The Moccasin Maker

by E. Pauline Johnson, A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff (Introduction)

Long before American Indian women’s literature achieved its current popularity, the writings of E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) pioneered the field. A mixed-blood of Mohawk-English descent, Johnson gained renown for literary recitals and theatrical performances in Canada, England, and the United States, being billed at the turn of the century as the "Mohawk Princess." Many of Johnson’s stories in The Moccasin Maker depict nineteenth-century Indian women caught between the forces of cultural continuity and the pressures of assimilation.

Genres: Short Stories, Indigenous, Classics, Canada

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Emily Pauline Johnson (also known in Mohawk as Tekahionwake), commonly known as E. Pauline Johnson or just Pauline Johnson, was a Canadian writer and performer popular in the late 19th century. Johnson was notable for her poems and performances that celebrated her First Nations heritage; her father was a Mohawk chief of mixed ancestry, and her mother an English immigrant. One such poem is the frequently anthologized "The Song My Paddle Sings". Her poetry was published in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Johnson was one of a generation of widely read writers who began to define a Canadian literature. While her literary reputation declined after her death, since the later 20th century, there has been renewed interest in her life and works.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata]

Oct 27, 830pm ~~ Review asap.

Oct 28, 230pm ~~ This collection of twelve stories was published in 1913, after the author's death the same year. It is available at Project Gutenberg, along with other titles of Johnson's poems and stories. I have one left to read, and I know I will return to them all for re-reads in the future.

This book has an introduction by novelist/politician Gilbert Parker, and an 'appreciation of the author' by Charles Mair, a Canadian poet/journalist. While both of these men offered some praise for Johnson, they each also belittled her talent, at least to my way of thinking. But luckily the book does not belong to these two men, and I was able to ignore them (after more than a few righteous snorts) and continue on to the first selection, My Mother, which tells the story of Johnson's mother's life.

I cannot imagine surviving what this poor woman went through as a child. That she managed to get through it, and still find joy in life and love in her heart? Wow. This is an example of the power of one woman's spirit and how she shaped the life of her children, especially E. Pauline's, because of that spirit.

There were some lovely stories here. I also very much liked A Red Girl's Reasoning, which was the tale of Charlie and his new wife, whose mother was Native although her father was white. I was very much on her side of the aisle when the topic of styles of marriage came up. And I cheered her decision and her pride.

The Tenas Klootchman was a story of a baby girl and her mother. And another mother and her baby girl. Another moving story which tugs at the heart, just like Mother O' The Men (a major's wife at a RCMP post) and The Legend Of Lillooet Falls, telling the origin story of a waterfall, told to the author by an elderly Native friend of hers.

One of the funnier stories here was The Nest Builder, where a laughing woman with nine children shows up one day at a tiny little town where she is supposed to meet her husband. She has to start life in this new spot roughly, with barely enough of a house built to hold them all. But she doesn't sit around and whine, she uses what is available and works very hard to make a success of the family's adventure.

But the stories here are not merely gentle incidents in Canadian life. Many also make intense statements about the relationships between white and red men and their various gods and approaches to life. Johnson touches on this type of topic in her poetry, but in these stories she gives us longer glimpses at her way of thinking and I for one agree with her stance every time.

[mariana ୨ৎ]

The writing is really beautiful, I loved reading this book, but I couldn’t feel that beautiful emotion of feeling passionate about the book that you’re currently reading.
Isn’t bad at all, but isn’t wonderful, but it was a little bit interesting, but the end? It didn’t felt like some decent ending, and I really hate that.

[Max Carmichael]

Pauline's white reviewers always seem to begin with a putdown that says more about them than about her. Sure, from the perspective of the English Department her writing is not great literature. "Literature" is an effete product of Anglo-European "high culture" like classical music. From the more universal perspective of the global human tradition of storytelling, Pauline is a smart, perceptive, and sometimes eloquent storyteller.

[Christy]

A collection of short stories (and an essay) that primarily deal with issues surrounding mixed-race marriages and individuals (Indian and white European/Canadian), The Moccasin Maker is not great literature, but it is historically significant as a reflection on elements of 19th century Canadian culture and racial ideology as well as of popular tastes of the same period, for Pauline Johnson's performances and stories were immensely popular in Canada and in England during her lifetime. The narrative style is old-fashioned and thus the stories can be a little hard for a modern reader to fully embrace, tending as they do toward romance and sentiment, and Johnson is no feminist (although her work is centered on women's lives, which places her nicely in the tradition of women's literature), but these stories are interesting and remain relevant for their exploration of the clash between native and colonizing cultures. Over and over again in these stories, a white man falls in love with an Indian or half-Indian girl and the lovers must face the challenges of family disapproval, perceived disgrace because of cultural differences, and misunderstandings of alternative traditions. In most cases, the true love of the two individuals trumps these difficulties, but in at least one notable story (which might be a good candidate for introduction into a sophomore literature class), "A Red Girl's Reasoning," the prejudices and differences in values stand in the way of the triumph of love. These stories are also interesting for their overt criticism of Christian missionaries and the hypocrisy that must accompany a joint conversion/colonization mission, one that sees the Christianization of pagans as the humanization of savages. In Johnson's attempts to counter these stereotypes of Indians, she reinforces another set of stereotypes, however. Lavonne Ruoff writes, in the introduction to the text, "To counteract the stereotypes of the 'bloodthirsty savage' and the venial mixed blood, stock figures in the westerns of the period, Pauline creates idealized portraits of Indian and mixed-blood women who possess far more goodness and morality than do the whites who betray them or who are slow to recognize their virtues. However, as Shrive points out, Pauline ironically became part of the artificiality against which she protested in her writing. Although she protested against stereotypical 'noble Savages,' she also used them in her work. For example, her young mixed-blood heroines are unfailingly beautiful, possessing the best qualities of both the red and white races" (32).

[Chelsea]

Okay, so Johnson didn’t call people on their shit as much as I’d like her to, but these stories were written in the late 1800s, and there’s only so much a First Nations woman could do in the late 1800s. There’s only so much First Nations and other Indigenous women can do today, as a matter of fact.

Full review here. tw for sexual assault, murder, racism, and sexism.

[Gylbert Coker]

This was a series of stories about Native Americans, primarily in Canada. Curiously, most of these people married or interacted with Europeans. It would have been more interesting, to me, to have had some of the stories telling us about the interactions of Native Americans within their own life experience without the interference of Europeans; was this not possible?