Critical Evaluation
The commemorative poem The Song of Hiawatha is neither a historically accurate nor an exact chronological account of actual events among Native Americans in the southern Lake Superior area of the United States. Instead, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow bases the narrative in part on information about Native Americans from many areas and eras; he employs myths and folktales from many cultures. His main character, Hiawatha, combines features taken from the heroes of several different tribes, such as Tarenyawago of the Iroquois, a legendary chief named Hiawatha who may have helped form the Iroquois Confederacy, and the mythical Manabazho of the Algonquin or Chippewa tribe. In addition, Longfellow employs his own creativity.
Longfellow utilized some traditional myths in his poem, incorporating stories of the people that explain phenomena they do not understand. Thus, The Song of Hiawatha explains how the woodpecker got its red head, how the tribes acquired corn, how picture writing began, and how the peace pipe developed. In addition, the poet borrowed some characters (fairies and evil spirits) from traditional European tales and used some of his own imaginative storytelling as well to produce his episodic poem. Longfellow mentioned in his journals and diaries that one of his sources was Algic Researches (1836) by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (a supporter of the finished work). The poet also utilized the travel logs of George Caitlin and the accounts of missionary John Heckewelder’s experiences among the Delaware and Huron tribes. He wrote also of the inspiration he received from a young Harvard graduate who shared with him some stories from the West.
Longfellow drew on traditional literature, incorporating its three most popular themes into his work: the picaresque (journey) theme, the survival of the unfittest theme, and the reversal of fortune theme. The picaresque theme is one that Longfellow applied liberally in The Song of Hiawatha. Young Hiawatha travels to the land of the West Wind to find his father. He journeys also to the land of the Dacotahs; there, he sees and falls in love with Minnehaha. Other travelers—white men from a faraway place—arrive in the land of Hiawatha’s people and receive welcome. To some readers, however, Longfellow presents a rather detached, benign view of the arrival of Europeans to the land of the Native Americans. At the end of the poem, Hiawatha suggests another trip; he tells Nokomis that he must go on a journey to the “hereafter,” perhaps a reference to heaven.
Longfellow uses the traditional theme of the survival of the unfittest in The Song of Hiawatha. As Hiawatha is enduring days of fasting, he encounters a stranger clad in green and yellow. This newcomer insists that Hiawatha must wrestle him the following morning. Hiawatha continues his fast and is still able to engage in the contest and conquer the stranger. This triumph of the weakened Hiawatha and the gift of corn suggest that the fittest do not always endure in literature.
The reversal of fortune figures prominently in The Song of Hiawatha. For example, as the result of his conquest of the stranger, Hiawatha is able to change the lives of his people. The starved members of the tribes receive the gift of the corn and will find plenty in their future crops—a reversal of their fortunes.
Longfellow uses symbolism abundantly in this quasi-epic. Gitche Manito creates pipes that symbolize peace for the tribes to smoke. He also instructs them to perform other explicitly symbolic acts of peace, such as cleansing their bodies of blood and war paint. The land of the hereafter to which Hiawatha tells Nokomis that he must journey is a...
(This entire section contains 1115 words.)
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heaven perhaps symbolic of the Christian Heaven.
Longfellow’s studies of languages and literature after his 1925 graduation from Bowdoin and his travels in Europe (1926-1929) enabled him both to promote European literature in the United States and to share American folklore on the Continent. The publication of The Song of Hiawatha abroad and in the United States is an example of this cultural exchange.
The Song of Hiawatha employs the unrhymed, trochaic tetrameter; this structure is suggestive of that of the Kalevala (1835; English translation, 1888), by Finnish poet Elias Lönnrot, which Longfellow studied during his travels. In 1855, trochaic tetrameter represented a memorable departure from the then-usual form for serious English narrative poetry: iambic pentameter. Later, Robert Frost in his “The Road Not Taken” (1916) would also use trochaic tetrameter. “Tetrameter” means that the poem has four metrical feet per line. A trochee is a metrical foot composed of a long, or stressed, syllable followed by a short, or unstressed, syllable. Thus, although some variations may be necessary, there are usually eight beats—four stressed and four unstressed—for each line of poetry: “BY the SHORES of GITCHe GUmee/ BY the SHIning BIG-Sea-WAter.” Longfellow noted in a letter that trochaic tetrameter was logical for The Song of Hiawatha because it mimicked somewhat the standard rhythm of the Indian tom-tom. The beat of four trochees is much like the stereotypical “TUM tum TUM tum TUM tum TUM tum” of Native American drumming. Trochaic tetrameter also suggests light, quick movement.
Longfellow demonstrates great skill in his use of this unusual meter. His scheme, however, has encouraged parodies in subsequent years. Henry Eduard Legler observed in many articles and notes that the poem is among the most parodied poems in the English language; Hiawatha’s Photographing (1857) by Lewis Carroll is one example of such a parody. Another is Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt (1941), an Academy Award-nominated Warner Bros. cartoon starring Bugs Bunny. By contrast, the traditional iambic pentameter of Longfellow’s day seems to convey some gravity and makes it a logical choice for poems on solemn subjects. Readers usually read iambic lines (each of whose feet begins with an unstressed syllable and ends with a stressed syllable) more slowly than they read trochaic lines.
Longfellow was a prolific author in a variety of literary forms. His translation of Dante’s La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802) is still in print, but poetry remains his most popular style. Although sometimes receiving criticism for its moralizing, his literary work reflects high ideals; Longfellow’s involvement with the abolition movement suggests his application of these values in his own life.
Many teachers of literature consider Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha as a “children’s poem” that creates little interest among more mature audiences. Other critics disagree. They note that Longfellow’s poem makes use of some of the features of authentic epics, including supernatural intervention, the long journey, and heroic sacrifice. Because of these elements of serious literary content, they argue, it is not primarily children’s literature. Rather, The Song of Hiawatha carries legitimate claim to be serious literature.
