The Lost Island

Description

“My aim, my joy, my pride, is to sing the glories of my own people.” The story of “The Lost Island” is from The Legends of Vancouver, a book inspired by the friendship between a Mohawk poet and a Salish storyteller. Originally published to great success in 1911, it was the first collection of native legends retold in English by a native artist and has become a classic. The author, E. Pauline Johnson, was born on March 10, 1861, to George Johnson, a distinguished Mohawk chief. Pauline was an accomplished poet by her late teens, and from 1892 to 1909 she toured Canada, the United States, and Britain, giving dramatic performances of her poetry and entertaining audiences of all ages with the stories of her people. In 1910 she began to write what she affectionately called “The Legends of Capilano.” The stories appeared in a weekly magazine before a collection was chosen for publication in 1911.