Naturally I turned to his introductory remarks to see who Pauline Johnson was.  I was not at all surprised to find that she had Indian blood in her veins, but I was surprised and delighted to find that she belonged to a famous Indian family—­the Mohawks of Brantford.  The Mohawks of Brantford! that splendid race to whose unswerving loyalty during two centuries not only Canada, but the entire British Empire owes a debt that can never be repaid.

After the appearance of my article I got a beautiful letter from Pauline Johnson, and I found that I had been fortunate enough to enrich my life with a new friendship.

And now as to the genius of Pauline Johnson:  it was being recognised not only in Canada, but all over the great Continent of the West.  Since 1889 I have been following her career with a glow of admiration and sympathy.  I have been delighted to find that this success of hers had no damaging effect upon the grand simplicity of her nature.  Up to the day of her death her passionate sympathy with the aborigines of Canada never flagged, as shown by such poems as “The Cattle Thief”, “The Pilot of the Plains”, “As Red Men Die”, and many another.  During all this time, however, she was cultivating herself in a thousand ways—­taking interest in the fine arts, as witness her poem “The Art of Alma-Tadema”.  Her native power of satire is shown in the lines written after Dreyfus was exiled, called “‘Give us Barabbas’”.  She had also a pretty gift of vers de societe, as seen in her lines “Your Mirror Frame”.

Her death is not only a great loss to those who knew and loved her:  it is a great loss to Canadian literature and to the Canadian nation.  I must think that she will hold a memorable place among poets in virtue of her descent and also in virtue of the work she has left behind, small as the quantity of that work is.  I believe that Canada will, in future times, cherish her memory more and more, for of all Canadian poets she was the most distinctly a daughter of the soil, inasmuch as she inherited the blood of the great primeval race now so rapidly vanishing, and of the greater race that has supplanted it.

In reading the description of the funeral in the “News-Advertiser,” I was specially touched by the picture of the large crowd of silent Red Men who lined Georgia Street, and who stood as motionless as statues all through the service, and until the funeral cortege had passed on the way to the cemetery.  This must have rendered the funeral the most impressive and picturesque one of any poet that has ever lived.

Theodore Watts-Dunton.

The Pines,
Putney Hill.

20th August, 1913.

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

This collection of verse I have named “Flint and Feather” because of the association of ideas.  Flint suggests the Red Man’s weapons of war; it is the arrow tip, the heart-quality of mine own people; let it therefore apply to those poems that touch upon Indian life and love.  The lyrical verse herein is as a