THE SONG OF HIAWATHA

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Evangeline, published in 1847, was followed by The Golden Legend in 1851, and that by Hiawatha in 1855. The general purpose to make use of Indian material appears to have been in the poet's mind for some time, but the conception as finally wrought was formed in the summer of 1854. He writes in his diary under date of June 22, "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right and only one for such a theme." A few days before, he had been reading with great delight the Finnish epic Kalevala, and this poem suggested the measure and may well have reminded him also of the Indian legends, which have that likeness to the Finnish that springs from a common intellectual stage of development and a general community of habits and occupation.

An interest in the Indians had long been felt by Mr. Longfellow, and in his early plans for prose sketches tales about the Indians had a place. He had seen a few of the straggling remainder of the Algonquins in Maine, and had read Heckewelder

while in college; he had witnessed the spectacle of Black Hawk and his Sioux on Boston Common; and a few years before, he had made the acquaintance of the fine-tempered Kah-ge-ga-gah' bowh, the Ojibway chief, and had entertained him at his house, trusting not unlikely that he might derive from the Indian some helpful suggestion.

No sooner had his floating ideas of a work taken shape than he was eager to put his plans into execution. "I could not help this evening," he wrote June 25, "making a beginning of Manabozho, or whatever the poem is to be called. His adventures will form the theme, at all events;" and the next day; "look over Schoolcraft's great book on the Indians; three huge quartos, ill-digested, and without any index. Write a few lines of the poem.” His authority for the legends and the material generally of his poem was in the main Schoolcraft's work, with probably the same author's more literary composition Algic Researches, and Heckewelder's narrative. He soon took Manabozho's other and more euphonic name, Hiawatha, into his service, and gave himself up to a thorough enjoyment of the task. "Worked at Hiawatha," he wrote on the 31st of the month, as I do more or less every day. It is purely in the realm of fancy. After tea, read to the boys the Indian story of The Red Swan." "Hiawatha," he wrote again in October,"occupies and delights me. Have I no misgivings about it? Yes, sometimes. Then the theme seizes me and hurries me away, and they vanish." His misgivings took a concrete shape a few days later, when he read aloud to a friend some

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pages of his work. "He fears the poem will want human interest. So does F. So does the author. I must put a live, beating heart into it."

Mr. Longfellow began writing Hiawatha, as we have seen, June 25, 1854. It was finished March 29, 1855, and published November 10. It is doubtful if the poet wrote any of his longer works with more abandonment, with more thorough enjoyment of his task, with a keener sense of the originality of his venture, and by consequence, with more perplexity when he thought of his readers. He tried the poem on his friends more freely than had been customary with him, and with varied results. His own mind, as he neared the test of publication, wavered a little in its moods. "Proof sheets of Hiawatha," he wrote in June, 1855. "I am growing idiotic about this song, and no longer know whether it is good or bad;" and later still: "In great doubt about a canto of Hiawatha,whether to retain or suppress it. It is odd how confused one's mind becomes about such matters from long looking at the same subject.'

No sooner was the poem published than its popularity was assured, and it was subjected to the most searching tests. It was read by public readers to large audiences, and a few years later was set to music by Stoepel and given at the Boston Theatre with explanatory readings by Matilda Heron. It was parodied, - one of the surest signs of popularity, and it lived its parodies down, a surer sign still of intrinsic uncopyableness. It was criticised with heated words, and made the occasion for controversy. The elemental nature of

the poetry led to vehement charges of plagiarism, and altogether the poet found himself in the midst of a violent war of words which recalled his experience with Hyperion. He felt keenly the unreasonableness of the attack upon his honesty in the charge that he had borrowed metre and incidents both from the Kalevala. He made no secret of the suggestion of the metre, he had used an acknowledged form, which was not exclusively Finnish; and as for the legends, he openly confessed his indebtedness to Schoolcraft in the notes to the poem. Referring to an article in a Washington paper, embodying these charges, he wrote to Mr. Sumner, December 3, 1855:

This is truly one of the greatest literary outrages I ever heard of. But I think it is done mainly to show the learning of the writer. . . . He will stand finally in the position of a man who makes public assertions which he cannot substantiate. You see what the charge of imitation amounts to, by the extracts given. As to my having "taken many of the most striking incidents of the Finnish Epic and transferred them to the American Indians -it is absurd. I can give chapter and verse for these legends. Their chief value is that they are Indian legends. I know the Kalevala very well; and that some of its legends resemble the Indian stories preserved by Schoolcraft is very true. But the idea of making me responsible for that is too ludicrous.

Freiligrath wrote to him with reference to a discussion going on in the London Athenæum over the metre: "The very moment I looked into the book I exclaimed,

Launawatar, Frau die alte,

and was laughing with you again over the pages of the Finnische Runen, as thirteen years ago on the Rhine. The characteristic feature, which shows that you have fetched the metre from the Finns, is the parallelism adopted so skilfully and so gracefully in Hiawatha." In a note in his diary upon this letter, Mr. Longfellow added: "He does not seem to be aware that the parallelism, or repetition, is as much the characteristic of Indian as of Finnish song."

Freiligrath translated Hiawatha, as he had other of Mr. Longfellow's poems, and in acknowledging the receipt of the translation, the poet wrote, January 29, 1857:

It is admirable, this translation of yours, as I knew it would be from the samples sent before. A thousand and a thousand thanks for it, and may Cotta pay you, as the broker paid Guzman de Alfarache, in money sahumada, y lavada con agua de ángeles. A passage was changed in the proofs which I sent to Bogne [the English publisher], and which he promised to hand to you. It is in the description of the sturgeon. This was changed to

As above him Hiawatha

In his birch canoe came sailing,
With his fishing line of cedar,

VILL.8.168.

...

because the sturgeon, I found, was never guilty of the crime of frightening or eating his fellow fishes. . What you say, in the preface, of the close of the poem is very true. The contact of Saga and History is too sudden. But how could I remedy it unless I made the poem very much longer? I felt the clash and concussion, but could not prevent nor escape it.