Flint and Feather Read online

  I hated for his sake the reckless tread

  Of human progress;—on his race no morn,

  No noon of happiness shall ever beam;

  They fade as from our waking fades a dream.

  William Lighthall included one of his own compositions, which spoke of Indians as “dying, dwindling, dying!” And a poem entitled “The Indian’s Grave,” written by the mid-nineteenth-century Bishop of Montreal, George Jehoshaphat Mountain, sounded a death knell:

  Poor savage! In such bark through deepening snows

  Once did’st thou dwell—in this through rivers move;

  Frail house, frail skiff, frail man!

  In Pauline’s own experience, this pessimism seemed unwarranted. Granted she had seen the Six Nations Reserve dwindle in size and most of its residents adopt European dress and names. But respect for traditional practices and ceremonies remained strong, despite attempts by government officials to discourage them. Moreover, she had also watched a handful of her fellow Iroquois make decent lives for themselves outside the reserve. Her two brothers were doing well in the insurance industry. One of her Mohawk relatives, Peter Martin, or Oronhyatekha as he was called in his own tongue, had studied at Oxford University, had graduated with a medical degree from the University of Toronto and had then joined the Independent Order of Foresters. By the early 1890s, as Chief Ranger of this fraternal benefit society, he had built the IOF into a formidable North American organization. Another person who grew up on the Six Nations Reserve, John Ojijatekha Sero, was emerging as an articulate spokesperson for Iroquois interests. He gave a talk on the Six Nations at the 1889 Toronto meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  Pauline was exasperated by a particular aspect of the literature of her day: the treatment of young native women in fiction and verse. Only a few writers took the trouble to explore the character of any Indian woman they chose to feature in their compositions, or to identify her particular features or background. “The Indian girl we meet in cold type,” Pauline pointed out, “is rarely distressed by having to belong to any tribe, or to reflect any tribal characteristics. She is merely a wholesale sort of admixture of any band existing between the MicMacs of Gaspé and the Kwaw-Kwliths of British Columbia.” There were about 122,000 native people in Canada, in numerous different bands, “yet strange to say…our Canadian authors can cull from this huge revenue of character but one Indian girl.” The generic Indian heroine never had any education and was described by a variety of clichés, such as “’dog-like,’ ’fawn-like,’ ’deer-footed,’ ’fire-eyed, ’ ’crouching.’”

  This was not how Pauline saw herself. An 1887 novel called An Algonquin Maiden, which the well-known literary critic Graeme Mercer Adam wrote in conjunction with the young Ontario journalist and poet Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald, particularly riled her. The maiden of the title is Wanda, who is courted by a smart young Toronto beau called Edward Boulton. (Adam was much more interested in getting the non-native details right: his European characters all bore the names of Toronto’s real-life Fine Old Families.) Wanda duly falls in love with Edward, and he feels obliged to offer marriage to her. But she shames him with her childlike behaviour and inattention to dress. In a moment of revelation, Edward realizes that Wanda “seemed like some coarse weed, whose vivid hues he might admire in passing, but which he would shrink from wearing on his person.” In due course, Wanda drowns after saving Edward’s life, releasing Edward to marry the entirely suitable Hélène DeBerczy, a creamy hot-house bloom who has no idea how to paddle a canoe.

  “Will some critic,” fulminated Pauline, “who understands human nature, and particularly the nature of authors, please tell the reading public why marriage with the Indian girl is so despised in books and so general in real life! Will this good far-seeing critic also tell us why the book-made Indian makes all the love advances to the white gentleman, though the real, wild Indian girl (by the way, we are never given any stories of educated girls, though there are many such throughout Canada) is the most retiring, reticent, non-committal being in existence!”

