E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we're
going to talk about someone who listeners in Canada may
be familiar with, and folks in other parts of the

(00:23):
world might not be. It is Emily Pauline Johnson, also
known as Degaionega, who made a career writing poetry and
prose and performing it on stage in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Pauline's mother was British and her
father was Mohawk, and Degaon was her great grandfather's name.

(00:46):
I have seen it translated as double wampum, double life,
and two streams, So regardless of the exact specifics there,
the idea of two or doubling isn't all of them.
Pauline adopted the gay yon Wa Gay as a stage
name and a pen name, and she performed and published
a lot of her work under both of these names

(01:07):
as and it would say e Pauline Johnson Degayona Gay.
Most people that I have seen writing and speaking about
her today, including other members of the Mohawk Nation, referred
to her as Pauline Johnson. So I've also heard three
pretty different pronunciations of dega yon waka. If you're like,
that's not quite how I've heard it before, I heard

(01:27):
it a number of slightly different ways. You just gotta
pick one at the end of the day. Emily Pauline
Johnson was born on March tenth, eighteen sixty one, at
her family's home on the Six Nations Reserve. This is
outside the city of Brantford and what's now the province
of Ontario. Her parents were George Henry Martin Johnson and

(01:47):
Emily Susannah Howells, and she was the youngest of their
four children. Emily had been born in Bristol, England, and
her family had immigrated to the United States when she
was still a child. She met George after her sister Eliza,
got married to the Reverend Alan Elliott, who was an
Anglican missionary. Alan worked on the Sixth Nations Reserve and

(02:09):
George was his interpreter and lived in the parsonage with him.
Emily and George met when Emily was visiting her sister,
and they fell in love. After George contracted typhoid, Eliza
had asked Emily to come and help take care of him.
When George and Emily got married, it was over both
their famili's objections and in spite of controversy. In both

(02:31):
Indigenous and European communities, marriages between white men and indigenous
women had been relatively common during the early decades of
European colonization of Canada, when most colonists were men, but
marriages between white women and Indigenous men had never been
viewed in quite the same way. In the European ideal,

(02:52):
white women were examples of purity, while indigenous men were
thought of as uncivilized or savage, so pete were objected
to the idea of a supposedly pure woman marrying a
supposedly uncivilized man. Has more Europeans had emigrated to Canada,
interracial marriages had also become less and less socially acceptable overall.

(03:16):
One of Emily's brothers in law, the Reverend Robert Rogers,
not only refused to officiate her marriage to George, but
also spent years refusing to acknowledge that the marriage existed
at all. Robert told Emily that any children she might
ever have with George would never be allowed to associate

(03:36):
with his children with her sister Mary. Beyond that, the
Mohawk nation has a matrilineal kinship system, and George's mother
was a clan mother within the Wolf clan. George had
also followed his maternal uncle as a hereditary chief with
his mother's backing. Marrying a white woman rather than a
Mohawk woman meant that roles that have been passed down

(03:58):
through their family for generations could not be passed along
to his children, something that his mother was deeply upset about.
Many Indigenous people were also angry that, under provincial law,
Emily would automatically be considered indigenous after marrying an Indigenous man,
regardless of what the tribe's own laws said about her citizenship.

(04:20):
But George and Emily loved each other and they got
married in spite of all this. In eighteen fifty three,
as a wedding gift, George started building a spacious home
on the Grand River known as Chiefs Would. It was
finished about three years later. He built this home with
identical entrances on two sides, one of them facing the

(04:42):
road and the other facing the river, so that Indigenous
visitors who often came by canoe and European visitors, who
usually came by road. Both felt as though they were
being greeted at the front of the house. I love
that detail to this kind of duality was threaded all
through paul means life. Her father spoke multiple languages, including

(05:03):
the Mohawk language and other languages from the six nations
of the Hadenishawnee, as well as English, French, and German.
He worked as an interpreter and a cultural liaison, and
in addition to being an hereditary chief, he also held
various positions for the provincial government. Most of the time
he went by George, spoke English and war European style clothes,

