The Song of Hiawatha | Page 2

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,
From the land of the
Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains,
moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds
among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the
lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."
Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and
wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I
should tell you,
"In the bird's-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the
beaver,
In the hoofprint of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!
"All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the
fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang
them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the
Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
If still further you should ask me,
Saying, "Who was Nawadaha?

Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
I should answer your inquiries

Straightway in such words as follow.
"In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,

By the
pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about

the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And
beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,

Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
"And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the
valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the
Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the
Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of
Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.
"There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his
wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how be fasted,
How
he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might
prosper,
That he might advance his people!"
Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,

Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,

And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great
rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the
mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their
eyries;-
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye who love a nation's legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That
like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in
tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish

Whether they are sung or spoken;-
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To
this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who
have faith in God and Nature,

Who believe that in all ages
Every
human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are
longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,

That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,

Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted