Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

Everybody knows “By the shores of Gitche Gumee; By the shining Big-Sea Water”, right? But what comes next? Nor is that how the poem begins. In fact, we are well into the third Canto (of twenty-two) before those famous words show up. I know I was exposed to Longfellow’s long narrative poem way back in high school sometime, but I had never read it in its entirety before. Hiawatha, born of Wenonah and the fickle West Wind, is raised by his grieving grandmother, Nokomis, after Wenonah dies show more of a broken heart. He becomes a strong and mighty brave, and eventually wins the lovely Minnehaha as his wife. This poem is the story of his life, incorporating multiple Native American folktales which Longfellow learned from studying the work of two 19th century scholars, Heckewelder and Schoolcraft. The structure and rhythm of the poem are based on the Finnish epic, Kalevala, which appeared approximately 20 years earlier, and which Longfellow had read just before beginning his own epic tale. It was his intent to provide a similar chronicle, a sort of unified mythology, for the American Indians. Here, of course, arises a mighty cultural stumbling block to a 21st century appreciation of a work that contains some magnificent language and imagery. Longfellow, a white man, took it upon himself to codify a mythology for an indigenous culture he was not a part of, and which did not exist as he envisioned it. Because there is no single “American Indian” culture; because the indigenous people of this continent comprise multiple tribes diverse in their languages, beliefs, traditions and habits, who lived in harmony with their environment, without ever considering that they owned it, long before there was such a concept as “America”; because while Longfellow’s assumption that the Indian tribes would never create their own “national epic” may have been valid, his mission to do it for them was misguided in his own time, and now feels as obnoxious and out of place as the Christian sentiments and symbolism he inserts into the final scenes of his song. Longfellow was criticized by his contemporaries for “borrowing” legends from the Kalevala, and he defended himself against that charge by citing the scholarly works from which he drew his Indian legends, pointing out that the similarities which certainly appeared were not his doing. Apparently he was not called to task for doing what he openly admitted to, that is creating an overall mythic framework meant to encompass the Indians of the Maine woods, the Great Lakes, the Southwest, and the Great Plains as though they were a single people, indistinguishable from one another. There are common elements among their tribal stories, just as there were legends recounted in the Kalevala that sounded like source material for the Song of Hiawatha, and Longfellow really did create a poetic masterpiece here; it’s just that we must read it with a culturally critical eye to the liberties he took to do so.

A note on the edition I read (which claims to be the only unabridged version in print): it was published by David R. Godine, and contains the illustrations by Frederic Remington that accompanied the original edition. They are not coordinated to the text at all, and mostly consist of marginal drawings of tools, utensils, and other articles of Indian origin; animals, plants and features of the landscape of the Southwest. They are exquisite. This edition also includes a glossary, notes (in which the page references are all incorrect), and an informative afterword by the publisher. If you want to read this epic, I strongly suggest you get your hands on this edition. show less

This collection, published in 1842, vividly describes the predicament of slavery. It makes a case of natural philosophy of why slavery is immoral. Works like Longfellow's began to sway the northern U.S. towards the the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery (through the bloody carnage of the Civil War, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution).

What I find most appealing in the poems in this collection is how Longfellow makes a case show more that is relatively devoid of the notion of God. He simply dwells, ever-compassionately, upon the human predicament of the slaves. They are not able to reach their dreams; they are surrounded by an environment designed to belittle their self-esteem; they cannot possess a notion of "home;" they are denied identities; they are less free than even "wild" animals.

We live in similar - albeit more muted - bounds in twenty-first-century Western society. Women are still sold into sexual slavery; addiction to drugs still powerfully entraps many; refugees and forced migration still holds too many within its grasp. With different images, Longfellow's profound way with words can be applied to our situation. I'm glad the battle over systemic slavery is over and won. Nonetheless, the path forward is still arduous, and the victory is not complete. show less

One of those poems we read in grammar school that sticks with us later in life. I must say Longfellow had a way with description "Under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands. The smith, a mighty man is he, with large and sinewy hands, and the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands."

I can see this man, his environment, and recognize the labor he does. But it is the softer side that makes this poem immortal. It is the recognition of what the man feels and how he show more betters his community that makes me love it. show less

It is amazing that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could put so much into a 52 page poem. There is the love story, of course, and the themes of devotion and persistence, but there is also faith, forgiveness, the cruelties of war, injustice, extreme loss, strength of character, and reclamation.

The descriptive quality of his poetry is mesmerizing. I felt I could see the Acadian village, the Louisiana bayou and the western mountains. Does this not describe the spread of an epidemic perfectly:
And, show more as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September,
Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the meadow,
So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natural margin,
Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence.

You can both feel the spreading of the disease and in an eerie way, see it.

I read this once, long ago, when I was a girl. Then it was just the love story that I came away with. It was like reading Romeo and Juliet as a teenager. This time, I left the poem with so much more! show less