Stringing Verse-Wampum: E. Pauline Johnson, Haudenosaunee Knowledge, and Colonial Print Culture

Abstract:

This article analyzes the work of E. Pauline Johnson / Tekahionwake and her engagements with the print culture of colonial Canada at the end of the nineteenth century. It argues that Johnson used this print space to cannily negotiate the demands of a settler culture that was forcibly and violently working to assimilate First Nations peoples across the continent. By combining research by Haudenosaunee scholars on their wampum practices and traditions with scholarship on Victorian periodical and print culture, Fong shows how Johnson's early poetry and prose on paddling from the Toronto-based periodical Saturday Night engaged Mohawk political and aesthetic practices.