Massachusetts Indian Association. Cambridge Branch

The Massachusetts Indian Association was established in 1883, as an auxiliary of the Women's National Indian Association, founded four years earlier by Mary Bonney and Amelia Quinton. The national organization ultimately numbered sixty branches in twenty-seven states. The Cambridge Branch of the Massachusetts Indian Association was established on 21 Jan. 1886. According to its constitution, the objects of the organization were "to strengthen by every means in its power such a Christian public sentiment as shall aid our government in abolishing all oppression of Indians within our national limits, and in granting to them the same protection of law that other races enjoy among us", and secondly, "to aid in the educational and mission work pursued by the Massachusetts Indian Association." By 1905, the Cambridge Branch numbered 207 members. As was characteristic of similar groups, the organization was virtually entirely female at all levels (including donors). Also typical of such groups, the Cambridge membership was socially prominent, and many were wives of Harvard faculty. The work of the parent organization still continues in the form of the Massachusetts Indian Association Scholarship Fund, which makes grants twice yearly to tribal Indians for undergraduate or graduate study.