The Song of Hiawatha

[Joanna]

Discussion thread for our February 2021 group read of The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. If your comment includes spoilers, please remember to use the "hide spoilers" link. 😊

[Joanna]

This is probably my favorite of Longfellow's epic and narrative poems and I am so excited to be reading this as a group! I know there will be many interesting things to discuss...I've got several thoughts to share already but shall wait until tomorrow to get it all together because my fingers are too cold to type much at the moment! 😂

[Ruth]

Likewise, Meg.
We had a great time with "Wayside Inn"
I haven't cracked open my book yet, but
tea time is a good place to start.

Oh, no! You poor dear.
Do you have voice to text?

[Joanna]

Ruth wrote: "Likewise, Meg.
We had a great time with "Wayside Inn"
I haven't cracked open my book yet, but
tea time is a good place to start.

Oh, no! You poor dear.
Do you have voice to text?"

I'm sure you will enjoy this as well, Ruth! 🤗 The opening makes my heart skip a beat every time!

"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!" 💗

No, I don't have talk to text...just an old-fashioned keyboard. It's warmer now than it was yesterday! 🥶😂

[Werner]

I'm in, and got started on the poem this morning! (So far, I'm into Chapter 4.) For the last couple of years, I've tried to read a book of poetry every year, since I've tended to neglect it in the past --I like it, but I tend to like fiction better. That being the case, my favorite poems are often those which tell stories; and this is of that type, so that's a plus. :-) Also, I've wanted for a long time to read more of Longfellow's work, having only experienced it from short selections in American Literature textbooks.

Hiawatha was an actual person, who lived in the 16th century, and was a leader in the formation of the Iroquois confederacy; but all that we know of his life comes strictly from oral tradition. Wikipedia has an article on him, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiawatha . In this poem, of course, Longfellow transforms him from a historical figure into an essential mythological one.

Meg, why are your fingers so cold right now? Hope you guys have functioning heat at your house!

[Joanna]

Werner wrote: "I'm in, and got started on the poem this morning! (So far, I'm into Chapter 4.) For the last couple of years, I've tried to read a book of poetry every year, since I've tended to neglect it in the ..."

Oh yes, I enjoy narrative poems as well...in fact it was Longfellow's Evangeline that first sparked my enjoyment of poetry! 😊

Thank you for the link about Hiawatha! It's actually quite an interesting subject, how much Longfellow used the different Indian legends and wove them together...more on that later hopefully!

We live in an old farmhouse with literally no insulation, so it's pretty drafty. 😂 We heat with wood, so when it's really cold (it was 15 below yesterday morning) the kitchen is the only room that's comfortably warm. In the room where the computer is it's probably only about 50!

[Werner]

Meg wrote: "We live in an old farmhouse with literally no insulation, so it's pretty drafty. 😂 We heat with wood, so when it's really cold (it was 15 below yesterday morning) the kitchen is the only room that's comfortably warm. In the room where the computer is it's probably only about 50!"

Hang in there, Meg!

[Werner]

Meg, I just read your post in message 4, and checked it against my copy, which has an Introduction by a Nathan Haskell Dole. Since both that prose introduction (which I didn't read --I've learned to skip that kind of "introduction" until after I've read the text, to avoid spoilers!) and Longfellow's Introduction, which is actually part of the poem, have the same title, I confused them; so I started my read at Chapter 1, "The Peace-Pipe." So I see now that when I read today, I'll need to start with a bit of back-tracking. :-) I'd never have learned this if you hadn't commented; thanks!

[Joanna]

Werner wrote: "Meg, I just read your post in message 4, and checked it against my copy, which has an Introduction by a Nathan Haskell Dole. Since both that prose introduction (which I didn't read --I've learned t..."

Oh I'm glad you found Longfellow's introduction! It is sooo beautiful! I completely understand about not reading many introductions until after finishing the book though...I can't figure out why they would put spoilers right there at the beginning instead of in an afterward! There is an introductory note in my copy that just provides a little background information.

[Joanna]

I have yet to read it, but apparently Longfellow used the same metre for this poem as the Finnish epic The Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot. From what I've heard, the legends have some similarities as well, which caused some to accuse Longfellow of plagiarism. But as he wrote to his friend Charles Sumner, "As to having 'taken many of the most striking incidents of the Finnish Epic and transferred them to the American Indians'—it is absurd".

[Werner]

I haven't read The Kalevala either; but Longfellow doesn't strike me as the plagiarist type. :-) The literary influence of the Finnish work is undeniable, but literary influence and plagiarism are two very different things. IMO, what Longfellow mainly got from Lonnrot's work, besides the meter, was the basic inspiration to try to create the same thing for the U.S. that The Kalevala is for Finland --a truly national epic that expresses the spirit and ethos of a people, that goes back to their earliest days and lays the basic foundation for their literary heritage.

Given that kind of authorial intention, The Song of Hiawatha is a very ambitious work. Obviously, that ambition wasn't fully realized; Longfellow's poem never captured the American imagination in the same way that The Kalevala and other national epics did for the nations in which they arose. That's partly, I think, because European-descended Americans never embraced American Indian culture as part of their "heritage," the Indians were always seen as outsiders and "Other."

