Johnson, E. Pauline (1861–1913)

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Johnson, E. Pauline (1861–1913)

Poet and writer, who emphasized her native Indian heritage to become a popular and acclaimed recitalist throughout Canada and England. Name variations: Tekahionwake; Emily Pauline Johnson; The Mohawk Princess. Born Emily Pauline Johnson on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Indian Reserve near Brant-ford, Ontario, Canada; died of cancer on March 7, 1913, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; daughter of George Henry Martin Johnson (a Mohawk chief and Canadian government interpreter) and Emily Susanna (Howells) Johnson; never married; no children.

Attended school in Brantford (1875–77); death of her father (1884); gave first public recital (1892); made trip to England and published first book (1894); death of mother and marriage cancelled (1898); toured Canada and England as platform entertainer (1892–1909); retired in Vancouver (1909).

Selected publications:

The White Wampum (1894); Canadian Born (1903); Legends of Vancouver (1911); The Shaganappi (1913); The Mocassin Maker (1913). Selected poems: "The Song My Paddle Sings," "In the Shadows," "At the Ferry," "Fight On," "Canadian Born," and "Riders of the Plains."

At the peak of her career as an entertainer, E. Pauline Johnson toured Canada reciting her own poems and other works, wearing the traditional buckskin and beads of a Mohawk and appeared onstage under the names of Tekahion-wake and The Mohawk Princess. Biologically, she was in fact less than half Indian; both her mother and her great-grandmother on her father's side were white. By Canadian law, however, she was designated an Indian; more important, she saw herself as Indian and chose throughout her life to emphasize her Mohawk background and to minimize her white ancestry. She took pride in her ancestry, believing the Mohawks to be a distinguished and noble race. As she once wrote:

There are those who think they pay me a compliment in saying that I am just like a white woman. My aim, my joy, my pride is to sing the glories of my own people. Ours was the race that gave the world its measure of heroism, its standard of physical prowess. Ours was the race that taught the world that avarice veiled by any name is crime. Ours were the people of the blue air and the green woods, and ours the faith that taught men to live without greed and die without fear.

"Singing the glories" of her people to a wide and predominantly white audience, Johnson may have succeeded to some small extent in diminishing the prejudice against the native peoples of Canada at the beginning of the 20th century.

Born on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Indian Reserve outside of Brantford, Ontario, Pauline Johnson was the fourth child of George Henry Martin Johnson and Emily Howells Johnson . George Johnson came from a prominent Mohawk family, whose members had joined with the British in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. George's father, John "Smoke" Johnson, was a hero of the War of 1812, who had fought alongside Sir Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights and in other major battles. Through his mother, George Johnson inherited his position as a chieftain and sat on the senate of the Iroquois Confederacy. Fluent in Mohawk and five other languages of the Six Nations, as well as English, French, and German, he held the position of Canadian government interpreter on the reserve. Emily Howells came from Ohio to live with her sister, the wife of an Anglican minister who ran a reserve mission. The young couple's romance brought opposition from both families. George's relatives were particularly opposed because his title to the chieftaincy could not be passed to the sons of a white woman. Nevertheless, the couple persisted and were married in August 1853.

The family was not wealthy but lived comfortably on George's government income. Their home, designated Chiefswood, sat on the outskirts of the reserve, and by the standards of the time, even for the white middle class, it was a stately place. George and Emily entertained many prominent white guests, both government officials and those in the arts. In her early years, Pauline seldom played with other Mohawk children, and she attended school on the reserve only briefly.

From an early age, Pauline was taught to be proud of her native ancestry. From her father, she learned a respect for Mohawk history, legend, and ceremony, which her mother also encouraged. In her childhood, her grandfather spent countless hours telling her stories of his own exploits as well as the history and legends of their people. In later life, many of these legends, as well as her sense of pride in the Mohawk past, were to find their way into her short stories and poetry, including these lines from The Re-Internment of Red Jacket, written in 1884:

And few to-day remain:
But copper-tinted face, and smoldering fire
Of wilder life, were left me by my sire
To be my proudest claim.

In 1865, and again in 1873, George Johnson was brutally beaten, and almost died, because of his efforts to end the illegal traffic in liquor on the reserve. On the whole, however, the peaceful life of his family was rarely disturbed. Pauline was close to her three older siblings and idolized both her parents, perceiving them to be the perfect couple, blessed with an enduring and romantic love. In her early years, she suffered from frequent earaches, colds, and bronchitis, but as she reached her teenage years she grew stronger and began to pursue activities common to Mohawk children. As her siblings left home for schools in other cities, she grew skilled in archery and snowshoeing, and canoeing became her passion. As a young woman, she spent countless hours canoeing on the Grand River, alone or with friends, recognized for her abilities by members of local canoeing clubs.