(05:25):
but when it came to formal or ceremonial tribal events,
he wore Mohawk style clothing and used a Mohawk name.
He had a few other names over the course of
his life, the most well known being own one known Shoshon.
Emily was dedicated to the idea that Pauline and her
siblings should love and honor their Mohawk heritage and ancestry,

(05:47):
but she was also worried that white society might judge
them for it, so, in addition to raising them with
a very clear sense that they were Mohawk. Emily also
tried to mold them all into a very picture perfect
ex ample of a Victorian British family. She had a
lot of rules about etiquette and dress and behavior that

(06:08):
they were all expected to follow very scrupulously. In terms
of their education, George had attended the Mohawk Institute Residential
School in Brantford, which was established in eighteen thirty one
as one of the first residential schools for Indigenous children
in Canada, and he sent his sons there as well.
The Mohawk Institute eventually became a template for a formalized,

(06:31):
government backed network of schools meant to separate Indigenous children
from their families, cultures, languages, and identities, and to force
them to assimilate with white society. In nineteen twenty, the
Canadian government made attendance at the school's mandatory for Indigenous children,
and thousands of children died in them while they were
in operation. Today we understand that this was a tool

(06:54):
of cultural genocide, and these schools existed alongside laws and
government policies that were explicitly designed to destroy Indigenous cultures
and traditions and to force Indigenous people to assimilate with
white society. That part hadn't happened yet when George started
at the Mohawk Institute, which was shortly after it opened,

(07:15):
or when he sent his children there. But the roots
of this whole system and the focus on assimilation really
stretched all the way back to the first Christian missionary
efforts in Canada, and conditions at the Mohawk Institute were
cruel from the beginning. George and Emily sent their oldest son,
Henry Beverly known as Beverly or Bev, in part to

(07:37):
act as an example for other Mohawk families who were
reluctant to send their children to the school, but Bev
was miserable and homesick the whole time. They sent their
son Alan as well, but after he ran away to
his grandparents house, they did not make him go back.
Pauline's sister Evelyn known as Eva, went to Helmets Ladies
College in London, Ontario instead. Pauline, though was educated primarily

(08:02):
at home. She had been seriously ill several times as
a child, and her mother was acutely worried about her health.
Emily Johnson had watched three of her sister Eliza's children
die during an outbreak of scarlet fever, and then Eliza
herself had died of tuberculosis, and all of that naturally
heightened Emily's fears about Pauline's health. So Pauline had governesses

(08:27):
and tutors and access to her mother's very large library
of English literature. She learned Mohawk history and folklore from
her Mohawk family members, especially her grandfather, John Johnson, who
was known as Smoke Johnson. This is apparently because his
Mohawk name was translated into English along the lines of
disappearing of the Indian summer missed. Like Pauline's father, her

(08:52):
grandfather was prominent within the Mohawk. He had been named
Pine Tree Chief, which was a non hereditary position now
for the War of eighteen twelve. The Johnson family's position
in both Mohawk and European communities meant that throughout Pauline's
childhood they hosted all kinds of dignitaries and other important
people at Chiefswood. This included Arthur, Duke of Connacht, third

(09:15):
son of Queen Victoria, who was named Chief of the
Six Nations in eighteen sixty nine, Alexander Graham Bell and
his mother visited chiefs Wood as well, and at one
point the family saw a trial of Bell's telephone, with
George sending his message across the line in Mohawk. But
there were also times when George's life was threatened as

(09:36):
he tried to mediate between white and Mohawks societies and
protect the people of the Six Nations Reserve. When Pauline
was for George tried to put a stop to illegal
alcohol trafficking into the reserve and he was attacked and
badly beaten by two non Indigenous bootleggers. This is one
of at least three times that he was attacked and

