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THE SHAGGANAPPI

By E. Pauline Johnson

With Introduction by Ernest Thompson Seton


Dedicated to the Boy Scouts



TEKAHIONWAKE

(PAULINE JOHNSON)


How well I remember my first meeting with Tekahionwake, the Indian girl!
I see her yet as she stood in all ways the ideal type of her race, lithe
and active, with clean-cut aquiline features, olive-red complexion and
long dark hair; but developed by her white-man training so that the shy
Indian girl had given place to the alert, resourceful world-woman, at
home equally in the salons of the rich and learned or in the stern of
the birch canoe, where, with paddle poised, she was in absolute and
fearless control, watching, warring and winning against the grim rocks
that grinned out of the white rapids to tear the frail craft and mangle
its daring rider.

We met at the private view of one of my own pictures. It was a wolf
scene, and Tekahionwake, quickly sensing the painter's sympathy with the
Wolf, claimed him as a Medicine Brother, for she herself was of the Wolf
Clan of the Mohawks. The little silver token she gave me then is not to
be gauged or appraised by any craftsman method known to trade.

From that day, twenty odd years ago, our friendship continued to the
end, and it is the last sad privilege of brotherhood to write this brief
comment on her personality. I do it with a special insight, for I am
charged with a message from Tekahionwake herself. "Never let anyone call
me a white woman," she said. "There are those who think they pay me a
compliment in saying that I am just like a white woman. My aim, my joy,
my pride is to sing the glories of my own people. Ours was the race that
gave the world its measure of heroism, its standard of physical prowess.
Ours was the race that taught the world that avarice veiled by any name
is crime. Ours were the people of the blue air and the green woods,
and ours the faith that taught men to live without greed and to die
without fear. Ours were the fighting men that, man to man--yes, one to
three--could meet and win against the world. But for our few numbers,
our simple faith that others were as true as we to keep their honor
bright and hold as bond inviolable their plighted word, we should have
owned America to-day."

If the spirit of Wetamoo, the beautiful woman Sachem, the Boadicea of
New England, ever came back, it must have been in Tekahionwake the
Mohawk. The fortitude and the eloquence of the Narragansett Chieftainess
were born again in the Iroquois maiden; she typified the spirit of
her people that flung itself against the advancing tide of white
encroachment even as a falcon might fling himself against a horde of
crows whose strength was their numbers and whose numbers were without
end, so all his wondrous effort was made vain.

"The Riders of the Plains," the "Legends of Vancouver," "Flint and
Feather," and the present volume, "Shagganappi," all tell of the spirit
that tells them. Love of the blessed life of blue air without gold-lust
is felt in the line and the interline, with joy in the beauty of beaver
stream, tamarac swamp, shad-bush and drifting cloud, and faith in the
creed of her fathers, that saw the Great Spirit in all things and that
reverenced Him at all times, and over and above it all the sad note that
tells of a proud race, conscious that it has been crushed by numbers,
that its day is over and its heritage gone forever.

Oh, reader of the alien race, keep this in mind: remember that no people
ever ride the wave's crest unceasingly. The time must come for us to go
down, and when it comes may we have the strength to meet our fate with
such fortitude and silent dignity as did the Red Man his.

"Oh, why have your people forced on me the name of Pauline Johnson?" she
said. "Was not my Indian name good enough? Do you think you help us by
bidding us forget our blood? by teaching us to cast off all memory of
our high ideals and our glorious past? I am an Indian. My pen and my
life I devote to the memory of my own people. Forget that I was Pauline
Johnson, but remember always that I was Tekahionwake, the Mohawk that
humbly aspired to be the saga singer of her people, the bard of the
noblest folk the world has ever seen, the sad historian of her own
heroic race."

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON.



CONTENTS

The Shagganappi
The King's Coin
A Night with "North Eagle"
Hoolool of the Totem Pole
The Wolf-Brothers
We-hro's Sacrifice
The Potlatch
The Scarlet Eye
Sons of Savages
Jack o' Lantern
The Barnardo Boy
The Broken String
Maurice of His Majesty's Mails
The Whistling Swans
The Delaware Idol
The King Georgeman
Gun-Shy Billy
The Brotherhood
The Signal Code
The Shadow Trail
The Saucy Seven
Little Wolf-Willow




The Shagganappi


When "Fire-Flint" Larocque said good-bye to his parents, up in the
Red River Valley, and started forth for his first term in an Eastern
college, he knew that the next few years would be a fight to the very
teeth. If he could have called himself "Indian" or "White" he would have
known where he stood in the great world of Eastern advancement, but he
was neither one nor the other--but here he was born to be a thing apart,
with no nationality in all the world to claim as a blood heritage. All
his young life he had been accustomed to hear his parents and himself
referred to as "half-breeds," until one day, when the Governor-General
of all Canada paid a visit to the Indian school, and the principal, with
an air of pride, presented "Fire-Flint" to His Excellency, with "This
is our head pupil, the most diligent boy in the school. He is Trapper
Larocque's son."

