Title Page
7 best short stories by E. Pauline Johnson
The Shagganappi
A Red Girl's Reasoning
The King's Coin
The Derelict
Little Wolf-Willow
Her Majesty's Guest[1]
The Brotherhood
About the Publisher
Emily Pauline Johnson (10 March 1861 – 7 March 1913), also known by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake (pronounced dageh-eeon-wageh, literally: 'double-life'), was a Canadian poet, author and performer who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her father was a hereditary Mohawk chief of mixed ancestry and her mother was an English immigrant.
Johnson's poetry was published in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Johnson was one of a generation of widely read writers who began to define Canadian literature. While her literary reputation declined after her death, in the late 20th century there has been a renewed interest in her life and works. In 2002, E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: Collected Poems and Selected Prose, a complete collection of her known poetry was published.
Johnson was notable for her poems, short stories, and performances that celebrated her mixed-race heritage drawing from both Indigenous and English influences. She is most known for her books of poetry The White Wampum (1895), Canadian Born (1903), Flint and Feather (1912) and her collections of stories Legends of Vancouver (1911), The Shagganappi (1913) and The Moccasin Maker (1913).
Not only was Johnson a poet and writer but she was a part of the New Woman movement due to the blending of her two cultures in her works and her criticisms of the Canadian government. Johnson was also a key figure in the construction of Canadian literature as an institution and has made an indelible mark on Indigenous women's writing and performance as a whole.
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When "Fire-Flint" Larocque said good-bye to his parents, up in the Red River Valley, and started forth for his first term in an Eastern college, he knew that the next few years would be a fight to the very teeth. If he could have called himself "Indian" or "White" he would have known where he stood in the great world of Eastern advancement, but he was neither one nor the other—but here he was born to be a thing apart, with no nationality in all the world to claim as a blood heritage. All his young life he had been accustomed to hear his parents and himself referred to as "half-breeds," until one day, when the Governor-General of all Canada paid a visit to the Indian school, and the principal, with an air of pride, presented "Fire-Flint" to His Excellency, with "This is our head pupil, the most diligent boy in the school. He is Trapper Larocque's son."
"Oh? What tribe does he belong to?" asked the Governor, as he clasped the boy's hand genially.
"Oh, Fire-Flint belongs to no tribe; he is a half-breed," explained the principal.
"What an odd term!" said the Governor, with a perplexed wrinkle across his brows; then, "I imagine you mean a half-blood, not breed." His voice was chilly and his eyes a little cold as he looked rather haughtily at the principal. "I do not like the word 'breed' applied to human beings. It is a term for cattle and not men," he continued. Then, addressing "Fire-Flint," he asked, "Who are your parents, my boy?"
"My father is half French and half Cree; my mother is about three-quarters Cree; her grandfather was French," replied the boy, while his whole loyal young heart reached out towards this great man, who was lifting him out of the depths of obscurity. Then His Excellency's hands rested with a peculiar half fatherly, half brotherly touch on the shoulders of the slim lad before him.
"Then you have blood in your veins that the whole world might envy," he said slowly. "The blood of old France and the blood of a great aboriginal race that is the offshoot of no other race in the world. The Indian blood is a thing of itself, unmixed for thousands of years, a blood that is distinct and exclusive. Few white people can claim such a lineage. Boy, try and remember that as you come of Red Indian blood, dashed with that of the first great soldiers, settlers and pioneers in this vast Dominion, that you have one of the proudest places and heritages in the world; you are a Canadian in the greatest sense of that great word. When you go out into the world will you remember that, Fire-Flint?" His Excellency's voice ceased, but his thin, pale, aristocratic fingers still rested on the boy's shoulders, his eyes still shone with that peculiar brotherly light.
"I shall remember, sir," replied Fire-Flint, while his homeless young heart was fast creating for itself the foothold amongst the great nations of the earth. The principal of the school stood awkwardly, hoping that all this attention would not spoil his head pupil; but he never knew that boy in all the five years he had instructed him, as His Excellency, Lord Mortimer, knew him in that five minutes' chat.
"No," said the Governor, again turning to the principal, "I certainly do not like that term 'half-breed.' Most of the people on the continent of America are of mixed nationality—how few are pure English or Scotch or Irish—or indeed of any particular race? Yet the white people of mixed nations are never called half-breeds. Why not? It would be quite reasonable to use the term regarding them." Then, once again addressing Fire-Flint, he asked, "I suppose all the traders use this term in speaking of your parents and of you?"
