Pauline Johnson was born at Chiefswood, the family home built by her father in 1856 on the Six Nations Indian Reserve outside Brantford, Ontario. She was the youngest of four children born to George Henry Martin Johnson (1816—1884), a Mohawk chief, and Emily Susanna Howells Johnson (1824—1898), a native of England. Emily Howells had immigrated to the United States in 1832 as a young child with her father, stepmother and siblings.

Contrary to Emily and George Johnson's concerns that their mixed-race family would not be socially accepted, they were acknowledged as a leading Canadian family . The Johnsons enjoyed a high standard of living, and their family and home were well known. Chiefswood was visited by guests such as inventor Alexander Graham Bell, painter Homer Watson, and Lady and Lord Dufferin, Governor General of Canada.

Emily and George Johnson encouraged their four children to respect and learn about both the Mohawk and the English aspects of their heritage. Because the children were born on Native land, they were legally considered Mohawk and wards of the British Crown. Their paternal grandfather John Smoke Johnson, who had also been a chief, was an important presence in the lives of his grandchildren. He told them many stories in the Mohawk tongue. They learned to comprehend the language but did not speak it fluently . Pauline Johnson said that she inherited her talent for elocution from her grandfather. Late in life, she expressed regret that she had not learned more of her grandfather's knowledge .

The youngest of the family and a sickly child, Pauline Johnson did not attend Brantford's Mohawk Institute, one of Canada's first residential schools. Instead, her education was mostly at home and informal, deriving from her mother, a series of non-Native governesses, a few years at the small school on the reserve, and self-directed reading in the family's expansive library. There she became familiar with literary works by Byron, Tennyson, Keats, Browning, and Milton . She especially enjoyed reading tales about Native peoples, such as Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha and John Richardson's Wacousta . At age 14, Johnson went to Brantford Central Collegiate with her brother Allen, and she graduated in 1877. A schoolmate was Sara Jeannette Duncan, who developed her own journalistic and literary career.

Shortly after George Johnson's death in 1884, the family rented out Chiefswood. Pauline Johnson moved with her mother and sister to a modest home in Brantford, Ontario.

During the 1880s, Pauline Johnson wrote and performed in amateur theatre productions and enjoyed the Canadian outdoors, particularly by canoe. Johnson's first full-length poem, "My Little Jean," written for a friend, was published in the New York Gems of Poetry in 1883. Johnson increased her writing, publication and performance of her poetry afterward. In 1885, she traveled to Buffalo, New York to attend a ceremony honoring Iroquois leader Sagoyewatha, also known as Red Jacket. She wrote a poem expressing admiration for the renowned orator and pleas to reconcile feuds between British and Native peoples . At a Brantford ceremony held in October 1886 in honor of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, Johnson presented her poem "Ode to Brant." It called for brotherhood between Native and European immigrants while endorsing British authority . This performance sparked a long article in the Toronto Globe and increased interest in Johnson's poetry and ancestry.

Throughout the 1880s, Johnson made her reputation as a Canadian writer, publishing in periodicals such as Globe, The Week, and Saturday Night. Johnson was one of the critical mass of Canadian authors constructing a distinct national literature , . The inclusion of two of her poems in W.D. Lighthall's Songs from the Great Dominion (1889) signaled her membership amongst Canada's important authors . In her early literary works, Johnson drew lightly from her Mohawk heritage, and instead lyricized Canadian life, landscapes, and love in a post-Romantic mode reflective of literary interests shared with her mother .

In 1892, Johnson recited her poem "A Cry from an Indian Wife," at a Canadian Authors Evening arranged by the Young Men's Liberal Club. The work was based on the battle of Cut Knife Creek during the Riel Rebellion. The success of this performance initiated Johnson's 15-year stage career. She was perceived as quite young (although she was 31 at the performance), a beauty, and an exotic Native performer . After her first recital season, Johnson decided to emphasize Native aspects by assembling and wearing a feminine Native costume .

Johnson's decision to develop this stage persona, and the popularity it inspired, showed that the audiences she encountered in Canada, England, and the United States recognized and were entertained by Native peoples in performance. Johnson performed in the period of popularity of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show and ethnological aboriginal exhibits in the 1890s .

Johnson's complete works have been difficult to determine, as much was published in periodicals. Her first volume of poetry, The White Wampum, was published in London, England in 1895. It was followed by Canadian Born in 1903. The contents of these volumes, together with additional poems, were published as Flint and Feather in 1912. This volume has been reprinted many times, and has been one of the best-selling titles of Canadian poetry. Since the 1917 edition, Flint and Feather has been misleadingly subtitled "The Complete Poems of E. Pauline Johnson."