  The “Evening with Canadian Authors” gave Pauline the opportunity to put these questions to Mercer Adam in person. Adam invited the evening’s performers to a reception at his home at 196 Spadina Avenue. It was an invitation for a little-known poet to treasure. In 1892, Adam was one of the Grand Old Men of the young country’s cultural life. Born in Scotland in 1839, he had arrived in Upper Canada when he was in his early twenties and immediately became a pioneer in its infant publishing industry. He helped found a series of short-lived literary magazines, joined the staff of Goldwin Smith’s influential periodical The Week in 1883, edited a series of school readers and wrote travel books, mono-graphs about early explorers and a history of Upper Canada College. Adam knew anybody who was anybody in Toronto; when Pauline met him, he was working on a biographical compilation titled Prominent Men of Canada (he gave himself a prominent mention). His reputation had spread into the United States; within months of his encounter with Pauline, he would make his home in the US. A white-haired fifty-three-year-old with a gravelly Scottish accent and a penchant for snuff, Adam held court in his well-furnished sitting room while his wife, Frances, fussed around the guests.

  Frank Yeigh, William and Cybel Lighthall and most of the others present on this occasion contented themselves with nodding respectfully at their host as he pontificated about the need for a national literature and the importance of good textbooks in the classroom. But Pauline was not prepared to adopt the dog-like crouch of the generic Indian maiden. She shook his hand, gave him a captivating smile and enquired how much research he had done when he and Miss Wetherald were writing their novel. “I made him confess,” she wrote triumphantly to Lighthall, “that he had never met an Indian Girl and knew nothing about them.” In retrospect, Pauline felt a little rueful about her bluntness to the revered critic. “I wonder if you thought me rude to dear old Mr. Adam, in differing from him in his own house,” she asked Lighthall, “but I confess to you, the dear old gentleman frets me at times. The extraordinary things he made ‘The Algonquin Maiden’ do are astounding.”

  Pauline soon had another opportunity to perform in Toronto. In his role as Pauline’s manager, Frank Yeigh was eager to capitalize on his new star’s January triumph. He hired Association Hall for a second recital on February 19, in which Pauline was the main attraction. Nine days after the Globe’s glowing review of Pauline’s first Toronto

  “Miss E. Pauline Johnson,” her collar secured by a brooch in the shape of a snowshoe, was the star attraction of her second Toronto appearance.

  performance, the paper’s readers were informed that “Miss E. Pauline Johnson of Brantford, the Indian poetess,” would read her own poems in “A Novel and Unique Entertainment.” The programme would be filled out with musical selections by Mrs. Maggie Barr Fenwick of Hamilton, “Canada’s Favorite Soprano and Scottish Vocalist,” Mr. Fred Warrington, “the well-known baritone” and, last and obviously least, Mr. W. S. Jones, who was described simply as “organist.” Tickets were 25 and 50 cents.

  Once again Pauline travelled up from Brantford alone and made her way to Rossin House, where, she now liked to tell friends, she “always stayed” when she was in Toronto. She carefully dressed her hair and pressed the elegant white satin evening dress that she had sewn herself. Frank Yeigh arrived to escort her along Wellington Street to Association Hall; he knew that punctuality was not Pauline’s strong suit, and he wanted to ensure she reached the hall in good time. When she joined him in Rossin House’s marbled reception area, he was able to tell her that the recital was sold out. It was a fashionable as well as an intellectual gathering, he added with excitement: members of some of Toronto’s first families were present. Frank and Pauline had already discussed which of her works she should recite. Pauline was adamant that unlike most “elocutionists” of the 1890s, who read the works of others, she would speak her own verse from memory. She had just finished a new canoe poem, which she
looked forward to including. But her program would consist largely of her Indian work. From now on, she told Frank, she was going to live up to the billing “the Indian poetess.”

  Frank Yeigh was more than happy to follow Pauline’s lead. Once the audience was settled and the last chords of Mr. Jones’s overture had rolled through the hall, he straightened his cuffs and strode onto the stage. It gave him enormous pleasure, he announced, to introduce Miss Pauline Johnson, whose ancestors were one of the fifty noble families who helped organize the Iroquois Confederacy in the fifteenth century—a federation, he solemnly explained, which was almost as old as that of Switzerland. Miss Johnson’s grandfather, he went on, had fought in the War of 1812, and her father had been a revered chief on the Six Nations Reserve. Coached by Pauline, Frank now came to the climax of this lavish introduction. He pointed out that Miss Johnson, who was steeped in Indian history, life and legend, “wrote as one of their number and not as an onlooker,” as too many contemporary authors were wont to do.

