If the spirit of Wetamoo, the beautiful woman Sachem, the Boadicea of New England, ever came back, it must have been in Tekahionwake the Mohawk. The fortitude and the eloquence of the Narragansett Chieftainess were born again in the Iroquois maiden; she typified the spirit of her people that flung itself against the advancing tide of white encroachment even as a falcon might fling himself against a horde of crows whose strength was their numbers and whose numbers were without end, so all his wondrous effort was made vain.
"The Riders of the Plains," the "Legends of Vancouver," "Flint and Feather," and the present volume, "Shagganappi," all tell of the spirit that tells them. Love of the blessed life of blue air without gold-lust is felt in the line and the interline, with joy in the beauty of beaver stream, tamarac swamp, shad-bush and drifting cloud, and faith in the creed of her fathers, that saw the Great Spirit in all things and that reverenced Him at 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 Shadow Trail
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.