Longfellow's "Hiawatha"

1896

The Indian epic of "Hiawatha" took the world by surprise, writes Hezekiah Butterworth in an article "How Longfellow Wrote His Best-Known Poems" in Ladies' Home Journal.

Its form and its matter were for a long time mysteries. How could a Cambridge literary recluse produce such an epic? Certain critics claimed that the idea, form and magic treatment of the poem had been borrowed from a Scandinavian sage, and the implication greatly disturbed his publishers, and must have caused his sensitive spirit great pain. It partly eclipsed for a time the new star in the literary horizon on which all eyes were fixed.

The criticism was disarmed; the wonder grew; a fixed star had appeared. But the mystery of the poem is simply solved. Longfellow desired to produce an epic that should be in sympathy with all that was most beautiful and noble in the vanishing Indian race. Abraham Le Fort, an Onondaga chieftain, had furnished Schoolcraft, the historian, much Indian lore and many mystic traditions, with certain Indian vocabularies, in which the musical and unmusical sounds of many words indicated their meaning.

These traditions and vocabularies made the work of the poet easy. One only needs to read Schoolcraft, to whom the poet acknowledged his indebtedness, to see how this monument to the Indian race, their only great literary memorial, was builded.