"Oh? What tribe does he belong to?" asked the Governor, as he clasped
the boy's hand genially.

"Oh, Fire-Flint belongs to no tribe; he is a half-breed," explained
the principal.

"What an odd term!" said the Governor, with a perplexed wrinkle across
his brows; then, "I imagine you mean a half-blood, not breed." His voice
was chilly and his eyes a little cold as he looked rather haughtily at
the principal. "I do not like the word 'breed' applied to human beings.
It is a term for cattle and not men," he continued. Then, addressing
"Fire-Flint," he asked, "Who are your parents, my boy?"

"My father is half French and half Cree; my mother is about
three-quarters Cree; her grandfather was French," replied the boy,
while his whole loyal young heart reached out towards this great
man, who was lifting him out of the depths of obscurity. Then His
Excellency's hands rested with a peculiar half fatherly, half
brotherly touch on the shoulders of the slim lad before him.

"Then you have blood in your veins that the whole world might envy,"
he said slowly. "The blood of old France and the blood of a great
aboriginal race that is the offshoot of no other race in the world. The
Indian blood is a thing of itself, unmixed for thousands of years, a
blood that is distinct and exclusive. Few white people can claim such
a lineage. Boy, try and remember that as you come of Red Indian blood,
dashed with that of the first great soldiers, settlers and pioneers
in this vast Dominion, that you have one of the proudest places and
heritages in the world; you are a Canadian in the greatest sense of
that great word. When you go out into the world will you remember
that, Fire-Flint?" His Excellency's voice ceased, but his thin, pale,
aristocratic fingers still rested on the boy's shoulders, his eyes still
shone with that peculiar brotherly light.

"I shall remember, sir," replied Fire-Flint, while his homeless young
heart was fast creating for itself the foothold amongst the great
nations of the earth. The principal of the school stood awkwardly,
hoping that all this attention would not spoil his head pupil; but he
never knew that boy in all the five years he had instructed him, as
His Excellency, Lord Mortimer, knew him in that five minutes' chat.

"No," said the Governor, again turning to the principal, "I certainly do
not like that term 'half-breed.' Most of the people on the continent of
America are of mixed nationality--how few are pure English or Scotch or
Irish--or indeed of any particular race? Yet the white people of mixed
nations are never called half-breeds. Why not? It would be quite
reasonable to use the term regarding them." Then, once again addressing
Fire-Flint, he asked, "I suppose all the traders use this term in
speaking of your parents and of you?"

"Of my parents, yes, sir," replied the boy.

"And you?" questioned His Excellency, kindly.

"They call me the 'Shagganappi,'" replied Fire-Flint.

"I am afraid that is beyond me, my boy," smiled His Excellency. "Won't
you tell me what it means?" The boy smiled responsively.

"It is a buckskin, a color; a shagganappi cayuse is a buckskin color.
They say I look that way."

"Ah, I understand," replied His Excellency, as his eyes rested on the
dark cream brown tint of the boy's face. "Well, it is a good name;
buckskin is a thing essential to white people and to Indians alike, from
the Red River to the Rockies. And the cayuse--well, the horse is the
noblest animal known to man. So try to be worthy of the nickname, my
boy. Live to be essential to your people like the buckskin; to be
noble--like the horse. And now good-bye, Shagganappi, and remember that
you are the real Canadian."

Another handclasp and Lord Mortimer was walking away with the principal
at his side, who was saying, "Your Excellency, you have greatly
encouraged that boy; I think he always felt terribly that he was a
half-bree--half-blood. He would have loved to claim either all Cree or
all French ancestry."

"He is a fine lad and I like him," returned Lord Mortimer, rather
shortly, for he felt a little impatient with the principal, who could so
easily have lightened the boy's heart from the very first year he had
entered the school, by fostering within him pride of the two great races
that blended within his veins into that one mighty nation called
Canadian.

