ramona

Ramona
Cover to 1893 edition
Author(s)	Helen Hunt Jackson
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Little, Brown
Publication date	1884
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	335 (2007 ed.)
ISBN	ISBN 0812973518 (modern)
OCLC Number	56686628

Ramona is a 1884 United States historical novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson. It is the story of a Scots-Native American orphan girl in Southern California, who suffers racial discrimination and hardship. Originally serialized in the Christian Union on a weekly basis,^[1] the novel became immensely popular. It has had more than 300 printings,^[2] been made into four film versions. It has been performed annually as an outdoor play since 1923.

The novel's influence on the culture and image of Southern California was considerable. Its sentimental portrayal of Mexican colonial life gave the region a unique cultural identity; as its publication coincided with the arrival of railroad lines to the region, countless tourists visited who wanted to see the locations in the novel.

Plot summary

In Southern California, shortly after the Mexican-American War, a Scots-Native American orphan girl, Ramona, is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, the sister of Ramona's deceased foster mother. Señora Moreno has raised Ramona as part of the family, giving her every luxury, but only because Ramona's foster mother had requested it as her dying wish. Because of Ramona's Native American heritage, Moreno does not love her. That love is reserved for her only child, Felipe Moreno, whom she adores. Señora Moreno still considers herself a Mexican, although California has been taken over by the United States. She hates the Americans, who have cut up her huge rancho after disputing her claim to it.

Señora Moreno delays the sheep shearing, a major event on the rancho, awaiting the arrival of a group of Indians from Temecula whom she always hires for that work; she is also awaiting a priest, Father Salvierderra, from Santa Barbara. She arranges for the priest so that the Indian workers can have an opportunity to make their confessions and receive mass in her chapel. Ramona falls in love with a young Indian sheepherder, Alessandro, the son of the head of the tribe, Pablo Assis. Señora Moreno is outraged, because although Ramona is half-Indian, the Señora does not want her ward to marry an Indian. Ramona realizes that Señora Moreno has never loved her and, to the old woman's chagrin, she and Alessandro elope.

Alessandro and Ramona have a daughter, and travel around Southern California trying to find a place to settle. Alessandro's tribe was driven off their land, marking the beginning of white settlement in California. They endure misery and hardship, for the Americans who buy their land also demand their houses and their farm tools. They are driven off from several homesteads, due to the greed of the Americans, and cannot find a permanent community unthreatened by the encroachment of whites. They finally move up into the San Bernardino Mountains. Alessandro slowly loses his mind, for his pride and innocence cannot support the constant humiliation. He loves Ramona fiercely, and mentally tortures himself for having taken her away from relative comfort and stability in return for "bootless" wandering. Their daughter "Eyes of the Sky" dies because a white doctor would not go to their homestead to save her. They have another daughter, but Alessandro still suffers. One day he rides off with the horse of an American, who follows him and shoots him, although he knew that Alessandro was mentally unbalanced.

Ramona was missing from the rancho for two years. Felipe finds Ramona and they marry; he has always loved her and finds her more beautiful than ever. Felipe had considered Alessandro a friend, and to both him and Ramona the idea of staying in California with Americans is insupportable. They leave to live in Mexico, and have many children. Though Ramona considers her ability to love passionately "dead", she is very good to Felipe, who adores her. The most beautiful of all their children is Ramona, Alessandro's daughter.

Characters

• Ramona, Native American-Scots orphan girl
• Señora Moreno, sister of Ramona's dead foster mother
• Felipe Moreno, Señora Moreno's only child
• Alessandro, a young Native American sheepherder
• Father Salvierderra, a Catholic priest
• Pablo Assis, a tribal chief

Major themes

Jackson wrote Ramona three years after A Century of Dishonor, her examination of the mistreatment of Native Americans in the United States. By following that history with a novel, she sought to depict the Indian experience "in a way to move people's hearts."^[3] 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 slaves.^[4] Her success in this effort was limited, however.

Jackson intended Ramona to appeal directly to the reader's emotions. The novel's political criticism was clear, but its most potent message was a romantic vision of early California. Jackson had become enamored of the Spanish missions in California, which she romanticized. This rosy, but fictional, vision of Franciscan churchmen, señoritas and caballeros permeated the novel and captured the imaginations of readers by portraying the Americans as villains and the Native Americans as "noble savages".^[5]

Many Americans had not thought favorably of the Hispanic occupants of California at the time of their own arrival. They looked with a disparaging eye on what they saw as a decadent lifestyle of leisure and recreation among a people with huge tracts of land, prevailing mild weather and unusually fertile soil, who relied heavily on Native American labor. They favored the Protestant work ethic. This view was not universal, however, and was swept away by Jackson's escapist fantasy. Readers accepted the sentimentalized Spanish Californio aristocracy that was portrayed and the Ramona myth was born.^[6]

Reception

Ramona was immensely popular almost immediately upon its release, with over 15,000 copies sold in the ten months before Jackson's death in 1885.^[7] 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, one of two most ethical novels of the 19th century.^[8] Sixty years after its publication, 600,000 copies had been sold. There have been over 300 reissues to date and the book has never been out of print.^[7]

