English Essay: Exploring Themes in E. Pauline Johnson's Poetry

This essay analyzes the poetry of E. Pauline Johnson, focusing on her diverse ethnic background and her use of the pen name Tekahionwake, emphasizing her Mohawk heritage. The essay explores two of her prominent poems, "The Song My Paddle Sings," which uses metaphor to represent life's hardships and her respect for nature, and "A Cry from an Indian Wife," which is based on the Riel Rebellion and highlights the clash between Aboriginal and European perspectives. The essay discusses Johnson's role as the first Native American author to be published in Canada, her advocacy for Indigenous rights, and her ability to understand and portray both cultures. The paper examines her poetic style, the themes of cultural identity, and the challenges faced by Aboriginal people, showcasing her impact on literature and her success in bringing Indigenous concerns to a wider audience.

Running head: E. PAULINE JOHNSON
English essay: E. Pauline Johnson’s poems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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E. Pauline Johnson has a diversified and ethnic background which is clearly depicted in
her poetry. She also used the pen name Tekahionwake which again has its Mohawk origin this
name was used along with her European name and she chose it to emphasize her position as an
Aboriginal. In a time when women authors used pseudonym of men to publish literary work,
Johnson not only chose to stand up for her gender but also her ethnicity. She respected and had
great honor for both the cultures she represented and that is depicted in her poem over and over
again. As a stage performer the drama reflected in her poetry as well. She is well-known as the
Mohawk poet in the literary world; she became the first Native American author to be published
in Canada. Her book The White Wampum gave her literary recognition. She also received a lot of
goodwill and fame owing to her performance skills, her image always reflected and demanded
respect for her ethnicity. Her poems are all a condensed form of the experiences she has been
through (Goertz 2015).
In the poem “The Song My Paddle Sings”, is metaphor of life sailing in a musical. The
poem has a melodious tone to it and represents the hardships of life that she had to face. The
absence of wind and the struggle of the man to canoe through the river are the representation of
life testing her patience as she sails through. It also shows her respect for nature and the course
that has been chosen for her, she wades through the tough time to move ahead in the direction of
future. The rhythm of the poem is very captivating and charming as it mimics the paddle strokes
of the sailor breaking the monotone of the milieu. The solitude and remoteness of her life is been
depicted by the lonely sailor wadding through a serine backdrop (Jones and Ferris 2017).
Another popular poem by E. Pauline Johnson is A Cry from an Indian Wife, is based on
the Riel Rebellion of 1884. The poem exhibits how Aboriginal thinking processes were being
made mandatory to adapt to European perspectives and demand. A Cry from an Indian Wife is

3E. PAULINE JOHNSON
written in iambic pentameter and is represented by her increasingly vocal concerns about the
aboriginal people and an advocate for their rights; the thoughts of the narrator are placed into a
linear descriptive sequence in a monologue. This poem depicts a strong base of bloody, political,
and non-hesitant to reveal racism and despicable behavior by Europeans. In this poem the
character is having an unbiased perspective and can see from both the side of the conflict, as a
symbolic incentive to her listeners to understand and look into the matters from the perspective
of a native. The soliloquy is presented as Middleton's troops are marching west to crush the Riel
Rebellion (Dickinson 2017). It explains the dilemma and the hardships a wife has to endure
while she recommends her husband to join the fight against the troops from Ontario(Jones and
Ferris 2017). She the changes her mind, imagining that the lands were owned by the Indians and
the whites would have no sympathy for her or her husband as she does not want to lose her
husband as well. She then reconciles thinking that the people who are the other troop are also
someone’s husband or son and how could she ask her husband to cause someone else’s grief. But
lastly she gives up and sends he husband off to fight for the troops (Goertz 2015). The wife does
not compromise in her decision there is a part within her which is proud of her husband being a
part of the troop. The use of the rhythmic couplet form in the poetry to illustrate the judgment of
the Aboriginal narrator gives evidence to the infringement of the European culture upon the
aboriginal (Johnson 2015).
Her poetic style is a representation of her considerate personality and her articulate
knowledge about the politics around aboriginal people. Through her work and literature she
constant she reciprocated to the stress enforced on those of her ethnicity and gender with great
critical and commercial success. Her approach to place the concerns related to aboriginal people
to the European settlement was successful as she had immence understanding of both the

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cultures on an equal stand point. She was successful in her endeavor in reaching out to the people
as her audience and her readers gained a lot of knowledge about the hardships of aboriginals
through her work.

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Reference List:
Dickinson, S., 2017. To “Hear the Call of the Singing Firs”:(Re) Reading E. Pauline Johnson’s
“Lost Lagoon” as Eco-Elegy. Making Nineteenth-Century Literary Environments.
Goertz, K., 2015. The Mohawk Princess Writes and Recites: How Pauline Johnson Battled
Negative Indian Stereotypes through her Performances and Prose. The Albatross, 5(1), pp.36-51.
Johnson, E.P., 2015. Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson's Writings on Native North America.
Broadview Press.
Jones, M. and Ferris, N., 2017. Flint, Feather, and Other Material Selves: Negotiating the
Performance Poetics of E. Pauline Johnson. American Indian Quarterly, 41(2), pp.125-157.