“Skyward floating feather,
   Sailing on summer air.”

And yet that feather may be the eagle plume that crests the head of a warrior chief; so both flint and feather bear the hall-mark of my Mohawk blood.

E.P.J.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

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, a lady of pure English parentage, her birth-place being Bristol, England, but the land of her adoption was Canada.

Chief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, and of the “Blood Royal,” 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.  These Iroquois Indians have from the earliest times been famed for their loyalty to the British Crown, in defence of which they fought against both French and Colonial Revolutionists; and for which fealty they were granted the magnificent lands bordering the Grand River in the County of Brant, Ontario, and on which the tribes still live.

It was upon this Reserve, on her father’s estate, “Chiefswood,” that Pauline Johnson was born.  And it is inevitable that the loyalty to Britain and Britain’s flag which she inherited from her Red ancestors, as well as from her English mother, breathes through both her prose and poetic writings.

At an extremely early age this little Indian girl evinced an intense love of poetry; and even before she could write, composed many little childish jingles about her pet dogs and cats.  She was also very fond of learning by heart anything that took her fancy, and would memorize, apparently without effort, verses that were read to her.  A telling instance of this early love of poetry may be cited, when on one occasion, while she was yet a tiny child of four, a friend of her father’s, who was going to a distant city, asked her what he could bring her as a present, and she replied, “Verses, please.”

At twelve years of age she was writing fairly creditable poems, but was afraid to offer them for publication, lest in after years she might regret their almost inevitable crudity.  So she did not publish anything until after her school days were ended.

Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate, and 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 every line of Scott’s poems, every line of Longfellow, much of Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as Addison’s “Spectator,” Foster’s Essays and Owen Meredith.