(09:58):
seriously hurt as he fought back against things like illegal
liquor and illegal bootlegging on First Nation's land. Eventually, Pauline's
parents thought she was well enough to attend a reserve
day school, but by that point she had trouble fitting in.
She had developed a very particular demeanor under her mother's
many rules, and she was so passionately interested in British

(10:20):
literature and poetry that she had a really hard time
connecting with her classmates. After this, though, from the ages
of fourteen to sixteen, Pauline went to the Brantford Collegiate Institute,
which was far enough away from Chiefswood that she had
to stay with friends in town during the week and
then she would go back home on weekends. It really
seems like away from the rest of the family, she

(10:42):
started to grow into a more personable, friendly, fun loving
young woman. She loved making friends and canoeing and writing,
especially writing poetry. Her writing later made her famous, which
we will get to after a sponsor break. After Emily

(11:06):
Pauline Johnson returned home from Brantford Collegiate Institute in eighteen
eighty seven, the assumption was that she would soon be
getting married, and she did reportedly have a lot of
suitors and several marriage proposals, although we really don't know
a lot of the details. Her sister Eva destroyed most
of Pauline's personal papers after her death. Eva was a

(11:28):
poet and a writer as well, but she thought their
private lives should remain private, and she similarly destroyed a
lot of her own correspondence to Pauline did not get married, though,
she kept living at Chiefswood with her parents and sister,
spending her time writing, camping and canoeing, which was something
she dearly loved. But then in eighteen eighty four, her

(11:49):
father died. As we had said earlier, he had been
attacked several times, including once in eighteen seventy three when
he was shot and left for dead. He had been
permanently disabled in disfigured, and he dealt with chronic pain
in recurring skin infections. Although he had been living with
all of this for years, his death at the age
of sixty seven was unexpected. Pauline's brothers had already moved

(12:13):
away and they had established careers elsewhere. They tried to
send money home to their mother and sisters. Eva also
got a job working as a clerk for the local
Indian superintendent, but they really just couldn't make ends meet
without George's income. Aside from that, chiefs Wood was situated
on about two acres of land, and there was a

(12:34):
farm and orchards, and the three women just could not
maintain it on their own. In eighty five, they leased
out Chiefs Would and they rented a small house in Brantford,
and Pauline started trying to publish her work to help
support them. This was obviously a difficult time for all
three of them. In addition to their grief over George's death.

(12:56):
Pauline's grandfather, Smoke Johnson, died in eighteen eighty six. Their
home at Chiefs Wood had been large and comfortable, and
they had been well off, and now they were in
a much smaller space on a much tighter budget. Pauline
also lost most of her connections to the Six Nations
Reserve after her grandfather's death, so a lot of her

(13:16):
writing about the Mohawk or Indigenous people more broadly was
rooted more in her childhood memories than on current realities,
and Pauline's writing really wasn't adding very much to their income.
She published poems and magazines and newspapers, and she did
some work for formal occasions, including the dedication of a

(13:36):
statue of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, who had fought for
the British during the American Revolution. This is in October
of eighteen eighty six, and afterwards. Pauline's poem was covered
in the Toronto Globe. But while she was making some
headway in Canadian newspapers and magazines, she really struggled to
publish in the US, especially in major magazines that might

(13:57):
have paid her more. She wrote patriotic poems about Canada,
poems about the beauty of the Canadian landscape, poems inspired
by her Mohawk heritage or indigenous history, and it just
was not resonating with editors in the US. She eventually
became so discouraged that she thought about giving up, but
she had sent some of her writing to American poet

(14:20):
John Greenleaf Whittier, whose work similarly included pastoral poems about
rural New England. His letter back to her was so
gracious and encouraging that it really lifted her spirits. But
Pauline's big break didn't come from Whittier. It came from
her reading she gave at the Young Men's Liberal Club
of Toronto in eight two, when she was thirty one.

