Introduction

Should you ask me, whence these stories?Whence these legends and traditions,With the odors of the forestWith 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 reverberationsAs 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-landsWhere the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,Feeds among the reeds and rushes.I repeat them as I heard themFrom the lips of Nawadaha,The musician, the sweet singer.”

Should you ask where NawadahaFound 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 inquiriesStraightway 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 villageSpread 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 he 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 riversThrough their palisades of pine-trees,And the thunder in the mountains,Whose innumerable echoesFlap 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 offCall to us to pause and listen,Speak in tones so plain and childlike,Scarcely can the ear distinguishWhether 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 agesEvery human heart is human,That in even savage bosomsThere are longings, yearnings, strivingsFor the good they comprehend not,That the feeble hands and helpless,Groping blindly in the darkness,Touch God’s right hand in that darknessAnd are lifted up and strengthened;--Listen to this simple story,To this Song of Hiawatha!

Ye, who sometimes, in your ramblesThrough the green lanes of the country,Where the tangled barberry-bushesHang their tufts of crimson berriesOver stone walls gray with mosses,Pause by some neglected graveyard,For a while to muse, and ponderOn a half-effaced inscription,Written with little skill of song-craft,Homely phrases, but each letterFull of hope and yet of heart-break,Full of all the tender pathosOf the Here and the Hereafter;Stay and read this rude inscription,Read this Song of Hiawatha!