  Pauline then glided onto the stage, to loud applause. Her composure and gracefulness impressed those in the audience who had no idea what an “Indian poetess” would look or sound like. When she began to recite “A Cry from an Indian Wife,” an appreciative ripple ran through the hall; many of those present had also attended the January performance. She followed this with a dramatic monologue entitled “The Avenger,” which told of a Mohawk warrior who kills a Cherokee in revenge for his own brother’s death. It was splendidly bloodthirsty and allowed Pauline to use her wonderful throaty voice at full throttle. In January, she had barely strayed from centre stage. This time, she paced around, directing her voice first to the left, then to the right, as she built a picture of a powerful and proud people:

  “Last night, thou lent’st the knife unto my brother,

  Come I now, oh Cherokee, to give thy bloody weapon back to thee!”

  An evil curse, a flash of steel, a leap,

  A thrust above the heart, well-aimed and deep,

  Plunged to the very hilt in blood

  While Vengeance gloating yells, “The Debt is paid!”

  Pauline intended to lighten the atmosphere by reciting next a poem she had written specifically for this recital, and which was to become her most enduring memorial: “The Song My Paddle Sings.” The poem combines two of her favourite themes, nature and canoeing, and describes with mounting excitement a journey through foaming whitewater. “West wind, blow from your prairie nest,” she began softly, “Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. / The sail is idle, the sailor too; / O! wind of the west we wait for you.” The sibilant opening lines of Pauline’s celebration of a fearless and skilled female canoeist whispered their way across the hall.

  I stow the sail, unship the mast:

  I wooed you long but my wooing’s past;

  My paddle will lull you into rest.

  O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west,

  Sleep, sleep,

  By your mountain steep,

  Or down where the prairie grasses sweep!

  Now fold in slumber your laggard wings,

  For soft is the song my paddle sings.

  August is laughing across the sky,

  Laughing while paddle, canoe and I,

  Drift, drift,

  Where the hills uplift

  On either side of the current swift.

  The river rolls in its rocky bed;

  My paddle is plying its way ahead;

  Dip, dip,

  While the waters flip

  In foam as over their breast we slip.

  And oh, the river runs swifter now;

  The eddies circle about my bow.

  Swirl, swirl!

  How the ripples curl

  In many a dangerous pool awhirl.

  And forward far the rapids roar,

  Fretting their margin for evermore.

  Dash, dash,

  With a mighty crash,

  They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash!

  But halfway through the poem, Pauline abruptly stopped. Frank, watching from the wings, started to sweat. This was more than a pause between verses. “I vividly recall those awful few moments that seemed prolonged minutes, as she plucked a rose to pieces from a vase on the table,” Frank later wrote in a memoir of that evening. “What had happened? The silence of the audience waiting for an explanation was in itself terribly oppressive until she quietly remarked, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten the words, and if you don’t mind, I’ll give something else.’…Picking up the threads of her work, her memory did not fail her again.” Another Indian monologue followed the hiatus: “The Pilot of the Plains,” the haunting story of an Indian woman whose paleface lover dies as he struggles towards her through a prairie snowstorm.

  Finally, Pauline returned to “The Song My Paddle Sings.” This time, her canoe raced unharmed through the rapids to the calm waters of the final stanza:

  We’ve raced the rapid, we’re far ahead!

  The river slips through its ancient bed,

  Sway, sway,

  As the bubbles spray

  And fall in tinkling tunes away.

  And up on the hills against the sky,

  A fir tree rocking its lullaby,

  Swings, swings,

  Its emerald wings,

  Swelling the song that my paddle sings.

