Actor and singer Allan T. Demaray Jr (1969-), with a bison, or to be precise, the trophy head of a bison. The photographer, Shane Balkowitsch, specialises in making photographs with the wet collodion technique used by Lewis Carroll back in the 1860s. Demaray is a Native American of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, which lives on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in central North Dakota.
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. (58 / 60 words)
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.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: besides, just, must, or, otherwise, since, until, whereas.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
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.
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