(14:43):
An old school friend, Frank Ya, had invited her to
appear at this and she chose to recite a poem
called A Cry from an Indian Wife, which is written
from the point of view of a maighty woman during
the Northwest Rebellion of five This poem illustrates what Pauline
was doing with a lot of her work that directly
related to Indigenous people. It was written to be accessible

(15:06):
to a white audience, but it also did not shy
away from subjects that would make that same audience uncomfortable.
This included leaning on the kind of linguistic tropes that
white audiences would expect from a first nation's poet. The
poem's first line is quote my forest, brave, my red
skin love farewell, but later lines are quite pointed, writing

(15:28):
quote they but forget we Indians owned the land from
ocean onto ocean, that they stand upon, a soil that,
centuries a gone was our sole kingdom and our right alone.
They never think how they would feel today if some
great nation came from far away, resting their country from
their hapless braves, giving what they gave us, but wars

(15:50):
and graves from there. The speaker in this poem imagines
a white woman praying for the safety of her own
husband heading off to fight in the same conflict, before
ending quote, she never thinks of my wild aching breast,
nor praise for your dark face. An eagle crest endangered
by a thousand rifle balls my heart the target. If

(16:13):
my warrior falls, oh coward self, I hesitate no more
go forth, And when the glories of the war go forth,
nor bend to greed of white man's hands, by rights,
by birth, we Indians on these lands, those starved, crushed,
plundered lies, our nation low. Perhaps the white man's God

(16:34):
has willed it. So Pauline treated this event as more
of a performance than a straight reading, and the reception
was extremely positive. A newspaper right up about it said
in part quote, ms. E. Pauline Johnson may be said
to have been the pleasantest contribution of the evening. It
was like the voice of the nations that once possessed
this country, who have wasted away before our civilization, speaking

(16:57):
through this cultured, gifted, saw off face descendant. Pauline developed
the performance style that she became famous for. From there,
she billed herself as E. Pauline Johnson Decaiona Gay and
spent the first half of the performance in indigenous dress,
reading work that focused on mohawk and other indigenous themes,

(17:18):
and then she would change into a Victorian gown and
read other work like pastoral poems about the beauty of Canada,
or love poems, patriotic poems, things like that. All of
this was carefully tailored to appeal to white audiences. Her
outfit for the first half of the performance wasn't any
particular indigenous regalia. It was a costume inspired by an

(17:41):
illustration of Minnie Ha ha from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song
of Hiawatha. Some of this costume choice was because at
this point many Mohawk women were wearing European style clothing,
but those who were to often wore tunics, leggings, and blankets,
which Pauline didn't think would come together in an appealing
or lattering stage ensemble. She shopped around trying to find

(18:03):
something authentic that would give her the look that she
wanted on stage, before finally buying a dress from Hudson's
Bay Company in Winnipeg and significantly modifying it with buckskin, fringe,
fur pelts, and beads. She added to this costume over
the years, also wearing a bear claw necklace and carrying
a hunting knife that had belonged to her father. In

(18:24):
addition to poetry, Pauline also wrote essays and stories, and
as all of this was happening, she won a short
story contest for A Red Girl's Reasoning, and that became
her first published piece of fiction. This is about a
woman named Christine whose father was English and whose mother
was indigenous. Christine and her new husband, Charlie, who is white,

(18:45):
are at a social gathering when a conversation reveals that
Christine's parents were married through indigenous customs and not through
a Christian marriage ceremony or at least a magistrate. Charlie
and a lot of the other people around them are
appalled at what, to them is a scandalous revelation. When
asked why her parents didn't get married by a priest

(19:08):
or a missionary once there was one in the area
where they were living, Christine answers, quote, do you suppose
that my mother would be married according to your white
rights after she had been five years a wife and
I had been born in the meantime? No. A thousand
times I say no. When the priest came with his
notions of Christianizing and talked to them of remarriage by

