Helen Fiske was born October 18th, 1830 and died August 12th, 1885. Both of her parents - her father, an Amherst professor, minister, and author; and mother, a writer - passed away while she was a teenager enrolled in the prestigious Ipswich Female Seminary in Massachusetts. She went on to get married (changing her name to Helen Hunt) and have two kids, but unfortunately her husband and children passed away between the years 1854 and 65. Hunt found herself alone at the end of the Civil War, and moved to Rhode Island. There she restored and created friendships with her mentor figure Thomas Wentworth Higginson and other influential American female writer Emily Dickinson, an old neighbor from school, off of whom Hunt would later base a novel character. Seven years later, she moved to California. During a trip to Colorado Springs a few years later, she met her second husband and became Helen Hunt Jackson. They married in 1875.
In 1879, Jackson attended a life-changing lecture by Chief Standing Bear about the tragedy of the Ponca Indians. Upon learning that the national government had forced them out of their Nebraska homes, Jackson began working as an advocate and activist for Native Americans.