"Of my parents, yes, sir," replied the boy.
"And you?" questioned His Excellency, kindly.
"They call me the 'Shagganappi,'" replied Fire-Flint.
"I am afraid that is beyond me, my boy," smiled His Excellency. "Won't you tell me what it means?" The boy smiled responsively.
"It is a buckskin, a color; a shagganappi cayuse is a buckskin color.
They say I look that way."
"Ah, I understand," replied His Excellency, as his eyes rested on the dark cream brown tint of the boy's face. "Well, it is a good name; buckskin is a thing essential to white people and to Indians alike, from the Red River to the Rockies. And the cayuse—well, the horse is the noblest animal known to man. So try to be worthy of the nickname, my boy. Live to be essential to your people like the buckskin; to be noble—like the horse. And now good-bye, Shagganappi, and remember that you are the real Canadian."
Another handclasp and Lord Mortimer was walking away with the principal at his side, who was saying, "Your Excellency, you have greatly encouraged that boy; I think he always felt terribly that he was a half-bree—half-blood. He would have loved to claim either all Cree or all French ancestry."
"He is a fine lad and I like him," returned Lord Mortimer, rather shortly, for he felt a little impatient with the principal, who could so easily have lightened the boy's heart from the very first year he had entered the school, by fostering within him pride of the two great races that blended within his veins into that one mighty nation called Canadian.
But that day proved the beginning of a new life for Fire-Flint; Lord Mortimer had called him Shagganappi in a half playful way, had said the name meant good and great things. No more did the little half-blood despise his own unusually tinted skin, no more did he hate that dash of grey in his brown eyes that bespoke "white blood," no more did he deplore the lack of proper coloring that would have meant the heritage of pure Indian blood. He was content to fight it out, through all his life to come, as "The Shagganappi," and when the time came for him to go to the great Eastern college in Ontario he went with his mind made up that no boy living was going to shoulder him into a corner or out-do him in the race for attainment.
* * * * * * * *
"Hello, fellows, there is an Indian blown in from the North-West. Cracker-jack of a looking chap," announced "Cop" Billings to his roommates late one morning, as he burst into the room after his early mile run to find them with yet ten minutes to spare before the "rising bell."
"Shut up, and let a fellow sleep," growled "Sandy," from his bed in the corner.
"Indian?" exclaimed young Locke, sitting bolt upright; "this ain't a
Redskin school; he's got to get put out, or I'm a deader."
"You'll be a deader if you try to put him out," sneered Cop Billings; "first place he's got an arm like braided whipcord, and he's got a chin—hanged determined swat-you-in-the-face sort of chin—not a boiled-fish sort of jaw like yours," and he glared at the unfortunate Locke with sneering disapproval.
"Where'd you see him?" ventured little chunky Johnny Miller, getting into his clothes.
"Saw him in the library as I passed. The Head called me in and—"
"Stow it! stow it!" they all yelled; then Locke jeered, "The Head is never up at six-thirty—we are not rabbits."
"Just where you get left; the Head was up at five-thirty and went to the station to meet mister Indian."
"Well, I'll be jing-banged," exclaimed Sandy, nearly awake; "what's the meaning of it all?"
"Meaning's just this, my son," replied Cop, getting out of his limited running togs into something more respectable, "that if you chumps guessed all day you'd never strike just how the Indian came to this school. Who do you suppose wrote to the Head recommending him to take the Redskin, and kind of insinuating that the college would do well to treat him properly? None other than His Excellency Lord Mortimer, Governor-General of 'this Canada of ours.' Now, Locke, will you act good and pretty, and take your bread and milk like a nice little tootsy-wootsy and allow the Indian to stay?"
"Whew!" bellowed Locke, "I guess I'm it, fellows."
"Just found it out, eh?" answered Cop; then, as the first bell clanged throughout the building and hustling was in order, he proceeded to explain that as he passed the library door on his way to the baths, Professor Warwick called him in and introduced him to the tall, lithe Westerner, who had wonderfully easy manners, a skin like a tan-colored glove, and whose English was more attractive than marred by a strong accent that sounded "Frenchy."
"When he found that I was heading for the baths he asked to come, too," rattled Cop; "been on the train over three days and nights coming from Winnipeg; said he felt grimy, so I took him along. Jingo, you should see his clothes—silk socks, silk shirt, top-coat lined with mink, an otter collar—must have cost hundreds. Says I, 'Well, pal, your governor must be well fixed.' Says he, 'My father is a trapper and trades with the Hudson's Bay Company. He trapped all these minks, and my other clothes—oh, we buy those at the H.B.C. in Winnipeg.' Wouldn't that phase you, fellows? But I forgot his clothes when I saw him strip. Jiminy Christmas! I never saw such a body. I'm in bully training, but I'm a cow compared to 'Shag.'"