After retiring from the stage in August 1909, Johnson moved to Vancouver, British Columbia and continued writing. She wrote a series of articles for the Daily Province, based on stories related by her friend Chief Joe Capilano of the Squamish people of North Vancouver. In 1911, to support the ill and poor Johnson, a group of friends organized the publication of these stories under the title Legends of Vancouver. They remain classics of that city's literature.

The posthumous Shagganappi (1913) and The Moccasin Maker (1913) are collections of selected periodical stories which Johnson wrote on a number of sentimental, didactic, and biographical topics. Veronica Strong-Boag and Carole Gerson provided a provisional chronological list of Johnson's numerous writings in their text Paddling Her Own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (2000).

Johnson died of breast cancer in Vancouver, British Columbia on 7 March 1913. Her funeral (the largest until then in Vancouver history) was held on what would have been her 52nd birthday. Her ashes were buried near Siwash Rock in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

In Legends of Vancouver, Johnson related a Squamish legend of how a man was transformed into Siwash Rock "as an indestructible monument to Clean Fatherhood." In another story, she related the history of Deadman's Island, a small islet off Stanley Park. In a poem in the same book, Johnson named one of her favourite areas "Lost Lagoon", as it seemed to disappear when the water emptied at low tide. Although Lost Lagoon has since been transformed into a permanent, fresh-water lake at Stanley Park, Johnson's name for it remains.

Despite the acclaim she received from contemporaries, Pauline Johnson's reputation significantly declined in the decades after her death . Starting in 1961, with commemoration of the centenary of her birth, Johnson began to be recognized as an important Canadian cultural figure. A number of biographers and literary critics have downplayed her literary contributions, however. They contend that her abilities as a performer contributed most to her literary reputation during her lifetime. W. J. Keith wrote: "Pauline Johnson's life was more interesting than her writing ... with ambitions as a poet, she produced little or nothing of value in the eyes of critics who emphasize style rather than content."

The author Margaret Atwood admitted that she did not examine literature written by Native authors when preparing Survival, her seminal work on Canadian literature. She stated at its publication in 1973 that she could not find such Native works. She questioned, "Why did I overlook Pauline Johnson? Perhaps because, being half-white, she somehow didn't rate as the real thing, even among Natives; although she is undergoing reclamation today." Atwood's comments indicated that questions regarding Johnson's claims to Aboriginal identity contributed to her neglect by critics.

As Atwood suggested, in recent decades Johnson's writings and performances have been rediscovered by literary, feminist, and postcolonial critics. They have appreciated her importance as a New Woman and figure of resistance to dominant ideas about race, gender, Native Rights, and Canada . The increase in First Nations literary activity during the 1980s and 1990s prompted writers and scholars to investigate Native oral and written literary history ... a history to which Johnson made a significant contribution .

Honours

In 1922, the city of Vancouver erected a monument in Johnson's honour at her well-loved Stanley Park.

In 1961, on the centennial of her birth, Johnson was celebrated with a commemorative stamp bearing her image, "rendering her the first woman (other than the Queen), the first author, and the first aboriginal Canadian to be thus honored" .

Four Canadian schools have been named in Johnson's honour: elementary schools in West Vancouver, British Columbia; Scarborough, Ontario; and Burlington, Ontario; and a high school in Brantford, Ontario.

Chiefswood, Johnson's childhood home constructed in 1856 in Brantford, has been listed as a National Historic Site because of her father and her historical importance, and has been preserved as a house museum. It is the oldest Native mansion surviving from pre-Confederation times. An Ontario Historical Plaque was erected in front of the Chiefswood house museum by the province to commemorate E. Pauline Johnson's role in Ontario's heritage.

On 11 March 2008, City Opera Vancouver announced its commission of Pauline, a chamber opera to star the dramatic mezzo Judith Forst. The composer is Christos Hatzis, with libretto by Margaret Atwood. The work is planned for premiere in early 2011. The first opera to be written about Pauline Johnson, it is set in Vancouver in March 1913, in the last week of her life.

Canadian actor Donald Sutherland narrated the following quote from her poem "Autumn's Orchestra", at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Know by the music woven through

This fragile web of cadences I spin,

That I have only caught these songs

Since you voiced them upon your haunting violin.

