The Song of Hiawatha

Henry W. Longfellow

CONTENTS

Introductory Note 1 Introduction 2 I The Peace-Pipe 5 II The Four Winds 9 III Hiawatha's Childhood 15 IV Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis 20 V Hiawatha's Fasting 26 VI Hiawatha's Friends 32 VII Hiawatha's Sailing 36 VIII Hiawatha's Fishing 39 IX Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather 44 X Hiawatha's Wooing 50 XI Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast 55 XII The Son of the Evening Star 60 XIII Blessing the Corn-Fields 67 XIV Picture-Writing 71 XV Hiawatha's Lamentation 76 XVI Pau-Puk-Keewis 81 XVII The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis 86 XVIII The Death of Kwasind 93 XIX The Ghosts 96 XX The Famine 101 XXI The White Man's Foot 105 XXII Hiawatha's Departure 110 Vocabulary 115

Introductory Note

The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of many North American Indian tribes, but especially those of the Ojibway Indians of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned historian, pioneer explorer, and geologist. He was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841.

Schoolcraft married Jane, O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua (The Woman of the Sound Which the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky), Johnston. Jane was a daughter of John Johnston, an early Irish fur trader, and O-shau-gus-coday-way-qua (The Woman of the Green Prairie), who was a daughter of Waub-o-jeeg (The White Fisher), who was Chief of the Ojibway tribe at La Pointe, Wisconsin.

Jane and her mother are credited with having researched, authenticated, and compiled much of the material Schoolcraft included in his Algic Researches (1839) and a revision published in 1856 as The Myth of Hiawatha. It was this latter revision that Longfellow used as the basis for The Song of Hiawatha.

Longfellow began Hiawatha on June 25, 1854, he completed it on March 29, 1855, and it was published November 10, 1855. As soon as the poem was published its popularity was assured. However, it also was severely criticized as a plagiary of the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. Longfellow made no secret of the fact that he had used the meter of the Kalevala; but as for the legends, he openly gave credit to Schoolcraft in his notes to the poem.

I would add a personal note here. My father's roots include Ojibway Indians: his mother, Margaret Caroline Davenport, was a daughter of Susan des Carreaux, O-gee-em-a-qua (The Chief Woman), Davenport whose mother was a daughter of Chief Waub-o-jeeg. Finally, my mother used to rock me to sleep reading portions of Hiawatha to me, especially:

"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, Little, flitting, white-fire insect Little, dancing, white-fire creature, Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"

Woodrow W. Morris April 1, 1991

The Song of Hiawatha Introduction

Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers, With their frequent repetitions, And their wild reverberations As of thunder in the mountains? I should answer, I should tell you, "From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland,