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Updated: May 31, 2025
Primitive man with a kind of fine democracy claimed kinship with the animals about him. So Hiawatha learned the language and the secrets of birds and beasts, "Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them Hiawatha's Brothers." Out of this intimacy and understanding grew the fable, wherein animals thought, acted, and talked in the terms of human life.
As he stood in the assemblage of chiefs a white bird, appearing at an immense height, descended like a meteor, struck Hiawatha's daughter with such force as to drive her remains into the earth and shattered itself against the ground.
He advanced crying out, "It was you that killed my grandfather," and with this shot his arrows. The combat continued all day. Hiawatha's arrows had no effect, for his antagonist was clothed with pure wampum. He was now reduced to three arrows, and it was only by extraordinary agility that he could escape the blows which the Manito kept making at him.
In autumn the squaws used to go in their canoes to these natural rice-fields, and, bending the tall stalks over the gunwale, beat out the heads of grain with their paddles into the canoe. It is mentioned among the dainties at Hiawatha's wedding-feast: "Haunch of deer, and hump of bison, Yellow cakes of the Momdamin, And the wild rice of the river."
"Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow " Hiawatha's wigwam might well have been just beyond the spruce thicket, Thayer reflected. The description was too accurate to be artistic; it amounted to mere photography.
"Why," said she, "I am fixing a snare for Hiawatha, if he should be on this earth; and, in the mean time, I am looking for herbs to heal my son. I am the only person that can do him any good. He always gets better when I sing: "'Hiawatha a ne we guawk, Koan dan mau wah, ne we guawk, Koan dan mau wah, ne we guawk, It is Hiawatha's dart, I try my magic power to withdraw."
Hiawatha's first endeavor was to enlist his own nation in the cause. He summoned a meeting of the chiefs and people of the Onondaga towns. The summons, proceeding from a chief of his rank and reputation, attracted a large concourse. For there appeared among them a well-known figure, grim, silent and forbidding, whose terrible aspect overawed the assemblage.
The poet Longfellow has also dwelt upon the power of observation in the early training of Hiawatha. You will perhaps recall the lines: "Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in summer, Where they hid themselves in winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them 'Hiawatha's Chickens."
In the course of conversation he asked his father whether he had been the cause of his mother's death. The answer was "Yes!" He then took up the rock and struck him. Blow led to blow, and here commenced an obstinate and furious combat, which continued several days. Fragments of the rock, broken off under Hiawatha's blows, can be seen in various places to this day.
As boys, I and my youngest brother knew "Hiawatha's Fishing" almost by heart, so I had an intense desire to see "Gitche Gumee, the Big-Sea Water," which we more prosaically call Lake Superior, the home of the sturgeon "Nahma," of "Ugudwash" the sun-fish, of the pike the "Maskenozha," and the actual scene of Hiawatha's fishing.
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