Flint and Feather | Page 4

of a poet so rare--so full of
the spirit of the open air.
Naturally I turned to his introductory remarks to see who Pauline
Johnson was. I was not at all surprised to find that she had Indian blood
in her veins, but I was surprised and delighted to find that she belonged
to a famous Indian family--the Mohawks of Brantford. The Mohawks
of Brantford! that splendid race to whose unswerving loyalty during
two centuries not only Canada, but the entire British Empire owes a
debt that can never be repaid.
After the appearance of my article I got a beautiful letter from Pauline
Johnson, and I found that I had been fortunate enough to enrich my life
with a new friendship.
And now as to the genius of Pauline Johnson: it was being recognised
not only in Canada, but all over the great Continent of the West. Since
1889 I have been following her career with a glow of admiration and
sympathy. I have been delighted to find that this success of hers had no
damaging effect upon the grand simplicity of her nature. Up to the day
of her death her passionate sympathy with the aborigines of Canada

never flagged, as shown by such poems as "The Cattle Thief", "The
Pilot of the Plains", "As Red Men Die", and many another. During all
this time, however, she was cultivating herself in a thousand
ways--taking interest in the fine arts, as witness her poem "The Art of
Alma-Tadema". Her native power of satire is shown in the lines written
after Dreyfus was exiled, called "'Give us Barabbas'". She had also a
pretty gift of vers de societe, as seen in her lines "Your Mirror Frame".
Her death is not only a great loss to those who knew and loved her: it is
a great loss to Canadian literature and to the Canadian nation. I must
think that she will hold a memorable place among poets in virtue of her
descent and also in virtue of the work she has left behind, small as the
quantity of that work is. I believe that Canada will, in future times,
cherish her memory more and more, for of all Canadian poets she was
the most distinctly a daughter of the soil, inasmuch as she inherited the
blood of the great primeval race now so rapidly vanishing, and of the
greater race that has supplanted it.
In reading the description of the funeral in the "News-Advertiser," I
was specially touched by the picture of the large crowd of silent Red
Men who lined Georgia Street, and who stood as motionless as statues
all through the service, and until the funeral cortege had passed on the
way to the cemetery. This must have rendered the funeral the most
impressive and picturesque one of any poet that has ever lived.
Theodore Watts-Dunton.
The Pines,
Putney Hill.
20th August, 1913.
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
This collection of verse I have named "Flint and Feather" because of
the association of ideas. Flint suggests the Red Man's weapons of war;
it is the arrow tip, the heart-quality of mine own people; let it therefore
apply to those poems that touch upon Indian life and love. The lyrical
verse herein is as a

"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 missionaires 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