"What a rum name!" said Locke, still a little resentful.
"Found out all about that, too," went on Cop. "Seems he has a whole string of names to choose from. Heard him tell the Head that his first name is 'Fire-Flint,' and his last name is 'Larocque.' Seemed to kind of take the Head where he is weakest.
"'If you don't like it,' says the Indian, with a dead-quiet, plumb-straight look at the Head, 'you may call me what the people up along the Red River call me; I'm known there as the Shagganappi—Shag, if you want to cut off part of the word. The other boys may call me Shag if they want to.' Say, fellows, I liked him right there and then. He may chum up with me all he likes, for all his silk socks and shirts."
"What did the Head say?" asked little Johnnie Miller.
"Said he liked the name Shag," replied Cop. "'Then I'm Shag to you, sir, and the others here,' speaks up his Indian nibs. Then he and I struck for the tubs, then they took him to get his room, and I came up here."
As Cop finished speaking the chapel bell sounded and all four boys scrambled down to prayers. As they entered the little sanctuary, one of the masters standing irresolute near the door, beckoned to Cop. "Billings," he whispered, "Will you please go and ask Larocque if he cares to come to prayers? He's in room 17; you met him this morning, I believe."
"Certainly, sir," replied Cop, dashing up the nearest stairway.
"Entrez," replied an even voice to Cop's unusually respectful knock.
Then the voice rapidly corrected itself, "Enter, come in," it said in
English.
"How about prayers?" asked Cop. "Perhaps you're tired and don't care to come?"
"I'll go," replied the Indian, and followed noiselessly where Billings led.
They entered just as Professor Warwick was beginning prayers, and although the eighty or so boys present were fairly exemplary, none could resist furtive looks at the newcomer, who walked up the little aisle beside Billings with a peculiarly silent dignity and half-indifference that could not possibly be assumed. How most of them envied him that manner! They recalled their own shyness and strangeness on the first day of their arrival; how they stumbled over their own feet that first morning at prayers; how they hated being stared at and spoken of as "the new boy." How could this Indian come among them as if he had been born and bred in their midst? But they never knew that Larocque's wonderful self-possession was the outcome of his momentary real indifference; his thoughts were far away from the little college chapel, for the last time he had knelt in a sanctuary was at the old, old cathedral at St. Boniface, whose twin towers arose under the blue of a Manitoba sky, whose foundations stood where the historic Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet, about whose bells one of America's sweetest singers, Whittier, had written lines that have endeared his name to every worshipper that bends the knee in that prairie sanctuary. The lines were drifting through his mind now. They were the first words of English poetry he had learned to memorize:
"Is it the clang of the wild geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the call of the north wind
The tones of a far-off bell?
"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace.
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.
"The bells of the Roman mission—
That call from their turrets twain
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain."
"To the hunter on the plain," said Shag's thoughts, over and over. Perhaps the hunter was his trapper father, who with noiseless step and wary eye was this very moment stalking some precious fur-bearing animal, whose pelt would bring a good price at the great Hudson's Bay trading-post; a price that would go toward keeping his son at this Eastern college for many terms. Shag's grey-brown eyes grew dreamy. He saw the vast prairies sweeping away into the West, and his father, a mere speck on the horizon, the ever-present "gun," the silent moccasin, the scarlet sash, the muffled step, all proclaiming "the hunter on the plain."
The prayers were ended and Shag found that he was not really watching his father coming up some prairie trail, but that before him was a different type of man, Professor Warwick, whose studious eyes now required glasses to see through, and whose hand was white and silken in its touch—how hopelessly lost this little man would be should circumstances turn him forth to gain his livelihood at hunting and trapping. Old Larocque himself would hardly be more incongruous teaching in this college. It was this thought that made Shag smile as he rose from his knees, with the echoes of the bells of St. Boniface haunting his heart.
Then the chapel emptied, each boy on breakfast bent. "Cop" Billings still remained at the Indian's elbow, but at the door one or two of the masters stopped to greet the new arrival, and a tall, remarkably handsome lad waited, apparently to speak. He was a boy that anyone would pick from a crowd of fifty—straight, well-built, with fine, strong, thin hands, and a face with contradictory eyes, for they twinkled and danced as if nothing so serious as thoughtfulness ever disturbed them. As the two boys approached him he stepped impulsively forward, extending his hand to Shag with the words, "May I shake hands with you and say hello?"
