Hiawatha’s Inspiration
Henry Longfellow tells us how his tale of a heroic Native American warrior came to him.
published 1855
Queen Victoria 1837-1901 Franklin Pierce, US President 1853-1857
Henry Longfellow tells us how his tale of a heroic Native American warrior came to him.
published 1855
Queen Victoria 1837-1901 Franklin Pierce, US President 1853-1857
In 1855, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha, a long narrative poem named after the twelfth-century Ojibwe warrior and leader of the Iroquois Confederacy of Native American peoples. The tale he told was wholly fictitious, but in the opening lines he nevertheless told us where he got it from.
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.”
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
According to Longfellow, how did he himself come to know the story of Hiawatha?
From a Native American singer named Nawadaha.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Where did I get this story? From Nawadaha. He sang it.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
ICome. IIHear. IIISong.