Poetry became her other passion, evident from an early age. The vast library of the Johnson home was filled with the works of Scott, Longfellow, Byron, and Shakespeare. Emily Howells Johnson loved poetry and valued literature. Thus, Pauline's early education, taught first by her mother and then by a governess, emphasized literature above all else. According to some sources, Pauline was creating poems perhaps even before she could write them down. When, at age 14, she was finally sent to Brantford to attend school, Pauline did well in the literary areas and enjoyed extracurricular activities, such as acting.

My aim, my joy, my pride is to sing the glories of my own people.
—Pauline Johnson

In the two years she attended Brantford Collegiate, from 1875 to 1877, it is not clear to what extent Pauline contended with prejudice, but given the prevailing attitudes toward Indians at the time, she must have been affected by it. But as a gregarious, cheerful, and charming girl, she made friends easily and seems to have fit in well, developing a group of friends which lasted beyond the school years.

In 1877, at age 16, Johnson returned to Chiefswood, where her next few years were spent in a happy and idyllic cycle of canoeing, reading, writing, and entertaining friends. But following the death of her father, in February 1884, Emily Johnson could no longer maintain Chiefswood without her husband's income. In the spring of 1885, Pauline moved with her mother and sister Eva into a small home in Brantford; her two brothers were already living away from home.

In 1885, Pauline's poem "My Little Jean" became her first published piece, appearing in a New York magazine called Gems of Poetry. Other works followed, in this magazine and others, and her gifts as a poet gained recognition in literary circles.

Why Johnson began to pursue publication at this point is not entirely clear. She loved poetry and had been writing it for some time. Reading and writing verse were acceptable activities for leisured, respectable, middle-class women of the day, and she may have considered herself simply to be passing the time as she waited for marriage. If she hoped to earn support for herself and her mother, it must have been evident that poetry alone would not provide her with a living, regardless of how popular or prolific she became. In January 1892, however, an invitation to recite one of her poems, at a social evening for the Young Liberal Club of Toronto, demonstrated an available means for financial survival.

In the age before television and radio, people often gathered to hear live music, the reading of poetry, and plays. On the night Pauline was first asked to recite, she discovered her talent as an entertainer. Although she lacked training in what was then called "elocution," she had a natural magnetism that carried across the stage lights, and an ability to project the emotion and passion of her work with her body and voice.

The club's organizer, Frank Yeigh, quickly recognized her gifts and arranged a public tour for the young woman across Ontario and eastern Canada. Over the next few months, she made 125 appearances in Ontario and Quebec. In sparsely populated Canada, communities were enormous distances apart; a performer on such a circuit stopped at every small and remote community, performing night after night. But Pauline found the lifestyle compatible; except for brief breaks, she would continue at it until her retirement in 1909.

In the fall of 1892, Johnson teamed up with a fellow entertainer, Owen Smiley. It was common for such shows to have more than one act, providing the entertainers with a break and variety for the audience, and Smiley was an experienced and accomplished platform entertainer whose light-hearted and humorous singing complemented Johnson's poetry readings. In the five years they toured together, their act became one of the most popular in the country.

In 1892, Frank Yeigh coined the stage title of "The Mohawk Princess"; Johnson later supplemented it with the Indian name "Tekahion-wake." Understanding what it took to make her act appeal to the average audience, Johnson appreciated the commercial value of her Indian background. By 1894, she was appearing for part of the program in a costume featuring a fringed and beaded buckskin dress with leggings and moccasins, with wampum belts, a hunting knife, and even a Huron scalp as accessories. She also diversified her act. In 1891, she had begun to write short stories incorporating Indian legends, which she later adapted as short plays she and her partner would use onstage, interspersed with crowd-pleasing jokes and bits of doggerel.

From 1892, Johnson justified her tours to her mother by claiming she would perform only as long as it took to earn money to publish a collection of her poems. In turn-of-the-century Canada, stage performers in general, and actresses in particular, were viewed as morally corrupt, following a lifestyle beneath the respectability of the middle class. In April 1894, when Johnson took her act to England, she had earned enough money to arrange for the publication of her poetry. Released late that year by a prestigious British publishing company, The White Wampum was well received by the critics and had robust sales in its first edition. The poet, meanwhile, had become a celebrity in the homes of the British upper classes, as guest and performer, before returning to Canada in July 1894; but her life on the stage was not over. Now she justified her career appearances to her mother by arguing that she needed to promote her book.