But that day proved the beginning of a new life for Fire-Flint; Lord
Mortimer had called him Shagganappi in a half playful way, had said the
name meant good and great things. No more did the little half-blood
despise his own unusually tinted skin, no more did he hate that dash
of grey in his brown eyes that bespoke "white blood," no more did he
deplore the lack of proper coloring that would have meant the heritage
of pure Indian blood. He was content to fight it out, through all his
life to come, as "The Shagganappi," and when the time came for him to go
to the great Eastern college in Ontario he went with his mind made up
that no boy living was going to shoulder him into a corner or out-do him
in the race for attainment.

* * * * * * * *

"Hello, fellows, there is an Indian blown in from the North-West.
Cracker-jack of a looking chap," announced "Cop" Billings to his
roommates late one morning, as he burst into the room after his early
mile run to find them with yet ten minutes to spare before the "rising
bell."

"Shut up, and let a fellow sleep," growled "Sandy," from his bed in the
corner.

"Indian?" exclaimed young Locke, sitting bolt upright; "this ain't a
Redskin school; he's got to get put out, or I'm a deader."

"You'll be a deader if you try to put him out," sneered Cop Billings;
"first place he's got an arm like braided whipcord, and he's got a
chin--hanged determined swat-you-in-the-face sort of chin--not a
boiled-fish sort of jaw like yours," and he glared at the unfortunate
Locke with sneering disapproval.

"Where'd you see him?" ventured little chunky Johnny Miller, getting
into his clothes.

"Saw him in the library as I passed. The Head called me in and--"

"Stow it! stow it!" they all yelled; then Locke jeered, "The Head is
never up at six-thirty--we are not rabbits."

"Just where you get left; the Head was up at five-thirty and went to
the station to meet mister Indian."

"Well, I'll be jing-banged," exclaimed Sandy, nearly awake; "what's
the meaning of it all?"

"Meaning's just this, my son," replied Cop, getting out of his limited
running togs into something more respectable, "that if you chumps
guessed all day you'd never strike just how the Indian came to this
school. Who do you suppose wrote to the Head recommending him to take
the Redskin, and kind of insinuating that the college would do well
to treat him properly? None other than His Excellency Lord Mortimer,
Governor-General of 'this Canada of ours.' Now, Locke, will you act
good and pretty, and take your bread and milk like a nice little
tootsy-wootsy and allow the Indian to stay?"

"Whew!" bellowed Locke, "I guess I'm it, fellows."

"Just found it out, eh?" answered Cop; then, as the first bell clanged
throughout the building and hustling was in order, he proceeded to
explain that as he passed the library door on his way to the baths,
Professor Warwick called him in and introduced him to the tall, lithe
Westerner, who had wonderfully easy manners, a skin like a tan-colored
glove, and whose English was more attractive than marred by a strong
accent that sounded "Frenchy."

"When he found that I was heading for the baths he asked to come, too,"
rattled Cop; "been on the train over three days and nights coming from
Winnipeg; said he felt grimy, so I took him along. Jingo, you should see
his clothes--silk socks, silk shirt, top-coat lined with mink, an otter
collar--must have cost hundreds. Says I, 'Well, pal, your governor
must be well fixed.' Says he, 'My father is a trapper and trades with
the Hudson's Bay Company. He trapped all these minks, and my other
clothes--oh, we buy those at the H.B.C. in Winnipeg.' Wouldn't that
phase you, fellows? But I forgot his clothes when I saw him strip.
Jiminy Christmas! I never saw such a body. I'm in bully training, but
I'm a cow compared to 'Shag.'"

"What a rum name!" said Locke, still a little resentful.

"Found out all about that, too," went on Cop. "Seems he has a whole
string of names to choose from. Heard him tell the Head that his first
name is 'Fire-Flint,' and his last name is 'Larocque.' Seemed to kind
of take the Head where he is weakest.

"'If you don't like it,' says the Indian, with a dead-quiet,
plumb-straight look at the Head, 'you may call me what the people up
along the Red River call me; I'm known there as the Shagganappi--Shag,
if you want to cut off part of the word. The other boys may call me Shag
if they want to.' Say, fellows, I liked him right there and then. He may
chum up with me all he likes, for all his silk socks and shirts."

"What did the Head say?" asked little Johnnie Miller.

"Said he liked the name Shag," replied Cop. "'Then I'm Shag to you, sir,
and the others here,' speaks up his Indian nibs. Then he and I struck
for the tubs, then they took him to get his room, and I came up here."

As Cop finished speaking the chapel bell sounded and all four boys
scrambled down to prayers. As they entered the little sanctuary, one
of the masters standing irresolute near the door, beckoned to Cop.
"Billings," he whispered, "Will you please go and ask Larocque if he
cares to come to prayers? He's in room 17; you met him this morning,
I believe."