(19:29):
the church, my mother arose and said, never never. I
have never had but this one husband. He has had
none but me for wife. And to have you remarry
us would be to say as much to the whole
world as that we had never been married. Before you
go away, I do not ask that your people be remarried.
Talk not so to me, I am married, and you

(19:51):
or the church cannot do or undo it. Pauline's career
really took off in late eighteen. Between October of that
year in May she did a hundred and twenty five
performances in fifty cities and towns, which is just a
colossal number. I can barely imagine how exhausting that must

(20:14):
have been. We will get to how her career grew
from there after another quick sponsor break. Pauline Johnson understood
that by incorporating an Indian princess costume and drawing from
the stilted language and idioms that white people associated with

(20:38):
native speech, she was kind of pandering to white people's
sensibilities and potentially reinforcing some stereotypes. At one point, she
replied to somebody who had written to her about this
and said, quote, more than all things, I hate and despise,
brain debasement, literary pot boiling, and yet I have done

(20:58):
will do these things, though I sneer at my own
littleness in so doing. The reason of my actions in
this matter, well, the reason is that the public will
not listen to lyrics, will not appreciate real poetry, will
not in fact have me as an entertainer if I
give them nothing but rhythm, cadence, beauty thought. But she

(21:21):
also created a persona and a literary voice that felt
comfortable and safe to white audiences, and she used that
as an opportunity to push back against injustice and racism,
or to undermine those same stereotypes. She also commented directly
on specific issues through her work. This included, as one example,

(21:41):
the residential schools that her father and brothers had gone to,
which at this point had come under federal control. The
poem Her Sister's Son was part of her regular performance repertoire,
but was never published in full. It read, in part quote,
for they killed the best that was in me when
they said I must not return, turned to my father's lodge,
to my mother's arms, when my heart would burn and burn,

(22:05):
For when dead is a daughter's womanhood, there is nothing
left that is grand and good. Because of her more
pastoral work on the beauty of the rural Canadian landscape
and her more patriotic poems about Canada, Pauline Johnson has
sometimes included among a group of Canadian poets known as
the Confederation Poets. These are writers that were born sometime

(22:28):
in the eighteen sixties and were the first poets to
really come to national prominence after the Confederation of Canada
in eighteen sixty seven, and they're really considered to have
formed the foundations of the Canadian literary tradition. By eighteen
ninety four, Pauline was touring all over Canada as well
as into parts of the US, and she traveled to

(22:49):
London that year as well. Apart from the extreme physical
and emotional demands of this kind of schedule, she faced
personal difficulties during this time. Her brother Beverly, died of
apparent heart failure while she was away on tour, and
her sister Evelyn was increasingly frustrated that Pauline was never
home to help with their responsibilities there. Evelyn and their

(23:11):
mother were both deeply disappointed whenever Pauline would come back
to Brantford, only to turn around and head out on
tour again. It didn't help that even though she and
her touring partner Owen Smiley were charging venues seventy five
dollars a night to perform were fifty dollars if the
crowd was really small, she never seemed to have much
money to send back home. Apart from the cost of

(23:34):
travel and keeping herself fed and housed, she was generous
with her money, especially if she thought somebody really needed it.
And she just wasn't particularly good at budgeting. I've read
a lot of sources that just describe her as bad
with money. It just it flowed. Uh. Pauline's first book,
The White Wampum, was published in London. In that book

(23:57):
simply said de gahone w on the cover with the
title page including the name E. Pauline Johnson and Degacion M.
Gay underneath, And sometime Pauline became engaged to Charles Robert
Lumley Drayton. Later that same year, Pauline's mother died. Pauline
had gotten word that Emily was seriously ill while she

(24:18):
was on tour, and she canceled the rest of her
planned appearances that she could go back home. Her fiance's
mother went with her, and Emily Johnson died less than
an hour after Pauline arrived. This was the start of
a particularly difficult stretch for Pauline. Shortly after Emily's death,
Pauline developed a throat infection and then rheumatic fever, which

(24:40):
would affect her health for the rest of her life.
Then Charles's mother died, Pauline's already tense relationship with her
sister became even rockier as they butted heads over how
best to divide their mother's possessions and Pauline's refusal to
move home. Eva couldn't afford the house they'd been living
in by herself, she had to move for a period.

