E. 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 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 the 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 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 favorite 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 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 favor, 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 George
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 of endurance could have borne up
under the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling 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 travelling, she had
many varied and interesting experiences. She travelled 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.