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    The Song of Hiawatha
    The Song of Hiawatha
    The Song of Hiawatha
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    The Song of Hiawatha

    By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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    About this ebook

    Initially conceived by Longfellow after reading the works of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, "The Song of Hiawatha" is an epic poem based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The beautiful descriptions of this part of the United States are intertwined with the story of the Native American Hiawatha. From his youth to his marriage, from his daily existence of gathering food to his participation in the traditions of his people, Longfellow weaves a tale of impressive scope in this lyric work. Ultimately, this poem tells the story of the American Indian, including his habitual life, fight for survival, and gradual disappearance at the arrival of white men.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781596252240

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    Reviews for The Song of Hiawatha

    4/5

    103 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      i found this book to be very soothing to read. i enjoyed it immensely.
    • 5/5
      Transported for two full nights into another world. Disappointed that I was not introduced to this at a younger age but also grateful that I've been able to discover it and enjoy it so thoroughly and fresh in my maturity. A poem in trochaic tetrameter that necessitates it being read aloud to fully experience its effect. Simply mesmerizing.
    • 4/5
      For some reason, I didn't expect this poem to be as accurately grounded in Native American folklore/mythology and language as it was. I like Longfellow's style of poetry, which has a strong meter and rhythm. This epic poem contains Algonquin folklore which is in some places surprisingly similar to Bible stories (for example, Hiawatha's strong friend Kwa'sind whose only weak spot is in the crown of his head can't help but remind one of Sampson). Other sections are more historical, as in the section describing the introduction of writing via pictograms.
    • 4/5
      This is weird: a modern retelling of ancient tales that is pretty old itself. It wasn't old in 1855, of course, when Mr. Longfellow published his version of Native American folk-tales. It's the epic poem of Hiawatha, the wise and powerful demigod who guides and protects his people and has many an adventure. According to the introduction, Longfellow has been accused of "cleaning up" the original tales to make them more palatable to a Victorian audience. That may be so (I can't tell you from personal experience whether that's true or not), but isn't that what folk tales are all about? You embellish the basic story to enchant your audience. Anyway, however much Mr. Longfellow may have monkeyed with the stories, he didn't spoil them. I found the book to be enjoyable, despite my tendency to start skimming through poetic writing.--J.
    • 2/5
      This was fairly good. It was like a really long fairy tale written in poem-style (although the fantastical elements evinced themselves more so later on). I guess it's more like an Indian legend than a fairy tale, but it feels similar.Peter Yearsley does an excellent job at narration in this Librivox audio book.
    • 5/5
      This book, spanning almost 200 pages, is one large poem. It is divided into chapters and memorializes myths from Native American tribes in mid-western North America. It is entertaining and, like much of Longfellow's poetry, highlights the unique nature of the United States. It portrays America as a land overflowing with natural resources and with a history that is also deep and speckled by strange names like Hiawatha.

      No wonder Longfellow received commendation in Westminster Abbey despite not being British. His poetry is patterned with a meter that is obvious to any reader. It does not rhyme but in a chant, lulls the reader into a trance as she/he wonders what is coming next in Hiawatha's adventures.

      Themes span the gamut of one's lifespan; birth, adventure, marriage, family, civic service, and death are all covered. In an age where Native Americans could be viewed as racially tinted, Longfellow's approach humanizes the bloodline. One sees Native Americans as a nexus of relationships that, too, long for peace and prosperity.

