E. Pauline Johnson, also known as Tekahionwake, is remarkable as one of a very few early North American Indigenous poets and fiction writers. Most Indigenous writers of her time were men educated for the ministry who published religious, anthropological, autobiographical, political, and historical works, rather than poetry and fiction. More extraordinary still, she became both a canonical poet and a literary celebrity, performing on stage for fifteen years across Canada, in the US, and in London. Johnson is now seen as a central figure in the intellectual history of Canada and the United States, and as an important historical example of Indigenous feminism. This edition collects a diverse range of Johnson’s writings on what was then called “the Indian question” and on the question of her own complex Indigenous identity.
Six thematic sections gather Johnson’s poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and a rich selection of historical appendices provide context for her public life and her work as a feminist and activist for Indigenous people.
Tekahionwake : E. Pauline Johnson's Writings on Native North America
Description
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
E. Pauline Johnson: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
The Iroquois Confederacy and Loyalism
“Canadian Born” (1900)
“The Re-interment of Red Jacket” (1885)
“‘Brant,’ A Memorial Ode” (1886)
“The Lodge of the Law-makers” (1906)
“My Mother” (1909)
“Heroic Indian Mothers” (1908)
“Forty-Five Miles on the Grand” (1892)
“A Brother Chief” (1892)
“The Brotherhood” (1910)
“The Death Cry” (1888)
“As Red Men Die” (1890)
“The Avenger” (1892)
“Her Majesty’s Guest” (1913)
“A Pagan in Saint Paul’s Cathedral” (1906)
“We-hro’s Sacrifice” (1907)
“The Happy Hunting Grounds” (1889)
The Plains and the Second Riel Resistance
“A Cry from an Indian Wife” (1895)
“Wolverine” (1893)
“Silhouette” (1894)
“The Cattle Thief” (1894)
“A Request” (1886)
“The Indian Corn Planter” (1897)
“The Haunting Thaw” (1907)
Dreams, Rivers, and Winds
“At the Ferry” (1886)
“The Song My Paddle Sings” (1892)
“His Majesty, the West Wind” (1894)
“Shadow River” (1889)
“Kicking Horse River” (1894)
“Moonset” (1894)
Women and Children
“A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction” (1892)
“A Red Girl’s Reasoning” (1893)
“Dawendine” (1895)
“Ojistoh” (1895)
“The Derelict” (1896)
“The Pilot of the Plains” (1891)
“Lullaby of the Iroquois” (1896) • 190
“The Corn Husker” (1896) • 190
Residential School
“As It Was in the Beginning” (1899)
“His Sister’s Son” (1896)
“Little Wolf-Willow” (1907)
The West Coast
“The Potlatch” (1910)
“Catharine of the Crow’s Nest” (1910)
“Hoolool of the Totem Poles” (1911)
“The Tenas Klootchman” (1911)
“A Squamish Legend of Napoleon” (1910)
“The Legend of the Ice Babies” (1911)
“The Lost Lagoon” (1910)
Appendix A: On Johnson
From Garth Grafton / Sara Jeannette Duncan, Interview with E. Pauline Johnson, “Women’s World,” Toronto Globe (14 October 1886)
W.D. Lighthall, “Miss E. Pauline Johnson,” Songs of the Great Dominion (1889)
Hector Charlesworth, “Miss Pauline Johnson’s Poems,” Canadian Magazine (1895)
Horatio Hale, Review of The White Wampum, The Critic (4 January 1896)
“From Wigwam to Concert Platform,” Evening Telegraph [Dundee] (4 July 1906)
Charles Mair, “Pauline Johnson: An Appreciation,” The Moccasin Maker (1913)
Gilbert Parker, Introduction, The Moccasin Maker (1913)
Ernest Thompson Seton, “Tekahionwake (Pauline Johnson),” Introduction, The Shaganappi (1913)
From Theodore Watts-Dunton, “In Memoriam: Pauline Johnson,” Introduction, Flint and Feather: Collected Verse (1913)
Appendix B: Writings by Women
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “On Leaving My Children John and Jane at School” (1851)
Margaret Fuller, “Governor Everett Receiving the Indian Chiefs, November, 1837” (1844)
From Sarah Winnemucca, “Domestic and Social Moralities” (1883)
Inshata Theamba (“Bright Eyes”) / Susette La Flesche, Introduction to William Justin Harsha’s Ploughed Under: The Story of an Indian Chief (1881)
From Anna Julia Cooper, “Woman versus the Indian” (1892)
Sophia Alice Callahan, “Is This Right?,” Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891)
Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, “Why I Am a Pagan,” Atlantic Monthly (December 1902)
From Zitkala-Ša / Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, “An Indian Teacher among Indians,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1900)
Appendix C: On the Six Nations
Duncan Campbell Scott, “The Onondaga Madonna” (1898)
W.D. Lighthall, “The Caughnawaga Beadwork Seller” (1889)
Walt Whitman, “Red Jacket (From Aloft)” (1885)
Ely S. Parker / Donehogawa, Speech at the Ceremony to Re-inter Red Jacket (1885)
From Arthur C. Parker, “Certain Important Elements of the Indian Problem,” American Indian Magazine (1915)
Appendix D: Canadian Residential Schools
From Nicholas Flood Davin, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds (14 March 1879)
From Peter Henderson Bryce, The Story of a National Crime (1922)
Works Cited and Recommended Reading
Author Description
E. Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake (1861-1913) was a Canadian poet, fiction writer, journalist, and actor.
Margery Fee is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Dory Nason holds a joint appointment in the departments of First Nations Studies and English at the University of British Columbia, Canada.