Flint and Feather (1914)/Author's Foreword

by E. Pauline Johnson

AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

This collection of verse I have named "Flint and Feather" because of the association of ideas. Flint suggests the Red man's weapons of war; it is the arrow tip, the heart-quality of mine own people; let it therefore apply to those poems that touch upon Indian life and love. The lyrical verse herein is as a

"Skyward floating feather,
Sailing on summer air."

And yet that feather may be the eagle plume that crests the head of a warrior chief; so both flint and feather bear the hall-mark of my Mohawk blood.

E.P.J.