[Ruth]

I was just reading about Longfellow writting this
Epic poem and he had this to say.

“Proof sheets of Hiawatha,” he wrote in June, 1855.
“I am growing idiotic about this song, and no longer
know whether it is good or bad;” and later still:
“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 long looking at the same subject.”

Werner, have you experienced this as well?

[Werner]

Ruth wrote: "Werner, have you experienced this as well?"

Hmmm! Well, sort of; when I was writing my novel, I never doubted that the basic idea was good; but it went through quite a few drafts and partial drafts, and changes of direction, before it got into its final form. A lot of confused ideas had to be sorted out during my "long looking at the same subject," since it took some 20 years to write. :-)

[Ruth]

Goodness, twenty years.
A belated congratulations!
I can imagine how delighted you were to have
your work published. Were you surprised at
finally becoming an author?

[Werner]

Thanks, Ruth! No, I can't say that I was really surprised, as such --I knew the book would never be published by Big Publishing, but I always had the confidence that some small press would one day accept it. It was very gratifying when it finally happened, though!

Yesterday, I finished reading the Longfellow poem itself. However, the edition I'm reading has an Appendix, added by Dole (see above), consisting of excerpts from the writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the main source for Longfellow's information about Indian mythology, intended to document the original source material. (Schoolcraft isn't well known or much read today, but I recognized his name; B. F. Gue cited him several times in History of Iowa from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century.) It'll take at least one day's reading session to finish reading this, and I won't get to read today or tomorrow.

Both on Goodreads as a whole and in my friend's circle, ratings for this poem are overwhelmingly positive, and mostly very high. So I'm a bit of an outlier. My review won't be posted until next Friday, but I would only rate it at two stars (okay, on Goodreads' scale.) I don't have any quibbles about the style; Longfellow is a seriously accomplished poet, and a master of eloquent language (and I want to read more of his work). But IMO, here the content of the poem, on examination, lacks substance and doesn't do much for me.

[Werner]

I posted my review of the poem a little while ago, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . It might (or might not) raise some points that spark discussion.

[Joanna]

Werner wrote: "I posted my review of the poem a little while ago, here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . It might (or might not) raise some points that spark discussion."

I JUST finished reading your review, Werner - it was excellent! 😊 I'm sorry it didn't meet your expectations, though!

[Joanna]

I haven't had a chance to read any more in this for a while, between being gone for several days and the fact that I've currently got 9 books going! 😂 But I hope to get back into it tomorrow.

[Werner]

Thanks, Meg! The read wasn't a total loss; I've always wanted to read this poem sometime, and I didn't actually dislike it (there's a real difference between two stars and one). I do hope to read more of Longfellow, and suspect that I'll like some of his work much better.

Meg wrote: "I've currently got 9 books going!"

Whoa! (Jaw drops in amazement. :-) ) The most I can manage to juggle at a time (rarely) is three.

[Joanna]

I finally found this passage from The Poets' New England by Helen Archibald Clarke (1911) which might be of interest... 😊 For anyone who really wants to dig deep, there's also the chapter on 'The Lore of Hiawatha' in Longfellow's Country by the same author (both books are free online).

The entire field of Indian lore, merely touched upon by Whittier and Lowell, has been carefully plowed by Longfellow with the result that in Hiawatha he has produced an Indian epic that stands unique in the literature not only of America but in that of the world. If to his familiarity with Indian legend he had added Whittier's acquaintance with localities, we might have had the unalloyed delight of associating the varied episodes in Hiawatha's life and those of the other heroes of the poem with the wilds of Central New York, instead of with the far-off shores of Lake Superior, the home of the Chippewas or Ojibways, an Algonquin tribe. He took the Iroquois account of Hiawatha as the basis for his hero's character, and added unto it a whole cycle of Algonquin legends attaching to Manabozho, as well as those of other Algonquin mythic personages.

Schoolcraft, who was Longfellow's authority for the Manabozho and Hiawatha legends, has been anathematized by more than one critic for confusing an Iroquois hero with an Algonquin hero. Jeremiah Curtin, especially, declares that since the Iroquois and Algonquins were enemies, the former taking the English and the latter the French side, “it is as if Europeans of some future age were to have placed before them a great epic narrative of French heroic adventure in which Prince Bismarck would appear as the chief and central Gallic figure in the glory and triumph of France." To which it might be retorted, why is it not more like the fact which already exists of an epic cycle in which a mythical King Arthur is the hero both in Brittany and Wales, though the Normans and the British were enemies? A typical Indian hero was what Longfellow wanted—a being who would reflect in his single personality all the qualities of mind and nature characteristic of the Indian, a wise man, a cunning man and a magician. One of the best proofs that the essential truths of the Indian mythology are preserved is the regard in which the present-day descendants of the Chippewas hold the poem. The writer asked a young Indian woman of the Chippewa tribe recently what she thought of Hiawatha. Her face lighted up, and she replied with enthusiasm, “I love it!” She went on to say that it was astonishing how little Longfellow's accounts of the myths differed from the stories which had been handed down to her in her own family.

