The Shagganappi | Page 2

all times, and over and above it all the sad note that tells of a
proud race, conscious that it has been crushed by numbers, that its day
is over and its heritage gone forever.
Oh, reader of the alien race, keep this in mind: remember that no people
ever ride the wave's crest unceasingly. The time must come for us to go
down, and when it comes may we have the strength to meet our fate
with such fortitude and silent dignity as did the Red Man his.
"Oh, why have your people forced on me the name of Pauline
Johnson?" she said. "Was not my Indian name good enough? Do you
think you help us by bidding us forget our blood? by teaching us to cast
off all memory of our high ideals and our glorious past? I am an Indian.
My pen and my life I devote to the memory of my own people. Forget
that I was Pauline Johnson, but remember always that I was
Tekahionwake, the Mohawk that humbly aspired to be the saga singer
of her people, the bard of the noblest folk the world has ever seen, the
sad historian of her own heroic race."
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON.

CONTENTS
The Shagganappi The King's Coin
A Night with "North Eagle"
Hoolool of the Totem Pole
The Wolf-Brothers
We-hro's Sacrifice

The Potlatch
The Scarlet Eye
Sons of Savages
Jack o' Lantern
The Barnardo Boy
The Broken String
Maurice of His Majesty's Mails
The Whistling Swans
The Delaware Idol
The King Georgeman
Gun-Shy Billy
The Brotherhood
The Signal Code
The Saucy Seven
Little Wolf-Willow

The Shagganappi
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