The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Shagganappi, by E. Pauline Johnson

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Title: The Shagganappi

Author: E. Pauline Johnson

Release Date: June 24, 2004 [EBook #5769]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHAGGANAPPI ***

Produced by Andrew Sly

THE SHAGGANAPPI

By E. Pauline Johnson

With Introduction by Ernest Thompson Seton

Dedicated to the Boy Scouts

TEKAHIONWAKE

(PAULINE JOHNSON)

How well I remember my first meeting with Tekahionwake, the Indian girl!
I see her yet as she stood in all ways the ideal type of her race, lithe
and active, with clean-cut aquiline features, olive-red complexion and
long dark hair; but developed by her white-man training so that the shy
Indian girl had given place to the alert, resourceful world-woman, at
home equally in the salons of the rich and learned or in the stern of
the birch canoe, where, with paddle poised, she was in absolute and
fearless control, watching, warring and winning against the grim rocks
that grinned out of the white rapids to tear the frail craft and mangle
its daring rider.

We met at the private view of one of my own pictures. It was a wolf
scene, and Tekahionwake, quickly sensing the painter's sympathy with the
Wolf, claimed him as a Medicine Brother, for she herself was of the Wolf
Clan of the Mohawks. The little silver token she gave me then is not to
be gauged or appraised by any craftsman method known to trade.

From that day, twenty odd years ago, our friendship continued to the
end, and it is the last sad privilege of brotherhood to write this brief
comment on her personality. I do it with a special insight, for I am
charged with a message from Tekahionwake herself. "Never let anyone call
me a white woman," she said. "There are those who think they pay me a
compliment in saying that I am just like a white woman. My aim, my joy,
my pride is to sing the glories of my own people. Ours was the race that
gave the world its measure of heroism, its standard of physical prowess.
Ours was the race that taught the world that avarice veiled by any name
is crime. Ours were the people of the blue air and the green woods,