(Musson, 1912, 1st ed. with later dj)
(frontispiece photo in above book signed 3 mos. before she died with rare pen corrections by Johnson)
(Forsyth, 1912, 2nd ed., leather cover)
(inscription inside by author)
(scarce first day issue envelope)
(rare Arc LP–read by Hannah Polowy & Mitch Sago)
(the memorial cairn today in Vancouver’s Stanley Park near Ferguson Point)
(Emily) Pauline Johnson (1862-1913), a.k.a. ‘Tekahionwake’, was the daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English mother. She was born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford. Johnson recited her picturesque, musical, sentimental, and then-popular poetry (her best-known poem was “The Song My Paddle Sings”) while wearing native dress during her successful inter/national reading tours which continued until 1909.
Then she settled in Vancouver, writing Legends of Vancouver (1911) there. Her collected poems were published in Flint and Feather in 1912, about a year before her death. Although she was the first major female Canadian writer of the 20th century, her reputation diminished steadily after WWII and as early as 1966, the influential landmark Klinck & Watters Canadian Anthology did not see fit to include her any of her work; today her poetry has been largely forgotten. A good introduction to her life, work, and legend can be found in Flint & Feather, a biography by Charlotte Gray.