center of this picture we find Quinton, a woman and reformer of her time.