Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s lyrical epic draws upon the oral legends and tribal traditions of the Ojibway, Delaware, and Iroquois peoples, as collected by historian Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The poem opens on the Mountains of the Prairie, where the Master of Life smokes the calumet peace-pipe and commands the warring tribes to bury their weapons and live as brothers under the guidance of a coming deliverer. Born to the mortal Wenonah and Mudjekeewis, the West-Wind, the young Hiawatha is raised by his grandmother Nokomis by the shores of Gitche Gumee. He grows into a mighty hunter and leader who slays monsters, invents picture-writing, and labors tirelessly for the prosperity of his people.
Along the way, he befriends the musician Chibiabos and the strong man Kwasind, slays the magician Megissogwon, and journeys to the land of the Dacotahs to win the hand of Minnehaha, the Laughing Water. Despite periods of peace, prosperity, and the gift of maize brought through Hiawatha's fasting, the narrative darkens with the deaths of Chibiabos and Minnehaha during a brutal winter of famine and fever. Hiawatha endures these profound losses with stoic grace, welcoming the ghostly trials of the dead and maintaining his reverence for the natural world. In the twilight of his life, as European settlers and Christian missionaries arrive in the canoes of the East, Hiawatha prepares his people for the inevitable transition of eras. Having fulfilled his sacred mission to unite the tribes and teach them the arts of peace, he launches his birch canoe into the sunset, departing forever into the purple vapors of the Hereafter.
