Literature / The Song of Hiawatha

"There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!"

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 Epic Poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. One of the most famous works of poetry of the early United States, it is a very loose retelling of Ojibwe mythology mostly centering around the culture hero Nanabozho, here referred to as Hiawatha.

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The Song of Hiawatha provides examples of:

• Abstract Apotheosis: Mudjekeewis begins as a mortal warrior and becomes the West-Wind. He states that Hiawatha will likewise become the Northwest-Wind upon his death.
• Adaptational Heroism: In Ojibwe legend, Nanabozho is a Trickster Archetype who is frequently motivated for his own benefit and is a "hero" in the old mythological sense, a doer of extraordinary deeds. Here, Hiawatha is a prophet sent by Gitche Manito to teach people peace and brotherhood, who thinks primarily of helping others, and has hardly a mean bone in his body.
• Adaptational Name Change: Longfellow went with the name "Hiawatha" under the impression that it was another name for Nanabozho or Manabozho. In reality Hiawatha was a historical figure who helped found the League of the Iroquois, an unrelated group of peoples who lived hundreds of miles away from the story's setting. It has been pointed out that the real Hiawatha was famed for making peace between warring peoples, just as Longfellow's Hiawatha is sent by God to do the same, suggesting that the fictional version may be something of a Composite Character.
• Altar Diplomacy: Hiawatha chooses a wife from the Dacotahs in an attempt to improve relations between them and the Ojibways.
• Anaphora: The poem makes frequent use of this, most memorably:
  By the shores of Gitche Gumee
  By the shining Big-Sea-Water
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Aside from the four winds, one canto details the end of a particularly long and brutal winter in the form of a meeting between a young man (spring) and an old man (winter) that ends with the old man shrinking and vanishing.
• Artistic License – History: By way of Misplaced Wildlife — dandelions and chickens are referenced in North America before the arrival of European settlers who actually introduced them.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Pau-Puk-Keewis is introduced as a "merry mischief-maker" who dances at Hiawatha and Minnehaha's wedding. The next time he shows up, his actions become a spiral of jerkassery, starting with rudely interrupting one of Iagoo's stories and ending with trashing Nokomis' house and slaughtering a bunch of birds for no reason.
• But Now I Must Go: At the end of the poem, Hiawatha bids the Ojibways farewell and sets off alone in his canoe across Gitche Gumee, saying that it will be many ages before he returns.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Early on, Hiawatha attacks his father Mudjekeewis in revenge for Mudjekeewis having abandoned his mother Wenonah to die of loneliness.
• Censor Shadow: In-universe — when Minnehaha blesses the cornfields by running naked around them at night, the darkness literally wraps around her so no one will see her.
• Composite Character: In Ojibwe mythology, Nanabozho's father is E-bangishimog, the West Wind, who is also the father of Majiikiwis, a spirit associated with bears. In The Song of Hiawatha, E-bangishimog and Majiikiwis are combined into Mudjekeewis, who is the West-Wind, Hiawatha's (Nanabozho's) father and also associated with bears.
• Crying Wolf: Iagoo is such a liar that no one believes his story about a giant winged canoe spitting thunder and bearing pale-faced people with hairy chins, until Hiawatha agrees with him. Of course, he's talking about the arrival of white settlers.
• Depraved Dwarf: The Puk-wudjies seem like standard Little People until they decide to murder Kwasind for no reason other than that he's scary to them.
• Dwindling Party: The final cantos detail the deaths of three of the four people Hiawatha is closest to. Lastly, Hiawatha himself departs, leaving only the elderly Nokomis still present out of the main characters.
• Evil Sorceror: Megissogwon, who uses magic to kill people from afar with disease and poison.
• Fiendish Fish: In canto VIII Hiawatha (joined for the time being by a squirrel companion) faces down the gigantic sturgeon Mishe-Nahma, king of fishes, who's big enough to swallow him and his canoe whole.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: After being swallowed by Mishe-Nahma, Hiawatha kills the sturgeon from inside, and both he and the squirrel survive long enough to escape once scavenging seagulls have eaten holes in the carcass.
• God: The first canto begins with a personal appearance by Gitche Manito, the Algonquian conception of The Maker.
• Heroic Lineage: Hiawatha is the son of Mudjekeewis, a warrior who stole the wampum belt from the Great Bear's neck and in reward became the Anthropomorphic Personification of the West-Wind.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Nokomis means "my Grandmother," but she's called this from her first appearance, before she even has a child, let alone a grandchild, and it seems to be her actual name.
• Imaginary Love Triangle: Shawondasee the South-Wind falls in love with a yellow-haired girl he sees on the plain, but he's too lazy to approach her until he sees her hair turn white and concludes that Kabibonokka the North-Wind has wooed her instead. It's all in his head because the "girl" is just a dandelion.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Iagoo claims he's played lots of gambling games and can even give Pau-Puk-Keewis lessons on Bowls and Counters, which Pau-Puk-Keewis invented. Instead, Pau-Puk-Keewis thoroughly fleeces him and all his guests.
• Messianic Archetype: Hiawatha is certainly close to if not a full-on messianic archetype, being personally sent by Gitche Manito to toil and suffer for the aid of his people, departing directly to the Hereafter at the end and implying that he'll return some day.
• The Münchausen: "Iagoo, the great boaster" constantly makes up adventures because he's jealous of the attention other people get. The Ojibways like him because he's a good storyteller, even if they know most of what he's saying is lies.
• The Old North Wind: The four winds are personified as nature spirits, with Kabibonokka the North-Wind being a "fierce" man with "snow-besprinkled" hair, but who is ultimately beaten by a strong human wrestler. The actual strongest of the four is Mudjekeewis, the West-Wind.
• Quick Draw: One of Hiawatha's showier feats is to shoot 10 arrows straight up one at a time, loosing the last one before the first one hits the ground.
• Riding into the Sunset: The ending has Hiawatha paddling his canoe into the sunset across Gitche Gumee.
• Sacred Hospitality:
  • At Hiawatha and Minnehaha's wedding, they and Nokomis only wait on the guests rather than eat anything themselves.
  • In canto XIX, Nokomis' home is visited by two haggard strangers who do nothing but sit silently in the corner and eat all the best parts of the meals which Hiawatha intended for Minnehaha. Neither Minnehaha, nor Hiawatha, nor Nokomis object to this. In perhaps Homeric fashion, they don't even ask who the guests are. This goes on for days.
• Shout-Out: The poem borrows quite a bit from The Kalevala, including its use of trochaic meter and being centered around a culture hero who leaves his people when Christianity arrives, promising to return in the future.
• Show Within a Show: The narrative about events in the story's present pauses several times while Iagoo tells stories of his own.
• Stellification: Wabun the East-Wind turns his human lover into a star so they can be together in the sky; she's thereafter called Wabun-Annung, Star of Morning.
• Strong Family Resemblance: When Mudjekeewis first sees Hiawatha, he thinks the young man looks like Wenonah risen from the grave.
• Super-Speed: When he reaches adulthood, Hiawatha is able to shoot an arrow and outrun it while it's still flying.
• True Companions: Hiawatha's two best friends are Chibiabos the singer and Kwasind the strong man; the three of them are always at work on ways to improve the Ojibways' lot.
• Weaksauce Weakness:
  • When they first meet, Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis ask each other if there is anything that can harm the other. Mudjekeewis answers a large black rock called Wawbeek and Hiawatha answers a bulrush. Both of them, of course, are lying.
  • Kwasind is only vulnerable to being hit on the head, and then only with pinecones.
• Winter of Starvation: Canto XX is titled "The Famine" and follows the characters' plight during a long, harsh winter when game becomes scarce. It ends with Minnehaha dying of starvation and sickness.
• World's Strongest Man: Kwasind, "the strongest of all mortals," can toss tree trunks singlehanded and can't draw a bow or wring out a fishing net without destroying them.
• You Are the Translated Foreign Word:
  • When Gitche Gumee is mentioned, it's usually followed with the same sentence except with "Gitche Gumee" replaced by "Big-Sea-Water" (a loose translation — generally "Great Sea" is preferred).
  • The same is usually done with animals; when one is mentioned, its Ojibway name either precedes or follows (e.g. "Chetowaik, the plover" or "the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah").