"The Song of Hiawatha" is one of the most beloved American classics and yet has been a little neglected recently by the literary community at large. Perhaps its pre-modern origins make it uninteresting as a modern study, or maybe it has simply become a text that is taken for granted? Who knows.
My mother found and gifted to me a 112 year old copy of this book. It was published within 50 years of the epic's first appearance in 1855. It is the Minnehaha Edition with illustrations published by Thompson & Thomas of Chicago in 1898. It is cloth-bound with what looks to have been at one time a beautiful gilded cover. It has a very short uncredited introduction and six pages of notes in the back. Otherwise, there is no scholarly material.
Longfellow was a poet of his time in many senses. One evidence of which is his careful attention to form and musicality within his work. Another was his choice of subject matter which he was at a opportune time in history to explore and record. What makes Longfellow stand out is the ease with which this book-length poem can be read. I am generally not inclined to read book-length poems because of their ungainliness. Poetry sustained over such a long stretch can tend to become cumbersome, dull, and difficult to follow. Not so "The Song of Hiawatha".
Such as the introduction and notes to this particular volume are, they do shed some light on Longfellow's sources for the material contained in "Hiawatha". The disadvantage of reading such an early edition is that these sources are stated as though generally known and accessible, which is not the case for the average modern reader who has not already made a scholarly study of the poem. These are stated this way: Schoolcraft's Algic Researches and other books, from Heckewelder's Narratives, from Black Hawk (one of the most famous Native American chiefs in U.S. history and who Longfellow associated with in Boston. Black Hawk died in 1838), and from the Ojibway chief Kahge-ga-gah-bowh, whom Longfellow entertained at his home.
Though the legends that inspired "Hiawatha" are more or less common to the Native American populations and there are references within the poem to locations throughout the United States, "Hiawatha" largely concerns itself with the Ojibways (modern spelling: Ojibwe or Ojibwa) and much of the story takes place on the southern shores of Lake Superior in Michigan. Hiawatha himself is depicted as an Ojibway of supernatural origins.
There are many similarities in the action of this poem with other known legends and narratives of other cultures. In one part, Hiawatha takes a journey to settle the score with his father, the north-west wind, who jilted his mother who later died of heartbreak that, although told swiftly and briefly, echoes the Odyssey. There are also some similarity with Greek myths concerning stars, etc. Biblical narratives are also brought to mind when Hiawatha gets swallowed by a fish, wrestles an angel-like creature which gave corn its name, and whose friend is the strongest man ever to live and has only one weakness which is fatally exploited, etc.
What may be the most remembered moments of the epic are those involving Hiawatha's relationship with Minnehaha. She was of one of the Dacotah tribes (the notes tell us that those known as the Sioux are most likely meant here) which were longtime enemies of the Ojibways and Hiawatha's marriage to her brought peace between them for a time. Lines 1-5 and 15-20 of Chapter 10, in which Hiawatha and his grandmother Nokomis discuss marriage, are possibly the most quoted passages of the whole poem.
The singular beauty, musicality, and readability of the work may be most owing to the proliferation of Native American names and terms throughout. Except place-names, these are usually explained within the text of the poem as part of the form. For the names of locations, one usually has to refer to the notes in the back or to small clues left in the text and one's knowledge of U.S. geography.
There can be no doubt of the service that Longfellow rendered in preserving these legends in surprisingly accessible form for future generations and readers. It would be beneficial to see more scholarly papers written about "The Song of Hiawatha", from both the viewpoint of the "white" majority and especially from the viewpoint of Native Americans.
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