Day 21: Poem/a/Day: Sadness in two languages

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft lived in the shadow of her husband Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Michigan’s first Indian agent and prolific writer.

Robert Dale Parker’s book, “The Sound the Stars Make Rushing through the Sky,” detailed the rich literary legacy of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft who is only the third American Indian to be named to the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.

Johnston-Schoolcraft was born in Sault Ste. Marie in 1800 to a Scotch-Irish man and an Ojibwe mother.

Parker’s book details the life and work of the woman who is considered the first recognized American Indian literary writer. For many of the poems in the book (with a number published in Anishinabemowin) it is the first time they have appeared in print.

One of the amazing things which Parker found is that Johnston-Schoolcraft was able to write in both languages with equal ability.

Parker, a professor of English at The University of Illinois at Urbana- Champagne, intuitively knew from his research and experience in Native American literary traditions that the Ojibwa Indian poet was the author of a much larger body of work than she was traditionally credited with. He since has found more than 160 Indian poets living prior to 1930.

Parker found that Schoolcraft’s work from the 1800’s was either hidden away in the Smithsonian and Library of Congress archives or had been appropriated by others including her husband Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. It is likely that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow borrowed from Johnston-Schoolcraft’s writings to write the poem “The Song of Hiawatha”. Johnston-Schoolcraft’s writing’s first appeared in the “Literary Voyager”-also known as “Muzzeniegun”.