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Updated: May 9, 2025
When my acquaintance with Longfellow began he had written the things that made his fame, and that it will probably rest upon: "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and the "Courtship of Miles Standish" were by that time old stories. But during the eighteen years that I knew him he produced the best of his minor poems, the greatest of his sonnets, the sweetest of his lyrics.
No one guessed the quiet pleasure that lay hidden in her heart when she watched the girl's dark head bent over her lessons at night, nor dreamed of her joy it, certain quiet evenings when Miranda went to prayer meeting; evenings when Rebecca would read aloud Hiawatha or Barbara Frietchie, The Bugle Song, or The Brook.
But the larger cities do not by any means contain all the worthy composition. In many smaller cities, and in a few villages even, can be found men of high culture and earnest endeavor. In Yonkers, New York, is Frederick R. Burton, who has written a dramatic cantata on Longfellow's "Hiawatha," which has been frequently performed.
There was the sedate Puritan from Longfellow's "Evangeline"; the red Indians from Cooper's books; Hiawatha and Pocahontas, of course; and the type most beloved in the European market, that of the plantation tyrant who drags his victim to the whipping-post with pointed stakes and cudgels, a la Oncle Tom, and lastly the Mexican types with slouched hats and picturesque shirts and leather leggings, pistols bulging from their belts.
But there was never any interruption or change in the continuity of his work. Evangeline and Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish blossom as naturally out of his evident and characteristic taste and tendency as The Golden Legend or the Masque of Pandora.
Her first, 'Hiawatha's Wooing, represents Minnehaha seated, making a pair of moccasins, and Hiawatha by her side with a world of love and longing in his eyes. In the 'Marriage' they stand side by side with clasped hands. In both the Indian type of feature is carefully preserved, and every detail of dress, etc., is true to nature. The sentiment equals the execution.
A frenzy swept over the West in 1890, inspiring the Indians by promise of the coming of one of superhuman power, who was generally believed to be Hiawatha, to threaten the destruction of the white population, since it had been foretold that the Messiah would drive the white men from their land.
Schoolcraft's volume, which he chose to entitle "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Taronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents.
Just at that moment the bait came near the king, and hearing Hiawatha continually crying out, "Me-she-nah-ma-gwai, take hold of my hook," at last he did so, and allowed himself to be drawn up to the surface, which he had no sooner reached than, at one mouthful, he took Hiawatha and his canoe down. When he came to himself, he found that he was in the fish's belly, and also his canoe.
Then, he, too, sat down, all gazing at him intently and with expectancy. He was a professional story-teller, an institution great and honored among the tribes of the Iroquois farther back even than Hiawatha. He began at once the story of the warrior who learned to talk with the deer and the bear, carrying it on through many chapters.
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