The Song of Hiawatha

: : \ ] of BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DESIGNS BY FREDERIC REMINGTON BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY ($fte fitoersibe press, Cambribge MDCCCXCV Copyright, 1855, BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Copyright, 1883, BY ERNEST W. LONGFELLOW. Copyright, 1890, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.. U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii INTRODUCTION ...... 1 I. THE PEACE-PIPE .... 4 II. THE FOUR WINDS .... 10 III. HIAWATHA S CHILDHOOD ... 19 IV. HIAWATHA AND MUDJEKEEWIS . 26 V. HIAWATHA S FASTING .... 36 VI. HIAWATHA S FRIENDS ... 45 VII. HIAWATHA S SAILING .... 50 VIII. HIAWATHA S FISHING ... 55 IX. HIAWATHA AND THE PEARL-FEATHER 62 X. HIAWATHA S WOOING ... 71 XI. HIAWATHA S WEDDING-FEAST . 80 XII. THE SON OF THE EVENING STAR . 88 XIII. BLESSING THE CORNFIELDS ... 99 XIV. PICTURE-WRITING .... 106 XV. HIAWATHA S LAMENTATION . 112 XVI. PAU-PUK-KEEWIS . 119 XVII. THE HUNTING OF PAU-PUK-KEEWIS 127 M204797 iv CONTENTS XVIII. THE DEATH OF KWASIND 138 XIX. THE GHOSTS . .142 XX. THE FAMINE ... 149 XXI. THE WHITE MAN S FOOT . .154 XXII. HIAWATHA S DEPARTURE . 162 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, etched by S. A. Schoff, from a portrait by C. G. Thompson Frontispiece All the tribes beheld the signal, Saw the distant smoke ascending 4 Like a ghost that goes at sunrise, He beheld a maiden walking 12 Then, upon one knee uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow 24 Glared like Ishkodah, the comet, Like the star with fiery tresses 32 And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments green and yellow 40 Pitched it sheer into the river . Where it still is seen in Summer 48 Thus the birch canoe was builded . In the bosom of the forest 52 Long sat waiting for an answer 58 Then began the greatest battle That the sun had ever looked on 68 " I " will follow yon, my husband ! 76 Through the shadows and the sunshine, Treading softly like a panther 84 And her lovers, the rejected, . Handsome men with paint and feathers 88 T was the women who in Autumn Stripped the yellow husks of harvest 100 VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Such as these the shapes they painted On the birch-bark and the deer-skin 110 " I can blow yon strong, my brother, " I can heal yon, Hiawatha ! 116 All the old men and the young men, . Played till midnight, played till morning 120 Thorough bush, and brake, and forest, Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis 128 Sideways fell into the river, Plunged beneath the sluggish water 140 Sat down in the farthest corner, Crouching low among the Shadows 144 Then he sat down, still and speechless, . At the feet of Laughing Water .152 " Sit here by the dying embers, " Let us pass the night together 156 Came the Black-Robe chief, . the Pale-face, With his guides and his companions 164 THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE FROM DESIGNS BY FREDERIC REMINGTON THE SONG OF HIAWATHA INTRODUCTORY NOTE The Song of Hiawatha was first published in November in 1855. The general purpose to make use of Indian material appears to have been in the poet s mind for some time, but the conception as finally wrought was formed in the summer of 1854. He writes in his diary under date of June 22, " I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beau tiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right and only one for such a theme." A few days before, he had been reading with great delight the Finnish epic Kale- vala, and this poem suggested the measure and may well have reminded him also of the Indian legends, which have that likeness to the Finnish that springs from a common intellectual stage of development and a general community of habits and occupation. An interest in the Indians had long been felt by Mr. Longfellow, and in his early plans for prose sketches tales about the Indians had a place. He had seen a few of the straggling remainder of the Algonquins in Maine, and had read Heckewelder viii THE SONG OF HIAWATHA while in witnessed the of Black college ; had display Hawk and his Sacs and Foxes on Boston Common ; and, a few years before, had made the acquaint ance of the fine-tempered Kah-ge-ga-gah bowh, the Ojibway chief, and had entertained him at his house, trusting not unlikely that he might derive from the Indian some helpful suggestion. No sooner had his floating ideas of a work taken shape than he was eager to put his plans into exe " I not this cution. could help evening," he wrote