Published under the heading “E. Pauline Johnson Congratulates Us.”
March 25th, 1902.
To the editor of the news magazine:
Dear Sir,—It is with extreme pleasure that I have read your announcement that you intend publishing “Wacousta” in the News Magazine.
Perhaps not a half dozen of the present generation in Canada have been as fortunate as the writer in having had the privilege of reading that most brilliant historical novel, “Wacousta.” From my earliest childhood I heard my father, the late Chief G.H.M. Johnson, praise the merits of Major Richardson's book, but how to obtain a copy—that was the question. I understand that only a limited number were issued in that first edition of which the lucky readers talked for a score of years afterwards. And then one day, while I was yet a child, some old bookworm friend of the family had a house cleaning of desks and drawers long strangers to the light—with the reward of a copy of “Wacousta,” which was yielded up to the glare of day and the tireless eyes that devoured it.
It was a rare treat, a thing long desired, a dashing, fascinating romance which had been “out of print” for years, a story my own red people talked of, a household word—in short, I at last, after “being brought up” on the very name of “Wacousta,” had the real book in my hands.
Years later I re-read it, and in my estimation it is the greatest historical romance ever published in America. It is written in a peculiarly simple last century style, but with a brilliant masterhand that touches its fiction with reality and convinces the reader with its historical facts. Never in prose has a certain type of Red Indian been so accurately portrayed. Charles Mair, in his inimitable “Tecumseh,” has given this type to us in poetry, but even Fenimore Cooper fell short—and lamentably so—in pencilling the true characteristics of the northern Red race. Cooper heroized his Redmen, until anything in these days that falls short of his drawing is looked upon as degenerating. The Red Race is like any other—half heroes, half demons, good and bad, high and low.
Major Richardson knew whereof he wrote, and just because he has sketched both his white men and his Red with an impartial pen, has he succeeded in giving to his readers a romance unexcelled in brilliancy, interest and in diction by authors whose names have been accounted far greater than his.
“Wacousta” will live, and I think the news will be accorded the thanks of many thousands of its readers for giving new birth to this long lost gem, that, like the famous Gainsborough painting, lay hidden for a time only to command far wider and greater attention at its resurrection.