      Unfortunately, history did not always listen to Longfellow. Native American culture is still not much appreciated today and is constrained to reservations. Reading this poem almost 150 years since its first publication, one cannot help but ponder whether Longfellow's idyllic vision meets the reality of modernity. At the very least, however, it gives us something to aspire to.
    • 4/5
      Everybody knows “By the shores of Gitche Gumee; By the shining Big-Sea Water”, right? But what comes next? Nor is that how the poem begins. In fact, we are well into the third Canto (of twenty-two) before those famous words show up. I know I was exposed to Longfellow’s long narrative poem way back in high school sometime, but I had never read it in its entirety before. Hiawatha, born of Wenonah and the fickle West Wind, is raised by his grieving grandmother, Nokomis, after Wenonah dies of a broken heart. He becomes a strong and mighty brave, and eventually wins the lovely Minnehaha as his wife. This poem is the story of his life, incorporating multiple Native American folktales which Longfellow learned from studying the work of two 19th century scholars, Heckewelder and Schoolcraft. The structure and rhythm of the poem are based on the Finnish epic, Kalevala, which appeared approximately 20 years earlier, and which Longfellow had read just before beginning his own epic tale. It was his intent to provide a similar chronicle, a sort of unified mythology, for the American Indians. Here, of course, arises a mighty cultural stumbling block to a 21st century appreciation of a work that contains some magnificent language and imagery. Longfellow, a white man, took it upon himself to codify a mythology for an indigenous culture he was not a part of, and which did not exist as he envisioned it. Because there is no single “American Indian” culture; because the indigenous people of this continent comprise multiple tribes diverse in their languages, beliefs, traditions and habits, who lived in harmony with their environment, without ever considering that they owned it, long before there was such a concept as “America”; because while Longfellow’s assumption that the Indian tribes would never create their own “national epic” may have been valid, his mission to do it for them was misguided in his own time, and now feels as obnoxious and out of place as the Christian sentiments and symbolism he inserts into the final scenes of his song. Longfellow was criticized by his contemporaries for “borrowing” legends from the Kalevala, and he defended himself against that charge by citing the scholarly works from which he drew his Indian legends, pointing out that the similarities which certainly appeared were not his doing. Apparently he was not called to task for doing what he openly admitted to, that is creating an overall mythic framework meant to encompass the Indians of the Maine woods, the Great Lakes, the Southwest, and the Great Plains as though they were a single people, indistinguishable from one another. There are common elements among their tribal stories, just as there were legends recounted in the Kalevala that sounded like source material for the Song of Hiawatha, and Longfellow really did create a poetic masterpiece here; it’s just that we must read it with a culturally critical eye to the liberties he took to do so.A note on the edition I read (which claims to be the only unabridged version in print): it was published by David R. Godine, and contains the illustrations by Frederic Remington that accompanied the original edition. They are not coordinated to the text at all, and mostly consist of marginal drawings of tools, utensils, and other articles of Indian origin; animals, plants and features of the landscape of the Southwest. They are exquisite. This edition also includes a glossary, notes (in which the page references are all incorrect), and an informative afterword by the publisher. If you want to read this epic, I strongly suggest you get your hands on this edition.
    • 3/5
      Not my thing, but I gave it a good try. It's fine for an epic poem.

    Book preview

    The Song of Hiawatha - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    THE SONG OF HIAWATHA

    BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

    A Digireads.com Book

    Digireads.com Publishing

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3248-5

    Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59625-224-0

    This edition copyright © 2011

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    I. THE PEACE-PIPE

    II. THE FOUR WINDS

    III. HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD

    IV. HIAWATHA AND MUDJEKEEWIS

    V. HIAWATHA'S FASTING

    VI. HIAWATHA'S FRIENDS

    VII. HIAWATHA'S SAILING

    VIII. HIAWATHA'S FISHING

    IX. HIAWATHA AND THE PEARL-FEATHER

    X. HIAWATHA'S WOOING

    XI. HIAWATHA'S WEDDING-FEAST

    XII. THE SON OF THE EVENING STAR

    XIII. BLESSING THE CORNFIELDS

    XIV. PICTURE-WRITING

    XV. HIAWATHA'S LAMENTATION

    XVI. PAU-PUK-KEEWIS

    XVII. THE HUNTING OF PAU-PUK-KEEWIS

    XVIII. THE DEATH OF KWASIND

    XIX. THE GHOSTS

    XX. THE FAMINE

    XXI. THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT

    XXII. HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE

    VOCABULARY

    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 hoof-prints 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 up and strengthened;—

    Listen to this simple story,

    To this Song of Hiawatha!

    Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles

    Through the green lanes of the country,

    Where the tangled barberry-bushes

    Hang their tufts of crimson berries

    Over stone walls gray with mosses,

    Pause by some neglected graveyard,

    For a while to muse, and ponder

    On a half-effaced inscription,

    Written with little skill of song-craft,

    Homely phrases, but each letter

    Full of hope and yet of heart-break,

    Full of all the tender pathos

    Of the Here and the Hereafter;—

    Stay and read this rude inscription,

    Read this Song of Hiawatha!

    I. THE PEACE-PIPE

    On the Mountains of the Prairie,

    On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,

    Gitche Manito, the mighty,

    He the Master of Life, descending,

    On the red crags of the quarry

    Stood erect, and called the nations,

    Called the tribes of men together.