June 25, " making a beginning of Manabozho, or whatever the poem is to be called. His adventures all " will form the theme, at events ; and the next " look over Schoolcraft s book on the day ; great Indians three ; huge quartos, ill-digested, and with index. a lines of the out any Write few poem." His authority for the legends and the material gen erally of his poem was in the main Schoolcraft s work, with probably the same author s more lit erary composition Algic Researches, and Hecke- welder s narrative. He soon took Manabozho s other and more euphonic name, Hiawatha, into his service, and gave himself up to a thorough en joyment of the task. " Worked at Hiawatha" he wrote on the 31st of the month, " as I do more or less every day. It is purely in the realm of fancy. After tea, read to the boys the Indian story of The Red Swan" "Hiawatha" he wrote again " in October, occupies and delights me. Have I no misgivings about it? Yes, sometimes. Then the theme seizes me and hurries me away, and they vanish." His misgivings took a concrete shape a few days later, when he read aloud to a friend some INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix " pages of his work. He fears the poem will want human interest. So does F. So does the author, I must put a live, beating heart into it." Mr. Longfellow began writing Hiawatha, as we have seen, June 25, 1854. It was finished March 29, 1855, and published November 10. It is doubtful if the poet wrote any of his longer works with more abandonment, with more thorough en joyment of his task, with a keener sense of the originality of his venture, and by consequence, with more perplexity when he thought of his read ers. He tried the poem on his friends more freely than had been customary with him, and with va ried results. His own mind, as he neared the test " of publication, wavered a little in its moods. Proof sheets of Hiawatha" he wrote in June, 1855. " I am growing idiotic about this song, and no longer " it is or later still : know whether good bad ; and "In great doubt about a canto of Hiawatha, whether to retain or suppress it. It is odd how confused one s mind becomes about such matters from at the long looking same subject." No sooner was the poem published than its pop ularity was assured, and it was subjected to the most searching tests. It was read by public read ers to large audiences, and a few years later was set to music by Stoepel and given at the Bos ton Theatre with explanatory readings by Matilda Heron. It was parodied, one of the surest signs of popularity, and it lived its parodies down, a surer sign still of intrinsic uncopyableness. It was criticised with heated words, and made the oc casion for controversy. The elemental nature of x THE SONG OF HIAWATHA the poetry led to vehement charges of plagiarism, and altogether the poet found himself in the midst of a violent war of words which recalled his expe rience with Hyperion. He felt keenly the unrea sonableness of the attack upon his honesty in the charge that he had borrowed metre and incidents both from the Kalevala. He made no secret of the suggestion of the metre, he had used an ac knowledged form, which was not exclusively Fin as for he confessed nish ; and the legends, openly his indebtedness to Schoolcraft in the notes to the poem. Referring to an article in a Washing ton paper, embodying these charges, he wrote to Mr. Sumner, December 3, 1855 : This is truly one of the greatest literary outrages I ever heard of. But I think it is done mainly to show the learning of the writer. He will stand finally in the position of a man who makes public assertions which he cannot substantiate. You see what the charge of imitation amounts to, by the extracts given. As to my having "taken many of the most striking incidents of the Finnish Epic and transferred them to the Amer " ican Indians it is absurd. I can give chapter and verse for these legends. Their chief value is that they are Indian I well legends. know the Kalevala very ; and that some of its legends resemble the Indian stories preserved by Schoolcraft is very true. But the idea of making me responsible for that is too ludicrous. Freiligrath wrote to him with reference to a dis cussion going on in the London AtJienceum over " the metre : The very moment I looked into the book I exclaimed, Launawatar, Frau die alte, INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi and was laughing with you again over the pages of the Finnische Runvn, as thirteen years ago on the Rhine.

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