(25:02):
After this, Pauline and Eva were estranged. Then in nine hundred,
Charles called off their engagement and Pauline faced a series
of serious illnesses. At one point, she was so sick
that doctors thought she might not survive, and over the
course of her illness she dealt with skin infections and
also the loss of all of her hair. She finally

(25:23):
recovered though. Pauline also found a new touring partner, Walter
McCrae in nineteen o one, but her family loudly disapproved
of this choice. They thought McCrae was vulgar and that
she would damage her reputation by being associated with him.
For Pauline's part, she usually toured with a white man
as her partner, both for her own safety and to

(25:43):
help with logistics. Walter handled a lot of the management
end of things, and he was consistently loyal to her.
Johnson's second book, Canadian Born, was published in Toronto in
nineteen o three, but it wasn't reviewed as well as
White Wampham had been. It included a lot of her
earlier poems that she had already published, and critics just

(26:04):
didn't find it as fresh or original as they had
found her first book. Around this time, she decided to
focus on publishing more prose, with the hope that she
could earn more money than she was by publishing poetry.
Her performances were still the real money maker for her,
but without more income from publishing, it was still not enough.

(26:26):
She took another trip to London in nineteen o six,
something that she had been working toward for years but
could only do once she had paid off various debts
from earlier tours. And while she was there, she met
a delegation of indigenous leaders from the Pacific Northwest who
hoped to meet with King Edward the Seventh. One of
them was Squamish chiefs Appoluck, also known as Joseph Capellano.

(26:49):
We've talked so many times on the show about treaties
between indigenous Nations and Britain or the United States that
were inherently exploitive of the Indigenous names being treated with,
or which Britain or the US just ignored the terms
of or both and what's now British Columbia, Canada settlers
had moved into Indigenous lands without even the pretense of

(27:13):
a treaty. This delegation to Edward the seventh had been
formalized after the provincial government had unilaterally banned hunting and
fishing outside of formalized hunting seasons. They did this without
regard to the fact that Indigenous peoples lived by hunting
and fishing year round. Indigenous people's advocacy for themselves on

(27:34):
this issue had been ignored. Although this delegation did eventually
meet with the King, at this point they were still
waiting and they seemed homesick and dispirited, so Pauline and
Walter brought them a gift of tobacco, and Pauline greeted
them in the Pacific Northwest trading language known as Chinook Jargon,
which she knew a little of. She described their faces

(27:56):
as lighting up when they heard words from home, and
she and Belok became friends well. The King did eventually
meet with the delegation. As we said, he did not
take any action on their requests. Pauline and Walter returned
to North America in nineteen o seven, and shortly after
they arrived in Nova Scotia, the hotel where they were
staying caught fire. This was at Christmas time and the

(28:19):
hotel was nearly empty, so nobody else was on the
floor where their rooms were when Pauline smelled smoke. By
the time the fire department arrived, they thought it was
too dangerous for anybody to go to the upper floor,
so Pauline went herself, saving both hers and Walter's belongings.
This was extraordinarily dangerous, but Pauline knew that if she

(28:42):
did not go get her things, she was gonna lose everything,
and this included her father's hunting knife and other family
heirlooms that had become part of her touring costume. By
this point, Pauline had succeeded in her effort to publish
more prose, and her work was regularly appearing in Mother's
Magazine and Boy's World. She made another trip to London

(29:04):
in the summer of nineteen o seven. Although it's not
clear how she spent her time there. Unlike with all
her touring, this time she went by herself. After she
got back, she embarked on a Chatauqua tour. The Chatauqua
movement was a movement for adult education that flourished in
the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
and while Chatauqua lectures were usually well attended, the schedule

