Books with title The song of Hiawatha,

This is the completely illustrated and annotated edition including an extensive primer on the author's life and works and many splendid drawings by Harrsion Fisher. 'This Indian Edda, if I may so call it,' says the author, 'is founded on a tradition, prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozho, Tarcuyawagon, and Hiawatha. ' We are further informed, that 'the scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.' Here then, at last, is a genuine American poem, by a native of America; a poem redolent of pine-forests and the smoke of wigwams. ' In reading American poetry, we never get beyond the shores of Kent,' said a surly critic some years ago. It is obvious enough, that if this complaint was justifiable then, it is utterly without foundation now. Longfellow's poem created an immense and instant sensation, not only in this country, but in England. It was read, it was quoted, it was praised, it was ridiculed, it was dramatized, it was parodied, it was attacked as a plagiarism. It remains to this day the most parodied poem in the English language.

Initially conceived by Longfellow after reading the works of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, "The Song of Hiawatha" is an epic poem based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The beautiful descriptions of this part of the United States are intertwined with the story of the Native American Hiawatha. From his youth to his marriage, from his daily existence of gathering food to his participation in the traditions of his people, Longfellow weaves a tale of impressive scope in this lyric work. Ultimately, this poem tells the story of the American Indian, including his habitual life, fight for survival, and gradual disappearance at the arrival of white men.

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The epic relates the adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature. In his book on the development of the image of the Indian in American thought and literature, Pearce wrote about The Song of Hiawatha: "It was Longfellow who fully realized for mid-nineteenth century Americans the possibility of image of the noble savage. He had available to him not only poems on the Indian . . . but also the general feeling that the Indian belonged nowhere in American life but in dim prehistory. He saw how the mass of Indian legends which Schoolcraft was collecting depicted noble savages out of time, and offered, if treated right, a kind of primitive example of that very progress which had done them in. Thus in Hiawatha he was able, matching legend with a sentimental view of a past far enough away in time to be safe and near enough in space to be appealing, fully to image the Indian as noble savage. For by the time Longfellow wrote Hiawatha, the Indian as a direct opponent of civilization was dead, yet was still heavy on American consciences . . . . The tone of the legend and ballad… would color the noble savage so as to make him blend in with a dim and satisfying past about which readers could have dim and satisfying feelings."

Return to the shores of Gitche Gumee and sing the Song of Hiawatha Out of childhood into manhood Now had grown my Hiawatha, Skilled in all the craft of hunters, Learned in all the lore of old men, In all youthful sports and pastimes, In all manly arts and labors. Swift of foot was Hiawatha; He could shoot an arrow from him, And run forward with such fleetness, That the arrow fell behind him! Strong of arm was Hiawatha; He could shoot ten arrows upward, Shoot them with such strength and swiftness, That the tenth had left the bow-string Ere the first to earth had fallen!--Longfellow

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Initially conceived by Longfellow after reading the works of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, "The Song of Hiawatha" is an epic poem based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The beautiful descriptions of this part of the United States are intertwined with the story of the Native American Hiawatha. From his youth to his marriage, from his daily existence of gathering food to his participation in the traditions of his people, Longfellow weaves a tale of impressive scope in this lyric work. Ultimately, this poem tells the story of the American Indian, including his habitual life, fight for survival, and gradual disappearance at the arrival of white men.