[Werner]

One thing that also has to be said in this poem's favor (and which I didn't mention in my review --as usual, after I hit the "Save" button, I remember more points that should have been made!) is that Longfellow offers a depiction of Indians, as a group, that's positive and respectful, and invites the reader to admire and like an Indian hero. That was not an attitude which was by any means universal in 19th-century America, where very deep-dyed racism against Indians flourished in many quarters, and there were politicians and military officers basically advocating genocide.

[Joanna]

Werner wrote: "One thing that also has to be said in this poem's favor (and which I didn't mention in my review --as usual, after I hit the "Save" button, I remember more points that should have been made!) is th..."

Haha, that always happens to me too! 🤦‍♀️😂 In the introductory note to my edition, it is pointed out that Mr. Longfellow "has done more to immortalize in song and story the life and environments of the red man of North America than any other writer, save perhaps J. Fenimore Cooper." Interestingly though, there are some in these mixed-up times who actually think the poem IS racist! 😵

[Werner]

Meg wrote: "Interestingly though, there are some in these mixed-up times who actually think the poem IS racist!"

That characterization of the poem probably tells us more about the attitudes, presuppositions and prejudices of the persons making it than it does about Longfellow's. :-( Whole books could be written (and probably have been) on that subject.

Yes, Cooper was another 19th-century American writer who treated Indians positively (and, in the title character of The Last of the Mohicans, gave readers an Indian hero). Catherine Maria Sedgwick was another.

[Joanna]

As a gardener and amateur botanist, I really enjoy all the references to plants and their uses in this poem! The building of the canoe is quite fascinating. The word Tamarack is derived from the Algonquian akemantak which means "wood used for snowshoes"...

"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack!
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-tree!
My canoe to bind together,
So to bind the ends together
That the water may not enter,
That the river may not wet me!"

[Joanna]

I just finished this today...too many books going at once made it a slow read, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again!! 😊 I've been looking and looking for the criticism of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. mentioned in the introduction of my copy, and finally found at least an excerpt from it...

"Suddenly and immensely popular in this country, greatly admired by many foreign critics, imitated with perfect ease by any clever
schoolboy, serving as a model for metrical advertisements, made fun of, sneered at, admired, abused, but at any rate a picture full of pleasing fancies and melodious cadences. The very names are jewels which the most fastidious muse might be proud to wear. Coming from the realm of the Androscoggin and of Moosetukmaguntuk, how could he have found two such delicious names as Hiawatha and Minnehaha? The eight-syllable trochaic verse of Hiawatha, like the eight-syllable iambio verse of The Lady of the Lake and others of Scott's poems, has a fatal facility, which I have elsewhere endeavored to explain on physiological principles. The recital of each line uses up the air of one natural expiration, so that we read, as we naturally do, eighteen or twenty lines in a minute without disturbing the normal
rhythm of breathing, which is also eighteen or twenty breaths to the minute. The standing objection to this is, that it makes the octosyllabic verse too easy writing and too slipshod reading. Yet in this most frequently criticized piece of verse-work, the poet has shown a subtle sense of the requirements of his simple story of a primitive race, in choosing the most fluid of measures that lets the thought run through it in easy sing-song, such as oral tradition would be sure to find on the lips of the story-tellers of the wigwam."

[Joanna]

One thing that really struck me this time, as Dr. Holmes mentions, is how poetical the Indian words are. I notice the same thing in our area where many of the rivers and streams have names like Aroostook, Mattawamkeag and Pennesseewassee...if I was a poet I'd sure use them! 😂 Also the beauty of their legends traditions...I just love this poem!

[Joanna]

Just a little botanical note: the "White-man's Foot" of the next to last chapter is the common lawn weed, Plantain (Plantago major). It is native to Europe and parts of Asia, but of course has spread throughout most of the world: "The Broad-leaved Plantain seems to have followed the migrations of our colonists to every part of the world, and in both America and New Zealand it has been called by the aborigines the 'Englishman's Foot' (or the White Man's Foot), for wherever the English have taken possession of the soil the Plantain springs up."

[Werner]

Plantain is common both in the Midwest where I grew up (it grew in our yard when I was a kid) and here in Appalachia, where it's colloquially known as "hog's ears." (it's one of the few plants I can actually recognize when i see it. :-) ) The leaves are edible, and a lot of residents of rural Appalachia gather and eat them, usually along with other wild greens. They're also known to have medicinal properties, and were used in folk medicine to reduce inflammation, improve digestion, and promote wound healing.

[Joanna]

Werner wrote: "Plantain is common both in the Midwest where I grew up (it grew in our yard when I was a kid) and here in Appalachia, where it's colloquially known as "hog's ears." (it's one of the few plants I ca..."

Yes it does have a lot of great uses! It's even mentioned a couple of times in Shakespeare as a remedy for a broken shin! 😂 I've used it in a salve before along with comfrey.