This post was written for Past Times Books (http://www.pasttimesbooks.com/?page_id=8)
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis....
In 1854, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
wrote in his diary, “I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the
American Indians... It is to weave together their beautiful traditions as
whole.” What he produced next year was 'The Song of Hiawatha,' a long narrative
poem about a legendary Iroquois chief. Longfellow’s epic work is a composite of
myth and legend, folklore and ethnography. It is written in unrhymed
alliterative verse, with heavy emphasis on alternating syllables: considered by
some to be clumsy, it nonetheless suits his meandering style.
Longfellow’s work was based partly on
the writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a government agent who married a Native
wife and took a personal interest in local customs and stories. In particular
he took the name of his hero, who has very little else in common with the
sixteenth-century Mohawk chief who co-founded the Iroquois League. In his notes to the poem, Longfellow cites Schoolcraft as
his source for “a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a
personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers,
forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known
among different tribes by several names (including) Hiawatha.”
Hiawatha has many childhood adventures, aided by his
ability to speak the language of birds and beasts. He falls in love with
Minnehaha, slays the evil magician Pearl-Feather, invents written language,
discovers corn and brings culture to his people. In the final episode a birch
bark canoe approaches the village bearing ‘the Priest of Prayer, the
Pale-face.’ Hiawatha welcomes him and having
endorsed the message of the Christian missionaries, sets off alone for the
West.
At a time when many white
people regarded the natives as savages, Longfellow’s lyrical lines were a
romantic revelation. He evoked a traditional way of life where mankind lived in
close harmony with the natural environment. The idea of the ‘noble savage’
caught the popular imagination across Europe and America. The poem was reprinted
in 1891 with pen-and-ink drawings by the artist Frederic Remington, and this is
regarded as the classic edition. Longfellow’s writing presaged the birth of both
the ecological and native civil rights movements. More relevantly for us, he was
also arguably the father of modern historical fiction.
For full post with illustrations, visit Past Times Books http://www.pasttimesbooks.com/?page_id=8
Read about the real-life Hiawatha at http://janebaileybain.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/hiawatha/