(29:28):
on the circuit was grueling. After having taken a brief
vacation in Vancouver, Johnson moved there permanently in nineteen o nine,
and this was the first time she had had a
permanent home since leaving for her first tour in eighteen
ninety two. She made a lot of friends. In particular,
there was a woman named Jean Johnson. The two of

(29:48):
them really loved to spend time in the outdoors, canoeing
and just generally hanging out and being a source of
mutual support for each other. Although Pauline's touring partners were men,
when it came to friendship and emotional connection, most of
the people closest to her were women. At one point,
she said in a letter quote women are fonder of
me than men are. I have had none failed me.

(30:10):
And I hope I have failed none. It is a
keen pleasure for me to meet a congenial woman, one
that I feel will understand me and will in turn
let me peep into her own life, having confidence in
me that this is one of the dearest things between friends, strangers, acquaintances,
or kindred in. Pauline Johnson was diagnosed with breast cancer.

(30:33):
She had noticed a lump in one of her breasts
a couple of years before, but she hadn't thought treatment.
Apart from the stigma associated with cancer in general and
breast cancer specifically, they're just weren't that many options for
treatment at the time. By the time this was diagnosed,
her ronely option was a mastectomy, but by the time

(30:54):
that diagnosis happened, her cancer had already metastasized. Pauline had
always tried to do things is her own way, and
she refused to ask for help. In nineteen eleven, some
of her friends organized the Pauline Johnson Trust to try
to raise money for her medical care and living expenses.
Canada's system of universal health care was still decades away

(31:14):
at this point. In nineteen eleven, her friends helped her
publish Legends of Vancouver, which was a collection of Squamish
legends and stories told to her by Sapoluk, who had
died on March tenth, nineteen ten. This was not the
title Pauline wanted for this book. These stories were not
about Vancouver at all, but her friends believed that the

(31:35):
book would sell better with that name, and they may
have been right. The first printing of one thousand copies
sold out within a week. Other editions followed, with more
than twenty thousand copies sold over the course of about
a year. Pauline was really sick by this point, and
she finished Legends of Vancouver by dictating her work to
her editor. Another book titled Flint and Feather followed in

(31:58):
nineteen twelve, and its publication seems to have been particularly
frustrating and chaotic. Pauline might not have been well enough
to prove the manuscript herself, like the documentation on this
is a little fuzzy, and afterwards she was dismayed at
a number of misprints and omitted verses. There. When Eva
heard how sick her sister was, she went to Vancouver.

(32:22):
She and Pauline had not seen each other in years
at that point, and although their relationship had improved since
its very lowest point, there was still a lot of
tension between them. They disagreed over everything from money to
where Pauline should be buried. They also just had totally
incompatible approaches to Pauline's illness. Pauline refused to acknowledge your

(32:44):
talk about it, while Eva wanted her to stop seemingly
ignoring the fact that she was dying. Pauline Johnson died
on March seventh, nine, even though she'd ask for nobody
to see her body. After her death, her friend Charles Marega,
who was a sculptor, may a death mask of her.
Her body was cremated, and at her request, her ashes

(33:05):
were buried at Stanley Park in Vancouver. Although some of
the land that became the park had been used as
a cemetery before that, burials were not being done there anymore.
She was the only person to be legally buried there
after the park was established in eighteen eighty six. There
was really a massive public outpouring for her funeral, with

(33:28):
people just lining the streets of Vancouver to see her
funeral procession, but the burial at the park was private.
In her will, Pauline left her performance costume and many
of her other belongings to the Museum of Vancouver. Some
of her papers and clippings from her tours are collected
at McMaster University. Pauline's book Moccasin Maker was published posthumously

(33:50):
in nineteen Some of her other works were collected and
republished after her death as well. In the Women's Canadian
Club did a monument at her burial site in the Park.
There had been plans for a much bigger and more
elaborate monument, but it was decided to be too expensive
in light of World War One. When Pauline's sister Evelyn