"Certainly, sir," replied Cop, dashing up the nearest stairway.

"Entrez," replied an even voice to Cop's unusually respectful knock.
Then the voice rapidly corrected itself, "Enter, come in," it said in
English.

"How about prayers?" asked Cop. "Perhaps you're tired and don't care to
come?"

"I'll go," replied the Indian, and followed noiselessly where Billings
led.

They entered just as Professor Warwick was beginning prayers, and
although the eighty or so boys present were fairly exemplary, none could
resist furtive looks at the newcomer, who walked up the little aisle
beside Billings with a peculiarly silent dignity and half-indifference
that could not possibly be assumed. How most of them envied him that
manner! They recalled their own shyness and strangeness on the first
day of their arrival; how they stumbled over their own feet that first
morning at prayers; how they hated being stared at and spoken of as "the
new boy." How could this Indian come among them as if he had been born
and bred in their midst? But they never knew that Larocque's wonderful
self-possession was the outcome of his momentary real indifference; his
thoughts were far away from the little college chapel, for the last
time he had knelt in a sanctuary was at the old, old cathedral at St.
Boniface, whose twin towers arose under the blue of a Manitoba sky,
whose foundations stood where the historic Red and Assiniboine Rivers
meet, about whose bells one of America's sweetest singers, Whittier, had
written lines that have endeared his name to every worshipper that bends
the knee in that prairie sanctuary. The lines were drifting through his
mind now. They were the first words of English poetry he had learned to
memorize:

"Is it the clang of the wild geese?
Is it the Indian's yell,
That lends to the call of the north wind
The tones of a far-off bell?

"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace.
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of St. Boniface.

"The bells of the Roman mission--
That call from their turrets twain
To the boatman on the river,
To the hunter on the plain."

"To the hunter on the plain," said Shag's thoughts, over and over.
Perhaps the hunter was his trapper father, who with noiseless step
and wary eye was this very moment stalking some precious fur-bearing
animal, whose pelt would bring a good price at the great Hudson's Bay
trading-post; a price that would go toward keeping his son at this
Eastern college for many terms. Shag's grey-brown eyes grew dreamy. He
saw the vast prairies sweeping away into the West, and his father, a
mere speck on the horizon, the ever-present "gun," the silent moccasin,
the scarlet sash, the muffled step, all proclaiming "the hunter on the
plain."

The prayers were ended and Shag found that he was not really watching
his father coming up some prairie trail, but that before him was a
different type of man, Professor Warwick, whose studious eyes now
required glasses to see through, and whose hand was white and silken
in its touch--how hopelessly lost this little man would be should
circumstances turn him forth to gain his livelihood at hunting and
trapping. Old Larocque himself would hardly be more incongruous teaching
in this college. It was this thought that made Shag smile as he rose
from his knees, with the echoes of the bells of St. Boniface haunting
his heart.

Then the chapel emptied, each boy on breakfast bent. "Cop" Billings
still remained at the Indian's elbow, but at the door one or two of
the masters stopped to greet the new arrival, and a tall, remarkably
handsome lad waited, apparently to speak. He was a boy that anyone would
pick from a crowd of fifty--straight, well-built, with fine, strong,
thin hands, and a face with contradictory eyes, for they twinkled and
danced as if nothing so serious as thoughtfulness ever disturbed them.
As the two boys approached him he stepped impulsively forward, extending
his hand to Shag with the words, "May I shake hands with you and say
hello?"

"Thank you;" replied Shag; "the way you boys are treating me makes me
feel less strange."

"Oh, no one feels strange here," laughed the handsome boy. "You must try
and like us. So you're from Manitoba, are you?"

"Yes, Red River," answered Shag.

"Father's been up there, and grandfather, too," said the other, falling
in step with the two boys on their way to the dining-room. "Come up to
my ranch some time soon--to-night if you like. Cop will bring you," he
added with a parting nod, as he left them for his own table at the other
side of the room.

Cop stared hard at his companion. "Thunderation!" he blurted, "but
you're the lucky kid!"

"Yes?" questioned Shag. "Never mind the luck, but tell me who that chap
is; he's very nice; I like him."

"Like him!" almost yelled Cop; "I should think you would like him! Why,
he's the 'Pop!'"

"'Pop?' What's that?" said Shag, with a puzzled air.