Commemorative postage stamp

On 10 March 1961, the Government of Canada released a commemorative stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of Pauline Johnston's birth. The Post Office's press release of the time described its new stamp and some of her achievements:

:This new postage stamp honours the centennial of the birth of Miss E. Pauline Johnson, [aboriginal] poetess. The stamp shows a profile of the late poetess, wearing a high ruffled collar of Victorian apparel superimposed on a background of forests, plains and mountains. In the background, a full-length likeness of Miss Johnson in tribal costume is shown to emphasize her two personalities of [aboriginal] princess and Victorian lady. In the foreground lower left corner, "1861", the year of her birth, appears on the pages of an open book representing her contribution to Canadian literature. In announcing this stamp, the Postmaster General said that in commemorating Pauline Johnson, we pay tribute to all Canadian [aboriginals] for their contributions of our Canadian way of life...

:In 1895, she published "White Wampum" and in 1903, she added "Canadian Born" to the world of Canadian writings. In 1912, she gathered a collection of her poems and added a biographical sketch which she published under the title of "Flint and Feather". This was followed by her first novel in 1913, "The Shagganappi". Although her contributions were numerous, she is perhaps better known for her volume of prose tales which she called "Legends of Vancouver" published in 1911.

A release of 35,450,000 stamps was issued by the Canada Banknote Company, with stamp design by Bernard J. Reddie and engravings by Yves Baril and Gordon Mash.

Johnson's father, Chief George Henry Martin Johnson, had ancestors with origins in what became the state of New York in the United States, their traditional homeland. In 1758, Pauline Johnson's great-grandfather Tekahionwake was born in New York. When Tekahionwake was baptized, he took the name Jacob Johnson, taking his surname from Sir William Johnson, the influential British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who acted as his godfather. The Johnson surname was subsequently passed down in the family.

After the American Revolutionary War started, Loyalists in the Mohawk Valley came under intense pressure. Jacob Johnson and his family moved to Canada. The Mohawks were allies of the British rather than the colonists. After the war they settled in Ontario.

One of Jacob's sons, John Smoke Johnson, had a talent for oratory, spoke English as well as Mohawk, and demonstrated his patriotism to the Crown during the War of 1812. As a result, John Smoke Johnson was made a Pine Tree Chief upon the request of the British government . Although John Smoke Johnson's title could not be inherited, his wife Helen Martin was descended from the Wolf Clan and a founding family of the Six Nations. Through her lineage and influence, their son George Johnson was named chief.

Chief George Johnson inherited his father's gift for languages and began his career as a church translator on the Six Nations reserve. There he met Emily Howells, sister-in-law of the Anglican missionary whom Johnson assisted. They fell in love and married. In 1853, the couple's interracial marriage displeased both the Johnson and Howells families. The birth of their first child reconciled the Johnson family . In 1856 Johnson built Chiefswood, a wood mansion where the family lived for years.

In his roles as government interpreter and hereditary Chief, George Johnson developed a reputation as a talented mediator between Native and European interests . He was well respected in Ontario. George Johnson also made enemies because of his efforts to stop illegal trading of reserve timber. He was attacked by Native and non-Native men involved in this traffic. George Johnson's health was weakened by these attacks. He died of a fever in 1884 .

Emily Howells was born in England to a well-established British family who immigrated to the United States in 1832 . Her father Henry Howells was raised as a Quaker. He intended to join the American abolitionist movement. He moved his family to several American cities, where he founded schools to gain an income, before settling in Eaglewood, New Jersey . Emily Howells' mother Mary Best died when Emily was five, before the family left England. Her father married again before they immigrated. After his second wife died (women had a high mortality in childbirth), Henry married a third time. He fathered a total of 24 children .

Henry Howells was motivated by his faith to oppose slavery. He encouraged his children to "pray for the blacks and to pity the poor Indians. Nevertheless, his compassion did not preclude the view that his own race was superior to others" .

At the age of 21, Emily Howells moved to the Six Nations reserve in Ontario, Canada to join her older sister and help care for her growing family. Her sister had moved there with her missionary husband. After falling in love with George Johnson, Howells gained a better understanding of the Native peoples and some perspective on her father's beliefs .

Poetry

• The White Wampum. London: John Lane, 1895. (Early Canadiana Online) ISBN 0-665076-18-5
• In the Shadows. Gouverneur, NY: Adirondack, [1898?] (Early Canadiana Online) ISBN 0-665084-94-3
• Canadian Born. Toronto: Musson, 1903. ISBN 0-665731-99-X
• (Project Gutenberg) ISBN 0-919645-26-7

Stories collected by Pauline Johnson.

• (Project Gutenberg) ISBN 1-550820-24-9
• (Project Gutenberg) ISBN 0-665771-95-9
• (Project Gutenberg) ISBN 0-66-573499-9