    From his footprints flowed a river,

    Leaped into the light of morning,

    O'er the precipice plunging downward

    Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.

    And the Spirit, stooping earthward,

    With his finger on the meadow

    Traced a winding pathway for it,

    Saying to it, Run in this way!

    From the red stone of the quarry

    With his hand he broke a fragment,

    Moulded it into a pipe-head,

    Shaped and fashioned it with figures;

    From the margin of the river

    Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,

    With its dark green leaves upon it;

    Filled the pipe with bark of willow,

    With the bark of the red willow;

    Breathed upon the neighboring forest,

    Made its great boughs chafe together,

    Till in flame they burst and kindled;

    And erect upon the mountains,

    Gitche Manito, the mighty,

    Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,

    As a signal to the nations.

    And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,

    Through the tranquil air of morning,

    First a single line of darkness,

    Then a denser, bluer vapor,

    Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,

    Like the tree-tops of the forest,

    Ever rising, rising, rising,

    Till it touched the top of heaven,

    Till it broke against the heaven,

    And rolled outward all around it.

    From the Vale of Tawasentha,

    From the Valley of Wyoming,

    From the groves of Tuscaloosa,

    From the far-off Rocky Mountains,

    From the Northern lakes and rivers

    All the tribes beheld the signal,

    Saw the distant smoke ascending,

    The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe.

    And the Prophets of the nations

    Said: "Behold it, the Pukwana!

    By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,

    Bending like a wand of willow,

    Waving like a hand that beckons,

    Gitche Manito, the mighty,

    Calls the tribes of men together,

    Calls the warriors to his council!"

    Down the rivers, o'er the prairies,

    Came the warriors of the nations,

    Came the Delawares and Mohawks,

    Came the Choctaws and Camanches,

    Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet,

    Came the Pawnees and Omahas,

    Came the Mandans and Dacotahs,

    Came the Hurons and Ojibways,

    All the warriors drawn together

    By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,

    To the Mountains of the Prairie,

    To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,

    And they stood there on the meadow,

    With their weapons and their war-gear,

    Painted like the leaves of Autumn,

    Painted like the sky of morning,

    Wildly glaring at each other;

    In their faces stern defiance,

    In their hearts the feuds of ages,

    The hereditary hatred,

    The ancestral thirst of vengeance.

    Gitche Manito, the mighty,

    The creator of the nations,

    Looked upon them with compassion,

    With paternal love and pity;

    Looked upon their wrath and wrangling

    But as quarrels among children,

    But as feuds and fights of children!

    Over them he stretched his right hand,

    To subdue their stubborn natures,

    To allay their thirst and fever,

    By the shadow of his right hand;

    Spake to them with voice majestic

    As the sound of far-off waters,

    Falling into deep abysses,

    Warning, chiding, spake in this wise:—

    "O my children! my poor children!

    Listen to the words of wisdom,

    Listen to the words of warning,

    From the lips of the Great Spirit,

    From the Master of Life, who made you!

    "I have given you lands to hunt in,

    I have given you streams to fish in,

    I have given you bear and bison,

    I have given you roe and reindeer,

    I have given you brant and beaver,

    Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,

    Filled the rivers full of fishes:

    Why then are you not contented?

    Why then will you hunt each other?

    "I am weary of your quarrels,

    Weary of your wars and bloodshed,

    Weary of your prayers for vengeance,

    Of your wranglings and dissensions;

    All your strength is in your union,

    All your danger is in discord;

    Therefore be at peace henceforward,

    And as brothers live together.

    "I will send a Prophet to you,

    A Deliverer of the nations,

    Who shall guide you and shall teach you,

    Who shall toil and suffer with you.

    If you listen to his counsels,

    You will multiply and prosper;

    If his warnings pass unheeded,

    You will fade away and perish!

    "Bathe now in the stream before you,

    Wash the war-paint from your faces,

    Wash the blood-stains from your fingers,

    Bury your war-clubs and your weapons,

    Break the red stone from this quarry,

    Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes,

    Take the reeds that grow beside you,

    Deck them with your brightest feathers,

    Smoke the calumet together,

    And as brothers live henceforward!"

    Then upon the ground the warriors

    Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin,

    Threw their weapons and their war-gear,

    Leaped into the rushing river,

    Washed the war-paint from their faces.

    Clear above them flowed the

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