"Popular, the most popular boy in college--head in everything--clubs,
classes, sports. Everybody is dippy over him from the Head right down to
'Infant' Innis, that little geezer in shorts across the table, who is
only eleven last birthday. Even Dirty Dick, the gardener, is batty about
him; and here he's put himself out to shake your fin, and ask you up to
his room--thing he's only done twice since he entered college. You are
lucky, kid!"

"Does he think a lot of himself?" asked Shag with some suspicion.

"He? Not much! Just the bulliest old pal in the world. Why, he wouldn't
be the 'pop' if he threw on side," asserted Cop loyally.

"You haven't told me who he is yet," said Shag.

"Oh, I forgot," apologized Cop. "It seems so funny that everybody
shouldn't know. Why, he's Harry Bennington. You must have heard of Sir
George Bennington, big railroad man. Queen Victoria knighted him for
some big scoop he made for Canada or the Colonies or something. Well,
Hal's his son; but do you suppose that his dad's title makes any
difference to Hal? Not much! But Hal's handshake will make a big
difference to you in this college, I'll tell you that, Shag. You're
made, that's what you are--just made; even Lord Mortimer back of you
couldn't give you the place among the crowd here that Hal Bennington's
grip did to-day."

Shag did not reply; he was looking across the room at Sir George
Bennington's son. He knew the name of the wealthy man whom Queen
Victoria had honored, knew it well. His father, Trapper Larocque,
had met Sir George in the old pioneer days of the railroad in the
North-West. There was a little story about Sir George, well-known in the
Red River Valley; Trapper Larocque knew it, the Hudson's Bay Company
knew it, Shag knew it, and was asking himself if Hal knew it. Then the
boy from Manitoba took the story and locked it within his heart, sealed
his lips above it, and said to his soul, "Hal Bennington won't know it
from me, nor will anyone else. He's made my first day at this school an
easy day; the fight won't be half what I thought it would. I owe much
to him, and above all I owe him my silence."

"Coming up, fellows?" asked Hal genially, as Cop Billings stretched his
big frame after grind in the evening at recreation hour before going to
bed. The word "fellows" embraced him with a look that included Shag.

"Thanks, I guess we will," said Cop, and the three boys proceeded
upstairs to the private room occupied by Hal and one other, a
stocky fellow known as "Shorty" Magee, who was just settling to his
letter-writing as the boys entered. He nodded curtly, said "Hello!"
rather grumpily, and did not offer to shake hands when Hal introduced
Shag Larocque. Shorty always hated to be disturbed at anything, even if
it were the irksome weekly letter home. He shoved aside his note-paper,
however, and sat with his hands in his trousers pockets, his feet
stretched out in front of him, and a tolerant expression on his face.

Hal, always gracious and kindly, seemed more so than ever to-night,
evidently trying to make up for his roommate's moroseness by his own
geniality. He showed Shag his treasures, his collection of curiosities,
his two lynx-skin rugs--animals shot by his father years before--his pet
books, and finally came to his photographs.

"This is a splendid one of father," he said enthusiastically; "it was
taken when he was a young man surveying out West before they put the
railroad through. That group of men to the left are axe-men. It should
interest you, for Professor Warwick told me you came here to study
surveying."

"Yes," said Shag, "that is my chosen work."

"Then," continued Hal, "that splendid-looking chap on father's right
was his guide and personal cook--the one in the blanket coat and sash.
He was part French but mostly Indian, I fancy--Why, what's the matter,
Larocque?" for Shag had suddenly made some inarticulate exclamation,
and had carried the photograph nearer the light.

"That is my father," he said quietly. As he spoke the words he was well
aware that they might tell against him some time or other. He knew
enough of the civilization of the white people to understand that when
two boys attend the same school, one with a titled father and the other
with a father who had cooked for the titled one, that things are apt to
become strained; but never for one second did he hesitate about claiming
the Red River trapper as his sire. He would have despised himself far
more than any boy in the school could possibly do now, had he failed to
say the words, "That is my father." The attitude of his three listeners
was certainly a study. Cop Billings stood staring at him for a moment,
then said, "Well, if your dad did cook he gets you far better shirts
and socks than mine does me." Shorty Magee uttered the four words,
"Cooked for Sir George!" and with an ugly sneer turned again to his
letter-writing.

Hal Bennington had sprung forward, tossing his arms about the Indian's
shoulders and exclaiming, "Your father! Is French Pete your father? Oh,
I'm so glad! Father will be delighted when I tell him. I have heard him
say a hundred times that he would never have lived to be 'Sir' George if
it hadn't been for French Pete."

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