Johnson's partnership with Smiley ended in 1897, and in February 1898 her touring was interrupted by the death of her mother. It was a devastating event for Johnson, who had been close to her mother throughout her life, and was shortly followed by another. In January 1898, it had been announced that Pauline was to marry Charles Drayton, a socially prominent young man who was an assistant inspector for the Western Canada Savings and Loan Company. Although the newspapers continued to mention the impending marriage for more than a year, the relationship was threatened from the outset by severe opposition from the Drayton family. Pauline was a Mohawk Indian, engaged in a questionable profession, and, at age 37, was 11 years older than Charles; though she maintained a circle of socially and politically prominent friends and there had never been any scandal associated with her, the Drayton family undoubtedly found the marriage unacceptable. Regardless of the cause, the engagement ended sometime in 1898. Throughout her life, Johnson was exceedingly charming, beautiful, and surrounded by an exotic aura; she had always attracted men. For reasons only she knew, Charles Drayton was the only man she considered a suitable partner. With the end of their relationship, she probably knew that she would never marry. In those days, a woman of 37 was considered past the age of marriageability.

Professionally and emotionally, Johnson's next few years remained difficult. Without a partner and inept at handling the business of bookings and promotion, she was in constant financial difficulties until 1901, when she teamed up with J. Walter McRaye. McRaye was one of the innumerable second-rate entertainers who toured Canada and the U.S., never achieving recognition or popularity and barely making a living. However, McRaye was excellent at handling the business and financial aspects of touring. Johnson was by this time a recognized talent, and many among her family did not understand her choice of McRaye. But what Pauline did not need was another "star"; she was better off with someone willing to take second billing, fill in during her shows, and allow her a break and time to change. Also, as a business manager he performed well.

The partnership was perfect for the next eight years. Johnson and McRaye were on the road almost constantly, from one end of Canada to the other. In 1906, they toured England, where they were also well received. They performed everywhere, from cities and towns to the smallest and most remote outposts, before audiences of both the elite and the common folk. In November 1901, they played the prestigious Orme Hall in Ottawa with the Canadian prime minister and his wife in attendance; by early 1902, they were in southeastern British Columbia, playing in front of miners in makeshift halls. Johnson seems to have enjoyed these ventures into isolated areas. In the summer of 1904, she toured the remote communities of northern British Columbia, where travel over 400 miles was by horse and buggy. Pauline viewed the booking as an adventurous holiday.

In 1903, Johnson took a break from touring to prepare for the publication of a second collection of poems, called Canadian Born. The book did not receive the critical praise that had accompanied her first. Most of the material had been written for performance. Effective when recited on the stage, these poems lacked the style, emotion, and content to endure. Years as a platform performer had accustomed her to writing for commercial ends, and the efforts to sustain her career on tour no doubt hindered her ability to mature artistically. Given her earlier show of talent, one can only speculate about the quality of the work she might have produced had she managed to devote more time to writing in solitude.

The lifestyle of a platform entertainer was hard, with its endless travel, poor accommodations, and often bad food. In 1909, at age 48, Johnson was finding it difficult to rally the energy for her performances and decided to retire. Since 1891, she had been producing articles and short stories, often about the lives and legends of Native peoples, which had appeared in a number of magazines. From her years on the road, she could detail her stories with unusual characters or romantic figures like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and describe the culture and scenery of remote places. As a public figure, she had a following who would be interested in her work, and she believed she could publish enough work to live

comfortably. Thus, in August, she settled into a small apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia.

For some time, however, Johnson had been ignoring visible signs of illness. In October 1909, she was finally persuaded by a friend to see a doctor, who found her to be in the advanced stages of breast cancer. By then there was little that could be done beyond treating her for pain. Nevertheless, Johnson plunged wholeheartedly into writing stories, which were bought by The Boys' World and Mother's Magazine. Through her friendship with a chief of the Squamish people of coastal British Columbia, she became interested in preserving the history and legends of the tribe, and wrote several articles which appeared as a series in a Vancouver magazine.

By 1911, however, pain and the effects of morphine injections to counteract it were lessening her ability to work. Unable to bring in income, she was considering a return to her family in Ontario when a group of women friends intervened and arranged for the publication of three collections of her prose works.

Legends of Vancouver was the first of the books, which sold vigorously. Johnson had a wide following, and many people were willing to buy, sometimes at a high price, out of a desire to help. Johnson was able to remain in Vancouver as she wished and received excellent private medical care until her death on March 7, 1913. Because of her popularity, E. Pauline Johnson died knowing that the material of her books would help preserve the heritage of her people for future generations.