The Literary Voyager is a must read for anyone interested in Metis relationships in the 19th century in the Great Lakes Area! The Schoolcrafts, Mr. Henry Schoolcraft and Mrs. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft published this magazine during the long winter months of the mid 1820s in Sault Ste Marie. It was circulated widely in Detroit amongst their elite friends, such as Govenor Lewis Cass and his wife. I will include here a poem written by Mrs. Schoolcraft from the Voyager.
Schoolcraft’s wife was proud of both her European and Aboriginal heritage and she expressed this through her poetry For example, she expressed the pride she felt for her grandfather in Invocation to My Maternal Grandfather, Wabojeeg, on hearing his descent misrepresented.
Rise bravest chief! of the mark of the noble deer,
Resume thy lance, and again wield thy warlike spear!
The foes of thy line, have dar’d to speak an untruth
Their tongues with black envy, throw a stain on thy youth,
They say, when a child, thou wert stol’n from the Sioux,
And thy lineage they cowardly, basely abuse.
For they know that our kinsmen, a distant land tread,
And thy spirit has fled – to the hills of the dead!
Can the sports of thy youth, and thy deeds ever fade,
From the minds of those men, who had oft with thee stray’d,
Who have fought by thy side, and remember thy pride
When to battle you led, and the ground you have dy’d
With the blood of thy foes, and ensured the repose
Of thy country long trembling with dread. Till you rose,
Like a star in the west, when the sun’s sunk to rest,
You shone in bright splendor, to thy kindred oppress’d.
The mem’ry of thy deeds can refute the false tale
Which slander invented and base-born souls detail
But, noblest chief! – thy child’s, child thy praises shall sing
The dark forests and plains with loud echo shall ring
Tho’ thy spirit has fled to the hills of the dead,
Yet thy worth?, in remembrance long, long shall be led?#
As evidenced by this poem and several others, Mrs. Schoolcraft was an educated and literate woman.
Note:
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, ed. Robert Dale Parker, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2007), 101.
Image courtesy of University of Michigan.
