Legends of Vancouver

Legends of Vancouver, by E.
Pauline Johnson

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Legends of Vancouver, by E. Pauline
Johnson Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to
check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Legends of Vancouver
Author: E. Pauline Johnson
Release Date: Oct, 2002 [EBook #3478] [This file was first posted on

March 31, 2002] [Most recently updated: December 8, 2002]
Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LEGENDS
OF VANCOUVER ***

This etext was produced by Judy Boss.
[Transcriber's Note for 12th Edition: Andrew Sly edited this by making
a detailed comparison against another etext, produced independently, of
the same book, and referring to a first edition of the paper text for all
differences. We hope this has produced a faultless edition of the book.]

Legends of Vancouver
By E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

PREFACE
I have been asked to write a preface to these Legends of Vancouver,
which, in conjunction with the members of the Publication
Sub-committee--Mrs. Lefevre, Mr. L. W. Makovski and Mr. R. W.
Douglas--I have helped to put through the press. But scarcely any
prefatory remarks are necessary. This book may well stand on its own
merits. Still, it may be permissible to record one's glad satisfaction that
a poet has arisen to cast over the shoulders of our grey mountains, our
trail-threaded forests, our tide-swept waters, and the streets and
sky-scrapers of our hurrying city, a gracious mantle of romance.
Pauline Johnson has linked the vivid present with the immemorial past.

Vancouver takes on a new aspect as we view it through her eyes. In the
imaginative power that she has brought to these semi-historical sagas,
and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose, she has shown herself to
be a literary worker of whom we may well be proud: she has made a
most estimable contribution to purely Canadian literature.
BERNARD McEVOY

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
These legends (with two or three exceptions) were told to me
personally by my honored friend, the late Chief Joe Capilano, of
Vancouver, whom I had the privilege of first meeting in London in
1906, when he visited England and was received at Buckingham Palace
by their Majesties King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.
To the fact that I was able to greet Chief Capilano in the Chinook
tongue, while we were both many thousands of miles from home, I owe
the friendship and the confidence which he so freely gave me when I
came to reside on the Pacific coast. These legends he told me from time
to time, just as the mood possessed him, and he frequently remarked
that they had never been revealed to any other English-speaking person
save myself.
E. PAULINE JOHNSON (Tekahionwake)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) is the youngest child of a family of
four born to the late G. H. M. Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), Head Chief
of the Six Nations Indians, and his wife Emily S. Howells. The latter
was of English parentage, her birthplace being Bristol, but the land of
her adoption Canada.
Chief Johnson was of the renowned Mohawk tribe, being a scion of one

of the fifty noble families which composed the historical confederation
founded by Hiawatha upwards of four hundred years ago, and known at
that period as the Brotherhood of the Five Nations, but which was
afterwards named the Iroquois by the early French missionaries and
explorers. For their loyalty to the British Crown they were granted the
magnificent lands bordering the Grand River, in the County of Brant,
Ontario, on which the tribes still live.
It was upon this Reserve, on her father's estate, "Chiefswood," that
Pauline Johnson was born. The loyalty of her ancestors breathes in her
prose, as well as in her poetic writings.
Her education was neither extensive nor elaborate. It embraced neither
high school nor college. A nursery governess for two years at home,
three years at an Indian day school half a mile from her home, and two
years in