The Uncollected Prose of Pauline Johnson

Introduction List of “uncollected” texts Observations Transcription and encoding details Bibliography Web Links

Introduction

When E. Pauline Johnson is remembered, she is generally known by her reputation as an “Indian poetess.” Indeed, she is familiar to many only as the author of the poem “The Song my Paddle Sings.” With interest in Johnson growing over the last decade, a volume was published recently including all her poems that could be found. However, only a fraction of her prose is currently easily available.

Three main collections of her prose exist. In 1911 some of Pauline Johnson's retellings of West Coast native legends were published as Legends of Vancouver. This volume was immediately successful and has been regularly reprinted right up to the present day. Shortly after her death in 1913, selections of her published stories were collected in The Moccasin Maker and The Shagganappi. But there are still many more, most of which have never been reprinted in full since their first appearance.

What I am hoping to do here is collect and transcribe as many of these stories and articles as possible, and make them freely available through Project Gutenberg, where the collections mentioned above can already be found. An invaluable resource for locating these is the “Chronological List of Pauline Johnson's Writings” found as an appendix in Paddling her own Canoe.

I am making this material available here for two reasons. First, as an ongoing project, this will not be completed for quite a while, so this is a way to share it with anyone who may be interested. Second, this makes it more possible for others to help. Anyone who would like to help proof-reading or tracking down copies of Johnson's stories would be most welcome.

I would love to hear any questions or comments. Please send them to me at: sly@victoria.tc.ca

List of “uncollected” texts

Here is the list of stories and articles in progress so far. I have tried to add meaningful, brief descriptions for each item in the list, although some of these articles do meander somewhat and are hard to pin down to one topic. Titles shown in red have not yet been thoroughly proofed and titles in grey are not yet online.

Observations

In reading through these varied writings, along with Pauline's other stories, it's interesting to see what topics reoccur. First, there is a patriotic love of Canada. Pauline Johnson was much more well-travelled than most women in her time and she describes the beauty she sees in places as diverse as the coast of Labrador, the lakes of Muskoka, the prairies of Saskatchewan, and the interior of British Columbia. Second, an almost naively optimistic outlook for natives in Canada, particularly the Iroquois. It appears she was constantly making efforts to break away from the stereotypes of the day and present images of natives as honourable, patriotic and upstanding people, who had an important role to play in bringing the country of Canada to maturity.

Transcription and encoding details

Almost all the items in this collection have followed a similar multi-stage process. First I get a copy from the source. (These have been mostly bound collections of old magazines or microfilm.) Next I type it out by hand, then convert it to HTML. Then, in varying order, I run a spell check, do a thorough proofing myself, and have someone else proof to find anything I've missed.

I have corrected obvious typographical errors in the sources such as misspelled words and missing quote marks. In occasional spots I've adjusted punctuation and paragraph breaks for greater clarity. So far, I have let inconsistencies between British and American spelling remain.

Regarding encoding, I've tried to make the files comply with W3C standards and be easily portable. All characters outside of 7-bit ASCII have been encoded as HTML 4 named character entities. This includes the emdash, endash, and open and closing quotes marks. I have kept the markup simple, with basic styling using CSS.

Bibliography

Foster, W. Garland. The Mohawk princess: being some account of the life of Tekahion-Wake. Lions' Gate, 1931.

First biography of Pauline.

Gray, Charlotte. Flint & Feather: the Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake. HarperFlamingo Canada, 2002.

Read a review of this book.

Johnson, E. Pauline. E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: collected Poems and Selected Prose. Ed. Carole Gerson and Veronica Strong-Boag. University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Johnson, E. Pauline. North American Indian Silver Craft. Subway Books Ltd., 2004.

A slim volume of reprints of Johnson's magazine articles on silver working.

Johnson, Linda Wikene. Vancouver! Borealis Press, 2002.

Fictional novel in which Pauline is one of the main characters.

Johnston, Sheila. Buckskin & Broadcloth: a Celebration of E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake. Natural Heritage/Natural History, 1997.

Strong-Boag, Veronica, and Carole Gerson. Paddling her own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson. University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Read a review of this book.

Keller, Betty. Pauline, a biography of Pauline Johnson. Douglas & McIntyre, 1981.

Keller, Betty. Pauline Johnson: First Aboriginal Voice of Canada. By XYZ Pub, 1999.

Short narrative biography. Read a review of this book.

Van Steen, Marcus. Pauline Johnson, her life and work. Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

Willoughby, Brenda. Pauline Johnson. Grolier Limited, 1988, Canadian Pathfinders Series.

Children's book. Designed for educational use.

Web Links

Free eBooks by E. Pauline Johnson in the Project Gutenberg collection

Flint and Feather.

Collection of Poetry.

Legends of Vancouver.

Johnson's reworkings of native legends from the Vancouver area.

The Shagganappi.

Collection of selected stories from the magazine Boy's World.

The Moccasin Maker.

Miscellaneous selected prose for adult readers.

Selected Web sites about Pauline Johnson

• The Pauline Johnson Archive.
• "Passing Through ... From Town Hall to Opera House"
• E. Pauline Johnson fonds, at McMaster University
• Chasing Pauline: The Perils of Biographical
• Canadian Born by Veronica Strong-Boag

I release all the material in this file and the associated stories and articles into the public domain. However, I would ask that anyone planning to make use of it let me know.