According to the National Park Service, she attended a Standing Bear lecture in Boston in 1879 and was deeply affected by what she heard about the Ponca removal.

The encounter helped redirect her attention toward the history of United States policy toward Native peoples.

Jackson began researching treaty violations, removals, and federal conduct.

In 1881 she published A Century of Dishonor, a sweeping indictment of the United States’ treatment of Native nations.

Her work had its own nineteenth-century assumptions and should not be treated as the final word on Native history.

But at the time, it became one of the most prominent reform texts challenging federal Indian policy.