"Thank you;" replied Shag; "the way you boys are treating me makes me feel less strange."
"Oh, no one feels strange here," laughed the handsome boy. "You must try and like us. So you're from Manitoba, are you?"
"Yes, Red River," answered Shag.
"Father's been up there, and grandfather, too," said the other, falling in step with the two boys on their way to the dining-room. "Come up to my ranch some time soon—to-night if you like. Cop will bring you," he added with a parting nod, as he left them for his own table at the other side of the room.
Cop stared hard at his companion. "Thunderation!" he blurted, "but you're the lucky kid!"
"Yes?" questioned Shag. "Never mind the luck, but tell me who that chap is; he's very nice; I like him."
"Like him!" almost yelled Cop; "I should think you would like him! Why, he's the 'Pop!'"
"'Pop?' What's that?" said Shag, with a puzzled air.
"Popular, the most popular boy in college—head in everything—clubs, classes, sports. Everybody is dippy over him from the Head right down to 'Infant' Innis, that little geezer in shorts across the table, who is only eleven last birthday. Even Dirty Dick, the gardener, is batty about him; and here he's put himself out to shake your fin, and ask you up to his room—thing he's only done twice since he entered college. You are lucky, kid!"
"Does he think a lot of himself?" asked Shag with some suspicion.
"He? Not much! Just the bulliest old pal in the world. Why, he wouldn't be the 'pop' if he threw on side," asserted Cop loyally.
"You haven't told me who he is yet," said Shag.
"Oh, I forgot," apologized Cop. "It seems so funny that everybody shouldn't know. Why, he's Harry Bennington. You must have heard of Sir George Bennington, big railroad man. Queen Victoria knighted him for some big scoop he made for Canada or the Colonies or something. Well, Hal's his son; but do you suppose that his dad's title makes any difference to Hal? Not much! But Hal's handshake will make a big difference to you in this college, I'll tell you that, Shag. You're made, that's what you are—just made; even Lord Mortimer back of you couldn't give you the place among the crowd here that Hal Bennington's grip did to-day."
Shag did not reply; he was looking across the room at Sir George Bennington's son. He knew the name of the wealthy man whom Queen Victoria had honored, knew it well. His father, Trapper Larocque, had met Sir George in the old pioneer days of the railroad in the North-West. There was a little story about Sir George, well-known in the Red River Valley; Trapper Larocque knew it, the Hudson's Bay Company knew it, Shag knew it, and was asking himself if Hal knew it. Then the boy from Manitoba took the story and locked it within his heart, sealed his lips above it, and said to his soul, "Hal Bennington won't know it from me, nor will anyone else. He's made my first day at this school an easy day; the fight won't be half what I thought it would. I owe much to him, and above all I owe him my silence."
"Coming up, fellows?" asked Hal genially, as Cop Billings stretched his big frame after grind in the evening at recreation hour before going to bed. The word "fellows" embraced him with a look that included Shag.
"Thanks, I guess we will," said Cop, and the three boys proceeded upstairs to the private room occupied by Hal and one other, a stocky fellow known as "Shorty" Magee, who was just settling to his letter-writing as the boys entered. He nodded curtly, said "Hello!" rather grumpily, and did not offer to shake hands when Hal introduced Shag Larocque. Shorty always hated to be disturbed at anything, even if it were the irksome weekly letter home. He shoved aside his note-paper, however, and sat with his hands in his trousers pockets, his feet stretched out in front of him, and a tolerant expression on his face.
Hal, always gracious and kindly, seemed more so than ever to-night, evidently trying to make up for his roommate's moroseness by his own geniality. He showed Shag his treasures, his collection of curiosities, his two lynx-skin rugs—animals shot by his father years before—his pet books, and finally came to his photographs.
"This is a splendid one of father," he said enthusiastically; "it was taken when he was a young man surveying out West before they put the railroad through. That group of men to the left are axe-men. It should interest you, for Professor Warwick told me you came here to study surveying."
"Yes," said Shag, "that is my chosen work."
"Then," continued Hal, "that splendid-looking chap on father's right was his guide and personal cook—the one in the blanket coat and sash. He was part French but mostly Indian, I fancy—Why, what's the matter, Larocque?" for Shag had suddenly made some inarticulate exclamation, and had carried the photograph nearer the light.