- Whence these stories?
- Whence these legends and traditions,
- With the odors of the forest
- With the dew and damp of meadows,
- With the curling smoke of wigwams,
- With the rushing of great rivers,
- With their frequent repetitions,
- And their wild reverberations
- As of thunder in the mountains?
- I should answer, I should tell you,
- "From the forests and the prairies,
- From the great lakes of the Northland,
- From the land of the Ojibways,
- From the land of the Dacotahs,
- From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
- Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
- Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
- I repeat them as I heard them
- From the lips of Nawadaha,
- The musician, the sweet singer."
- Should you ask where Nawadaha
- Found these songs so wild and wayward,
- Found these legends and traditions,
- I should answer, I should tell you,
- "In the bird's-nests of the forest,
- In the lodges of the beaver,
- In the hoofprint of the bison,
- In the eyry of the eagle!
- "All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
- In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
- In the melancholy marshes;
- Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
- Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
- The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
- And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
- If still further you should ask me,
- Saying, "Who was Nawadaha?
- Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
- I should answer your inquiries
- Straightway in such words as follow.
- "In the vale of Tawasentha,
- In the green and silent valley,
- By the pleasant water-courses,
- Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
- Round about the Indian village
- Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
- And beyond them stood the forest,
- Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,
- Green in Summer, white in Winter,
- Ever sighing, ever singing.
- "And the pleasant water-courses,
- You could trace them through the valley,
- By the rushing in the Spring-time,
- By the alders in the Summer,
- By the white fog in the Autumn,
- By the black line in the Winter;
- And beside them dwelt the singer,
- In the vale of Tawasentha,
- In the green and silent valley.
- "There he sang of Hiawatha,
- Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
- Sang his wondrous birth and being,
- How he prayed and how be fasted,
- How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
- That the tribes of men might prosper,
- That he might advance his people!"
- Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
- Love the sunshine of the meadow,
- Love the shadow of the forest,
- Love the wind among the branches,
- And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
- And the rushing of great rivers
- Through their palisades of pine-trees,
- And the thunder in the mountains,
- Whose innumerable echoes
- Flap like eagles in their eyries;-
- Listen to these wild traditions,
- To this Song of Hiawatha!
- Ye who love a nation's legends,
- Love the ballads of a people,
- That like voices from afar off
- Call to us to pause and listen,
- Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
- Scarcely can the ear distinguish
- Whether they are sung or spoken;-
- Listen to this Indian Legend,
- To this Song of Hiawatha!
- Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
- Who have faith in God and Nature,
- Who believe that in all ages
- Every human heart is human,
- That in even savage bosoms
- There are longings, yearnings, strivings
- For the good they comprehend not,
- That the feeble hands and helpless,
- Groping blindly in the darkness,
- Touch God's right hand in that darkness
- And are lifted up and strengthened;-
- Listen to this simple story,
- To this Song of Hiawatha!
- Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
- Through the green lanes of the country,
- Where the tangled barberry-bushes
- Hang their tufts of crimson berries
- Over stone walls gray with mosses,
- Pause by some neglected graveyard,
- For a while to muse, and ponder
- On a half-effaced inscription,
- Written with little skill of song-craft,
- Homely phrases, but each letter
- Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
- Full of all the tender pathos
- Of the Here and the Hereafter;
- Stay and read this rude inscription,
- Read this Song of Hiawatha!
- Introduction to the "Song of Hiawatha"
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow PHOTOS: LUTSEN RESORT, NORTH SHORE OF LAKE SUPERIOR
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