Nineteenth Century Women and Reform: The Women's National Indian Association

Abstract

N A CRISP NOVEMBER DAY in 1888, Mrs. E H. Taylor welcomed seventy-five delegates from fourteen different states to the Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Not long ago, women felt they could do almost nothing to reform public abuses, and to redress public wrongs, she informed her audience. Now we know that with united hearts, and God on our side, we can do effective work everywhere for the cause of righteousness ....' In her address, Mrs. Taylor eloquently summed up women's role in humanitarian reform to the middle and upper class women gathered before her. They were members of the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA) which had already actively labored in behalf of numerous Indian tribes for almost ten years and would continue for another six decades. The organization began in April, 1879 when Mary Lucinda Bonney stood before the monthly meeting of the Women's Home Mission Circle of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia and reported the disturbing news that railroads and settlers were clamoring to enter Indian Territory in direct violation of federal treaties. Bonney believed that such a wrong..,. would greatly hinder the work of Christianizing the Indians, and would also be a vast moral evil to [the] nation.2 She sucessfully recruited friends and the WNIA was launched.