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

Introduction

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.”

Précis
In the opening lines of ‘Hiawatha’, Longfellow explains that the story he is about to tell came to him from a Native American singer named Nawadaha. But Nawadaha was only the immediate source: ultimately, he says, the stories come from the lands of the Americans themselves, and above all from the natural world of rivers, plains and mountains.
Sevens

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?

Suggestion

From a Native American singer named Nawadaha.

Jigsaws

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.