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Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child
of a family of four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson
(Onwanonsyshon), Head Chief of the Six Nations Indians,
and his wife, Emily S. Howells. The latter was of English
parentage, her birthplace being Bristol, but the land
of her adoption was Canada.
Chief Johnson was of the renowned
Mohawk tribe, being a scion of one of the fifty noble
families which composed the historical confederation
founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago,
and known at that period as the Brotherhood of Five
Nations, but which was afterwards named the Iroquois
by the early French missionaries and explorers. For
their loyalty to the British Crown they were granted
the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River in the
County of Brant, Ontario, on which the tribes still
live.
It was upon this Reserve, on
her father’s estate, “Chiefswood,”
that Pauline Johnson was born. The loyalty of her ancestors
breathes in her prose, as well as in her poetic writings.
Her education was neither extensive
nor elaborate. It embraced neither high school nor college.
A nursery governess for two years at home, three years
at an Indian day-school half a mile from her home, and
two years in the Central school of the city of Brantford,
was the extent of her educational training. But, besides
this, she acquired a wide general knowledge, having
been through childhood and early girlhood a great reader,
especially of poetry. Before she was twelve years old
she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare,
and such books as Addison’s “Spectator,”
Foster’s Essays, and Owen Meredith’s writings.
The first periodicals to accept
her poems and place them before the public were “Gems
of Poetry,” a small magazine published in New
York, and “The Week,” established by the
late Prof. Goldwin Smith, of Toronto, the New York “Independent,”
and Toronto “Saturday Night.” Since then
she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,
both on this continent and England.
Her writings having brought
her into notice, the next step in Miss Johnson’s
career was her appearance on the public platform as
a reciter of her own poems. For this she had a natural
talent, and in the exercise of it she soon developed
a marked ability, joined with a personal magnetism that
was destined to make her a favourite with audiences
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Her friend, Mr. Frank
Yeigh, of Toronto, provided for a series of recitals
having that scope, with the object of enabling her to
go to England to arrange for the publication of her
[Page ix] poems. Within two years this
aim was accomplished, her book of poems, “The
White Wampum,” being published by John Lane, of
the Bodley Head. She took with her numerous letters
of introduction, including one from the Governor-General,
the Earl of Aberdeen, and she soon gained both social
and literary standing. Her book was received with much
favour, both by reviewers and the public. After giving
many recitals in fashionable drawing-rooms, she returned
to Canada, and made her first tour to the Pacific Coast,
giving recitals at all the cities and towns en route.
Since then she has crossed the Rocky Mountains no fewer
than nineteen times.
Miss Johnson’s pen had
not been idle, and in 1903 the Geo. N. Morang Co., of
Toronto, published her second book of poems, entitled
“Canadian Born,” which was also well received.
After a number of recitals,
which included Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces,
she went to England again in 1906 and made her first
appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished
patronage of Lord and Lady Strathcona. In the following
year she again visited London, returning by way of the
United States, where she gave many recitals. After another
tour of Canada she decided to give up public work, to
make Vancouver, B.C., her home, and to devote herself
to literary work.
Only a woman of remarkable powers
or endurance could have borne up under the hardships
necessarily encountered in traveling through North-western
Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and shortly
after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship
she had endured began to tell on her, and her health
completely broke down. For almost a year she has been
an invalid, and, as she is unable to attend to the business
herself, a trust has been formed by some of the leading
citizens of her adopted city for the purpose of collecting
and publishing, for her benefit, her later works. Among
these are the beautiful Indian Legends contained in
this volume, which she has been at great pains to collect,
and a series of boys’ stories, which have been
exceedingly well received by magazine readers.
During the sixteen years Miss
Johnson was traveling she had many varied and interesting
experiences. She traveled the old Battleford trail before
the railroad went through, and across the Boundary country
in British Columbia in the romantic days of the early
pioneers. Once she took an eight hundred and fifty mile
drive up the Cariboo trail to the gold-fields. She has
always been an ardent canoeist, and has run many strange
rivers, crossed many a lonely lake, and camped in many
an unfrequented place. These venturesome trips she made
more from her inherent love of Nature and adventure
than from any necessity of her profession. [Page
x]
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