Another reason for the novel's popularity may have been subtle racism. Ramona was part Indian, and she was described as beautiful, with black hair and blue eyes. Errol Wayne Stevens of the California Historical Society notes a number of contemporary reviews in which writers dismissed the idea that Ramona could have come from a race which they characterized as "dull, heavy and unimpressionable" and "lazy, cruel, cowardly, and covetous."^[9]

Because the general public was more attached to the romanticized vision of Southern California, Jackson was disappointed that she was unable to raise the profile of Indian issues. The historian Antoinette May argued in her book The Annotated Ramona that the novel was partially responsible for the Dawes Act being passed in 1887. This was the first American law to address Indian land rights.^[8]

Cultural influence

The runaway popularity of the novel inspired people to name schools, streets, freeways (the San Bernardino Freeway originally named the Ramona Freeway) and even towns (Ramona, California) after the novel's heroine. Because of the romanticized myth, there was a great increase in tourism, with many people wanting to see the locations that appeared in the story. This coincided with the opening of Southern Pacific Railroad's Southern California rail lines and created a tourism boom.^[1]

Rancho Camulos

As a result, locations all over Southern California tried to emphasize their Ramona connections. Jackson had died without specifying the locations on which her story was based. Two places had the strongest claim to being the inspiration: Rancho Camulos, near Piru, and Rancho Guajome in Vista, both of which Jackson had visited before writing her novel.^[1]

Camulos became the most accepted "Home of Ramona" due to several factors. The location of Moreno Ranch is roughly the same as the location of Camulos. Influential writers such as George Wharton James and Charles Fletcher Lummis avowed that it was so. Furthermore, Southern Pacific Railroad's main Ventura County line opened in 1887 and stopped right at Camulos and with the company engaged in a rate war,^[10] getting to Camulos was relatively easy. Finally, the Del Valle family of Camulos welcomed tourists and eagerly marketed the association, labeling their oranges and wine as "The Home of Ramona" brand.

In contrast, Guajome did not publicly become associated with Ramona until an 1894 article in Rural Californian made the claim. However, as the house was nearly four miles (6 km) away from the nearest Santa Fe Railroad station, getting there was not so easy. Additionally, the Couts family, who owned the property, were not eager to have flocks of tourists on the grounds, possibly due to a falling out between Jackson and Sra. Couts.^[1]

Wishing well, Ramona's Marriage Place

A third location, the Estudillo House in Old Town San Diego, declared itself to be "Ramona's Marriage Place" due to brief descriptions of Ramona's having been married in San Diego. Despite there being no record of Jackson's having visited there, it too became a popular tourist destination and remained so long after the novel's publication. The Estudillo House was also unique in marketing solely in terms of Ramona-related tourism. The caretaker sold pieces of the house to tourists, which hastened its deterioration. In 1907, the new owner John D. Spreckels remodeled the house to more closely match descriptions in the novel. When the reconstruction was completed in 1910, the building reopened as a full-fledged Ramona tourist attraction.^[1] Estudillo House's application for National Historic Landmark status was entitled "Casa Estudillo/Ramona's Marriage Place".^[2]

Other notable Ramona landmarks included "Ramona's Birthplace", a small adobe near Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, and the grave of Ramona Lubo on the Cahuilla Indian reservation. Lubo called herself the "real Ramona," and her life bore some resemblance to that of the fictional Ramona. Nevertheless, a Ramona monument was not erected on the site until 1938, sixteen years after Lubo's death.^[1] The Ramona Pageant, an outdoor staging of the novel, started in 1923 in Hemet and has been held every year since.

Most historians today believe that the fictional Moreno Ranch is an amalgamation of various locations and was not intended to represent a single place.^[1] As Carey McWilliams described in his book Southern California Country:

Picture postcards, by the tens of thousands, were published showing "the schools attended by Ramona," "the original of Ramona," "the place where Ramona was married," and various shots of the "Ramona Country." [...] It was not long before the scenic postcards depicting the Ramona Country had come to embrace all of Southern California.^[11]

Not only that, but because of the explosive popularity, fact and fiction began to merge in the public eye. 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.^[8]

Crucially, the novel gave Southern California and the whole of the Southwest a unique cultural identity. The architecture of the missions had recently gained national exposure and local restoration projects were just beginning. Railroad lines to Southern California were just opening and combined with the emotions stirred by the novel, it was a perfect storm of circumstances to suddenly thrust the region into the national spotlight.^[1] One result from this was the rapid popularity of Mission Revival Style architecture from about 1890 to 1915, which is still evident.

Adaptations

Ramona has been adapted several times for other media:

• Ramona (1910 film), a 17-minute short directed by D. W. Griffith
• Ramona (1916 film), directed by Donald Crisp
• Ramona (1928 film), directed by Edwin Carewe, featuring Dolores del Río and Warner Baxter
• Ramona (1936 film), directed by Henry King, featuring Loretta Young and Don Ameche
• Ramona (2000 TV series), a Mexican telenovela
• The Ramona Pageant, an annual outdoor play performed annually since 1923 in Hemet, California. The Ramona Pageant is the largest and longest running outdoor play in the United States and it is the official state play of the State of California.

See also

Novels portal

• Spanish missions in California

Notes

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article Ramona.

• Ramona at Project Gutenberg
• Ramona, available at Google Books
• Davis, Carlyle Channing; Alderson, William A. (1914). The True Story of "Ramona": Its facts and fictions, inspiration, and purpose. Dodge Publishing Co.. http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/true/index.html.