  Within months, “The Song My Paddle Sings” was a staple of campfire recitations at every canoe meet in Canada and the northern United States.

  At the end of the evening, the ovations were even louder and longer than those of a month earlier. Frank’s fashionable audience found Pauline’s combination of passion and vulnerability irresistible. A handful of her listeners even asked Frank whether her forgetfulness was actually a “stage trick” to enlist exactly the kind of sympathy that she had won. Frank protested that the star would never descend to such a ploy. Pauline returned to Brantford the next day, glowing with triumph and eager to perform again. The following Saturday, Saturday Night announced, “Miss Johnson is sure of a hearty welcome whenever she may visit Toronto.”

  Now that Pauline had established her stage presence, she wondered how to improve her act. She was conscious that when reciting her Indian poems, she presented two incompatible images. On the one hand, she appeared as an entirely proper young lady with a fashionable hourglass figure, thanks to a tightly laced corset, and the air of dainty helplessness customary amongst late-Victorian gentlewomen. On the other hand, she was reciting monologues about fearless Indian warriors and women prepared to kill, or urge their sons to kill, in revenge for ghastly crimes.

  Pauline cast around in her mind as she tried to decide how to give her act more punch. She had watched her father clothe himself in beads and buckskin when he wanted to impress non-natives with his tribal prestige. She also knew that there was a public appetite for “Wild West shows,” in which showmen like Buffalo Bill Cody presented set-piece battles between cowboys and Indians. In 1885, Buffalo Bill had brought the great Sioux chief Sitting Bull to Brantford and Toronto as part of his Wild West Show, which included sharpshooter Annie Oakley, equestrian acrobat Buck Taylor, a cowboy band and an entourage of fifty-two Indians in feather headdresses. The show, which was staged outdoors and advertised as “the Greatest Novelty of the Century,” sold out everywhere. Audiences watched re-enactments of some of the clashes, such as Custer’s Last Stand at the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn, that had occurred during the invasion and conquest of the American West in the 1860s and 1870s. From today’s perspective, these shows appear to have pandered to the worst kind of stereotyping. The only Indians represented were bare-chested Plains Indians in feathered war bonnets, and the climax of the war-whooping, tomahawk-wielding battle (even as General Custer lay dying) was always a spectacular victory for cowboys, depicted as ambassadors of “white civilization.” But Pauline’s generation believed that the shows gave them their first glimpse of “the Redman” in his pre-contact state—the state of fierce and distinguished inde
pendence that Pauline celebrated in her poems.

  The success of the Wild West shows gave Pauline an idea. The ambitious young poet had recently heard again from William Lighthall in Montreal. His anthology Songs of the Great Dominion had been well received in England; he enclosed a positive review from the Athenaeum by the revered English critic Theodore Watts-Dunton. Watts-Dunton had made special mention of Pauline’s poem “In the Shadows” as an example of authentic poetry “full of the spirit of the open air.” Lighthall urged Pauline to visit England so she could make the acquaintance of Mr. Watts-Dunton. Pauline valued Lighthall’s counsel: “For years [I] have regarded you as my Literary Father,” she replied. She told him that she hoped to visit England one day. Right now, however, she had a more immediate preoccupation: “I am going to make a feature of costuming for recitals.”

  But she had a problem: “For my Indian poems I am trying to get an Indian dress to recite in, and it is the most difficult thing in the world.” No such thing as “an Indian dress” existed on her own Six Nations Reserve. By now, almost all the women there preferred full-skirted European skirts and gowns. Only a handful of female elders still clung to traditional outfits, which consisted (like the clothing of women in most Indian bands) of tunics, leggings and blankets. Traditional Indian female clothing was similar to the clothing worn by older men. Pauline had in mind something more flattering, an outfit based on an American illustration of Minnehaha, wife of Hiawatha, in the copy of Longfellow’s epic poem she had enjoyed as a child at Chiefswood: “Minnehaha, Laughing Water. / Loveliest of Dacotah women.”