ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief analysis of cultural exchange 'at cross purposes' as figured in the construction, performance and representation of Johnson-Tekahionwake as 'The Mohawk Princess'. Pauline Johnson-Tekahionwake's performance of self maintains a tenuous balance between the colored exotic erotica of the 'other' woman and the virginal innocence of the fair English maid. It might be suggested that Johnson-Tekahionwake's portrayal (both in word and costume) of the 'red Indian' lacked the authenticity she demanded of Canadian novelists. Although necessarily constrained by the historical determinants of race and gender, Johnson was by no means the passive object of trade, although she might have been perceived as such by others – she was, after all, its progenitor. The costume and performance of the 'Mohawk Princess' is a deliberate and careful self-construction that trades in part upon the prevalent romantic literary image (assumed by the reading public to be 'authentic') of what it is to be 'an Indian'.