(34:12):
died in nineteen thirty seven, she left Chiefswood to the
Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Chief's Wood was
recognized as a historic site in nineteen fifty three and
it opened in a as a museum in nineteen sixty three.
It is still a museum. It is currently closed for renovations.
Pauline Johnson was tremendously famous during her life, and she's

(34:33):
probably the most widely read indigenous poet in Canada. In
nineteen forty five, she was named a National Historic Person.
In sixteen, Johnson was one of the women considered to
be shown on a Canadian bank note, which ultimately went
to recent podcast subject Viola Desmond. Pauline Johnson was one
of the most prominent writers and performers in North America

(34:56):
around the turn of the twentieth century, and some aspects
of her legacy or complicated because she was trying to
earn a living by writing, she published a lot of work,
and that means some of it varies in terms of
its quality. Audience response to her work has also really
varied a lot in the century plus since her death,

(35:17):
as literary and cultural tastes have changed, but writers continue
to cite her as an influence in their own work today,
especially but not exclusively, Indigenous women writers. I also thought
we would end on one of her nature poems, since
most of the poems we have read from before have
been uh more about specifically about indigenous culture history, and

(35:40):
that's one of several sort of topics that she wrote about.
So this is a nature poem called the Lost Lagoon,
which was one of her later poems written about a
body of water in Stanley Park. It is dusk on
the Lost Lagoon and we to dreaming the dusk away
beneath the drift of a twilight gray beneath the drowse

(36:01):
of an ending day, and the curve of a golden moon.
It is dark on the Lost Lagoon, and gone are
the depths of haunting blue, the grouping goals, the old canoe,
the singing furs, and the dusk and you. And gone
is the golden Moon, Oh lure of the Lost Lagoon.
I dreamed tonight that my paddle blurs the purple shade

(36:23):
where the seaweed stirs. I hear the call of the
singing furs in the hush of the golden moon. That
is Paulie Johnson. Uh, do you also have listener mail
for us? I do. This is from Cassie, and this
delighted me. Cassie's email is titled Penicillin in Peoria, and
Cassie wrote, High, Holly and Tracy. I've listened to your

(36:45):
entire backlog of episodes and constantly recommend your podcast to others.
I'm a closet history nerd in your show makes my
heart infinitely happy. I'm currently in the middle of the
Penicillin episode. I had deposit and write to you for
the first time. Immediately I finally had a reason to
write in. At the beginning of the episode, you ladies
chatted about how everyone knows some weird abbreviated version of

(37:07):
how penicillin was created. I was so confused. I was like, what, No,
it was in a cantalope. Everyone knows that. I legitimately
stared at my phone and utter confusion. Then I got
about halfway through the episode and it struck me, duh.
I live in Peoria, Illinois. We had the cantelope story
drilled into us from childhood because of the locale. We

(37:31):
also know way too much about a B Lincoln al
Capone theater and diapers because of this location. Anyway, I
found it super interesting that I have had a much
more thorough education on penicillin just because of where I lived.
Attached our pictures of our rescue dog Odin, our Boston
terrier Loki, and Nala our Geck. Thanks for keeping my

(37:52):
brain happy. I love your show, Cassie. Thank you so
much for this email. Cassie. I am always delighted when
we stumble over something that like people local to an
area now innately but other people were clueless about. Also,
all of these animal pictures are adorable. More get gos

(38:14):
please Yeah, It's also fine to write with us if
you don't have a reason. If you just want to say,
look at this dog I saw today, then that is
also great. Um I'm so glad to know that Peoria
in particular knows about the cantaloupe that was part of penicillin.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we were at History podcast i

(38:37):
heart radio dot com, and we're also all over social
media at miss in History, which is where you'll find
our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe
to our show on the I heart Radio app and
wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you

(38:57):
missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake